Swarm

The idea of Swarm is quite simple, get 50 Swarmites from one end of the level to the other, at least, that’s what you’re supposed to do. What you will probably and most likely find yourself doing, is running around like a nutter wondering what you have to do because you’re trying to remember the controls and what they do, or is that just me?

You can’t compare it to Lemmings due to being absolutely nothing like it, so if you read elsewhere that, “If you like Lemmings, you’ll like this!”, they’re lying and should be anally fisted with a sandpaper glove. The aim, once splurged out by one of Mothers tentacles, is to make your way from left to right and be sucked back up by Mother, avoiding losing all your Swarmites while collecting pretty purple things that build up your score, the more you collect (or the more Swarmites that die), the higher the score multiplier goes.
There are two avatar awards in the game and the first one is the most easiest to get, just start the game. That’s it. You don’t even have to play, just boot up the game and BAM!, avatar reward… I’m guessing you get the second one when you finish the game. I guess, because it’s a long game, you won’t finish this in just an hour or two and of course, that’s what makes it value for money.
You feel like it’s so similar to something else as the gameplay has a familiar feel to it, yet you can’t help but applaud the unique style and it wasn’t until someone pointed it out to me that, the Swarmites look a bit like him out of Trap Door, you know, yeah, him.
One of the things you will find yourself doing is having to repeat levels and sometimes more than once, while this is one of those things to test you and extend the gameplay, the inevitable frustration will kick in and a potential throwing at someone/thing/out of window/down of controllers may occur. It just needs a change of tactics to build up enough score to unlock the next level for you to progress and the tip for that is, try not to lose too many Swarmites and build up the multiplier as high as possible, might sound easier than it is, but that’s pretty much the jist of the game.
There are awards for death. Yes, you read that correctly, depending on how your Swarmites die, you’re awarded a Death Medal or Mega Death Medal relative to the amount lost by either falling into an abyss, getting vaporized or even asphyxiated (suffocation). It’s worth checking out the ‘How to Play’ option, not for the obvious reason, but for the images in there which includes some artwork instead of typical screenshots.
You can view the controls, but you’ll only really need the triggers and A, some parts will need the odd press of the B button, so all you’ll do is find out what happens when you press those buttons in the options. Tips are provided throughout the levels anyway, so you’ll know what to do in whatever situation you come across with new abilities becoming available upon completion of levels and as you can probably work out from that, you’ll need to use the new ability in the freshly unlocked level.
One of the problems you may get a little vexed at is that your swarm of little blue blob-like things need to come to a stop before you use an ability such as stacking, otherwise they’ll just jump in the air.
It’s a great looking game with amazing backgrounds, you can tell there has been some polishing up of graphics and physics of the game, you’ll very rarely scream, “AS IF!” because of something that happened which shouldn’t have. If you do, it’s your own fault for not being able to use the controls properly.
Yes the game gets progressively more difficult, but what would be the point of it being a simple breeze though? The difficulty is set at a good standard, it’s just the levels that increase the difficulty and that’s what makes Swarm earn it’s price tag, a decent balance of graphics and gameplay is why you should get this game, NOW!