The Red Star Critic Reviews

The Red Star is an amazing game; it's fast, fun, and loaded with variety.

Visually there's nothing like it--it is a purely artistic endeavor and as shooters go there's nothing here not to love.

If you're an action-shooter fan, looking for a pleasant distraction, the game delivers a quality experience, considering the $20 price tag. However, if you're a fan of the comics and were hoping for some of the glorious art style and heavy plot twists, you might just wish that XS Games had left The Red Star on the shelves to rot.

It doesn’t feel quite as polished as Konami’s PS2 Contra titles, but the bosses are large and feature a similar robotic look that many of the Contra bosses are known for.

Despite spending years on the shelf, The Red Star ably delivers a unique and challenging blend of beat-'em-up and top-down shooter action.

The game can grow repetitive over time, but being able to use three multitalented superheroes helps the game significantly -- especially with two players working together. In addition, the graphics and sound excel, and at only $20, it's an essential purchase.

Although enhanced graphics and special effects would have improved the game cosmetically, there's no denying that the mechanics are dialed-in and the developers have some damned good heads on their shoulders. Add in the fact that it retails for a rock-bottom $20 brand-new, and The Red Star and becomes the next surprise hit that's on every B-list hound's radar.

Self-esteem issues aside, The Red Star is a great game that stands on its own, despite the hardships its development went through.

Simple, harmless entertainment, an old school arcade game jazzed up (a little) for today's gaming generation - and as such, it does just fine.

I'd suggest you treat The Red Star like you would a dead dog full of lovely cream cakes: ignore the stench of old mank and dig right in to the deliciousness!

Purely from a gameplay perspective, it works.

It's cheap and it made us cheerful with its retro gameplay and easy-going difficulty levels.

Where The Red Star is best is in its combat system, which brilliantly blends melee attacks, shooting, and blocking defenses. There's an almost poetic beauty with the mastery of these, as you unconsciously perform incredible attacks by switching between and blending the three.

The Red Star, whilst not a title that is groundbreaking in any way, offers some incredibly fun gameplay and is definitely worth a second glance for those wanting some old-school style fun.

The big problem with this game is the loading times. Because of them, most people will pay no attention to the storyline as they will be preoccupied with just hammering the X button in order to get through the next loading screen.

Worth 20 quid? For no-nonsense arcade thrills, just about. Worth two years' wait? Sadly, not quite.

The graphics are what you'd expect from a PS2 game, with a nice gloomy futuristic style. For only $20, The Red Star is a great example of why the PS2 still rocks, and why old school gaming is far from dead.

While you could argue that it's relatively short, it has variety: new enemies are introduced on almost every level and each boss is distinctive, differing in size, strength or attack pattern to the last.

A modestly brilliant game throughout, and is thoroughly playable and very addictive. It has some inspired boss and bullet pattern design, and gives an immediate, rewarding sensation that truly belongs to the world of retro games.

We wish the astonishing re-imagining of the Soviet-Afghanistan war that the comic began with was better represented, but the gameplay is more than capable of carrying this one. The art team did a bang-up job as well, and The Red Star even supports progressive scan.