Some games are adept at teaching history in spite of your best efforts to avoid everything baring any resemblance to education. Jamestown is no such game. The year is 1619. The English are at war with the Spanish – “well the game’s only a couple of decades off…” The war is being fought over the outskirts of English expansion, Mars. “Wait, what?!”
If there’s anything that’ll draw me into the warm fold of a bygone genre its such an absurd display of imagination. Jamestown is a shoot ‘em up, in true Space Invaders fashion you’re meant to obliterate the enemy multitude whilst evading their unrelenting attempts to shoot down your ship. Of course, the first time you play Jamestown you won’t be paying enough attention to any of this. Rather, you’ll be ogling Final Form’s beautiful, pixelated realisation of a colonized Mars as it scrolls past in the background. Which is why you’ll promptly die. Woops.
But it’s worth it. Jamestown sees you fly through some truly gorgeous scenes: through the pink haze of a Martian sky while bronzed fighters greet you with an array of deadly pink-plasma; over floating-rock plantations as wee English footsoldiers take the occasional pot-shot at your common foe. But make no mistake, up against the combined Spanish and Martian fleet (and their ample supply of ammunition) you’re on your own. Except if you’ve managed to squeeze a few friends around your monitor for a brilliant session of co-op.
With or without friends, the principles stay the same. Explode an enemy and it will rain down cogs, gather enough of them and you’re presented with the opportunity to ‘vaunt’. Vaunting then rids your immediate area of all incoming fire, lets you deal more damage, and initiates a period of high scoring which lasts so long as you continue to hoover up cogs like a greedy anteater. Your scores translate into Ducats, and Ducats buy you new ships.
Crucially, all of the four ships on offer are more than a superficial paint-job, each of them actually changes the way you play the game. For instance, the first ship available for purchase differs in that instead of than having an isolated secondary weapon, you are able to rotate the facing of one of its two rapid-fire guns. A trick which means you can keep pouring fire onto enemies even when you are forced to side-step an incoming plasma-barrage.
The sheer volume of impending death which bosses spew onto your screen is plainly ridiculous. I am often struck with disbelief at how I managed to escape a particularly fierce encounter unscathed, just as often I am predictably struck down.
Jamestown is certainly challenging. This is mostly because it routinely forces you to up the difficulty on earlier levels in order to unlock later levels. And yet with a meagre five levels on offer, if you struggle with higher difficulties you are essentially denied half of the game. Though players like myself can this brush off as merely a cheeky design decision on the part of Final Form, it does however also impact the flow of the game’s narrative which is dosed out in-between levels. These morsels may be brief, but accompanied with some lovely paintings, they contribute enormously to the mood of the game – it seems a shame to spoil that.
One of the game’s other quirks is that the better you are doing, the more ships it will send your direction. The aim of this is noble: to give great players the test they deserve. However, because this additional difficulty is adjusted according to your score and ignores your death count, you may find that you keep failing a level because you are doing too well… confusing.
But qualms with difficulty do little to tarnish a game with such soul. With its joyous setting and glorious soundtrack, Jamestown remains a stylistic tour-de-force wrapped around a reliable and exciting shoot ‘em up.