Download Tubular Worlds

In this fast paced side scrolling shoot ‘em up, you’ll be taking the role of a cadet at an elite academy for fighter pilots. To pass your final exam, you’ll have to fly through four virtual worlds, destroy the enemies encountered and eventually defeat the Warlord at the end of each level.

Not the most intriguing story, but that’s not what shoot ‘em up’s are usually about anyway. They’re about destruction, mayhem, death, and Tubular Worlds delivers in this area, albeit nothing exceptional. It can’t measure up to games like Tyrian, although it’s fun to play in the basic sense. It incorporates everything a good shoot ‘em up needs, but adds little.

As you’ll soon notice while playing this game, it’s pretty hard. You die if you’re hit once by whatever comes your way. You have multiple lives, but they’re really just useless in single player mode. This because when you die, you’ll lose all your equipment, which is certain to get you killed in every level save the first; you’ll just be too weak to survive.

What makes this worse is the fact that you’ll usually have to know a level to win. There are some things that you just can’t see coming (like the collapsing mountainsides in the first level), and as you’ll die with every hit you don’t stand much of a chance the first time you play most levels. This means you’ll probably have to play the previous levels over and over again, which can become quite tedious.

Of course, not all is bad. The game environments are pretty nice, the levels are well designed, the graphics are pretty (though not exceptional), the sound is quite good and there’s some cool in-game music. But the best thing is that the game sports a two-player mode. In fact, this seems to be the only mode in which you can actually finish the game without having to worry about dying once. If two players work together, they can protect each other and split the targets. This way if someone dies, the other can protect him while he gets back up to speed.

All in all, if you like this genre and don’t mind a somewhat tedious and irritating single player mode, this game can be fun to play. Bring in a friend and the fun factor increases exponentially.