Gyruss Demo Review

That’s right, I’m going to review the demo. Because there’s no way I’m paying 400 points for this game, and the Powers that Be don’t deem it necessary to give the Xbox Topic crew free games..

So Gyruss is pretty much what you get when you take Galaga, and wrap it into a cylinder. This pseudo-3D game (also known as a “tube shooter“) must have been somewhat impressive back in 1983 when it was released, but today it’s just awkward. You travel through the galaxy, heading towards Earth, defeating aliens on the way. You’ve got a little ship that spins around the play area, shooting at alien ships that also move within the invisible cylinder’s walls. Pound on the shoot button, dodge, repeat, and you’ve got the gameplay down. I’m not trying to say this game is easy, I’m trying to say this game is pretty uninteresting today.

Perhaps if they had given us revamped graphics, we’d be more interested, but the old (albeit slightly blurred-edged) graphics are here, with just nothing to make this game stand out. One thing I liked was that the columns that surround the gameplay screen on an HDTV are feathered so that when the game screen is entirely black, the columns have the illusion of being part of the game, with some type of space dust forming a cloud around the playfield.

If space shooters are your type of thing, or you remember 1983 and want to relieve a classic then the low price should be worth it.