Back in the day twin stick shooters were a great way to unwind with some mindless mayhem, use one stick to move your on-screen character and the other to shoot in a desired direction. There were so many games to get this right over the years with classics like Smash TV, Total Carnage, and Robotron. In recent years we've seen a bit of a revisiting of this sub-genre of game with titles such as Geometry Wars and Waves leading the charge.
Hexodius is the latest attempt at bringing twin stick shooters into the modern era, but it fails terribly in making a compelling experience by forgetting why these games are fun in the first place. Instead of having fast-paced action that players can dive into whenever they want, we're forced to slog through an incredibly dull story mode first, and only as new areas are unlocked there do we start to also unlock new arcade areas to play in. Even worse, the arcade modes are dreary, uninspired dross themselves.
