Latest time waster: Harmotion

Now by Harmotion being a time waster, I mean it's fun, not a waste of time to try out. I've had some time to mess with this game a bit now, and even though it's very basic in design, it's very fun to play. The backbone of the game is an online 2 player head-to-head vs. shmup, which keeps track of your stats and ranks you against other players. Everything is free, you get the full version and only need to create an account in order to fight other shmuppers. Or you can even just play the one player game, if that's what floats your boat.



Start out by choosing from four different races. The main difference is the attack type - one's a spread pattern, one's a straight shot, one's a power shot, and the advanced ship has raystorm type lasers. The "arena" is filled with morphing grey blobs, that can latch onto each other or just generally float around and screw you up (think Gradius 5 green ooze.....) Shooting the bubbles releases energy, which you can collect to make your main shot stronger - the drawback is that you can't fire while doing this, so be sure to time it right! Some bubbles contain visible powerups, which are your secondary weapons. If you want to fight another player, activate a "radar" powerup (always the first one you get), and then the opponent's stat screen will appear as you combat them. Other secondary weapons include missiles, detenation controlled mines, and concussion blasts.

The actual combat can be a bit hairy. Bubbles break up a lot, and of course do damage to your ship, so you need to dodge them, collect energy, and dodge your opponent's attacks as well. If you read that last sentence with your keen shmup perceptions turned on, you would translate it into "there's screen clutter". And lots of it. But luckily the variation in colors make it easy to distinguish harmful blobs from bright pink energy balls. Once you figure the basic formula for winning matches (grab a secondary weapon, power up the main shot, and cut the screen in half with firepower, forcing them over to the sides), the game gets a bit repetitive. However fighting each different race does require some variation of strategies, just pray you don't fight the blue ship pictured here. Harmotion is a great concept and lots of fun challenging other shmup fans online. I just feel the main game is lacking a little something......with a little more development, this game could really make some big waves.

Harmonize here.