A smooth, straight forward (top down side-scrolling, actually) Shmup spanning the galaxy, utilizing a wide variety of weapons and powers to take down those evil Space Chickens we all hate so much.

7/10

Come join the hunt for hidden gems! Click Here for Digging Deep.

This was my first experience with a game from the Chicken Invaders series. Being perfectly honest, I found myself quite surprised at how fun it was. I wholly expected this to be a sloppily thrown together asset flip (I mean, c'mon, Chicken Invaders 5? You've gotta see where I was coming from!), but what I got was a well thought out, enjoyable arcade shoot-em-up experience. Plus, slaughtering hundreds, if not thousands, of chickens is always a weekend well spent.

In Chicken Invaders 5, it's up to you to save the universe, yet again, from these war-mongering Space Chickens. To do so, you will travel across a number of environments, and get your hands on all kinds of different weapons with which to wreak your wrath. Therein lies the strength of CI5, its variety. While the backgrounds of the levels are fairly plain, and repeat quite a bit, there is no shortage of styles of chickens out to get you. The weapons are all fairly useful, but there are a few that are objectively not great, and you definitely don't want to get stuck with one before a boss fight (Riddler, I'm looking at you). Also, the devs keep the levels feeling fresh by rotating your position on the screen, having the enemies come in from all number of different places (top, sides, down, wormholes, you name it) to keep you on your toes. It's not just space invaders the whole way through.

As you can tell in the store page, the graphics aren't anything to write home about. They're cute, and serviceable, though. I feel like the only fault with the visuals is the mostly bland backgrounds. Speaking of serviceable, the music, while isn't as ear-grating or repetitious as many games, also doesn't stand out; it's no more than your generic standard sci-fi quest music. It does the job, but you likely won't be humming it to yourself while doing dishes later. I only used a 360 controller for playing, and I found it to be responsive and accurate. Nice and tight, the way a shmup should be. I can't speak to the K&M, but other reviews cover that plenty.

One thing I found was there is either a sharp learning curve, or just a frustratingly hard stage around levels 30ish (wherever Epsilon Thalassas is). Originally, I was playing on the medium difficulty, but couldn't get through it, and when I switched to Rookie, I started from the beginning, dominated my way through and still wound up getting screwed over quite a few times. Upon respawning, my ship would appear beyond the “bottom” of the ocean, where instant death was to be found, and as soon as my momentary invincibility wore off, I was dead, and had to wait to respawn again in a safer area. That was the only technical issue I ran into during my time in the game.

They don't punish you for playing at a lower difficulty. Keys, which are used to unlock a selection of bonus goodies (extra backgrounds, ship modifications (my favorite!), and some extra buffs / handicaps for score hunters) drop just the same as they do at higher levels, and Steam achievements unlock at all levels for certain things (excluding the achievements for playing at higher levels, of course). In regards to the unlockables, to earn them all, you need something like 3k keys. I played for about 2.5 hours and gathered about 60. That's an insane amount of keys.

At $4.99, this is a good buy for people who are fans of the series, or are diehard shmup fans. Otherwise, I'd say wait for a sale, but it's definitely worth playing.

A smooth, straight forward (top down side-scrolling, actually) Shmup spanning the galaxy, utilizing a wide variety of weapons and powers to take down those evil Space Chickens we all hate so much. 7/10 Come join the hunt for hidden gems! [url=steamcommunity.com/groups/diggingdeep] Click Here for Digging Deep. [/url] This was my first experience with a game from the Chicken Invaders series. Being perfectly honest, I found myself quite surprised at how fun it was. I wholly expected this to be a sloppily thrown together asset flip (I mean, c'mon, Chicken Invaders 5? You've gotta see where I was coming from!), but what I got was a well thought out, enjoyable arcade shoot-em-up experience. Plus, slaughtering hundreds, if not thousands, of chickens is always a weekend well spent. In Chicken Invaders 5, it's up to you to save the universe, yet again, from these war-mongering Space Chickens. To do so, you will travel across a number of environments, and get your hands on all kinds of different weapons with which to wreak your wrath. Therein lies the strength of CI5, its variety. While the backgrounds of the levels are fairly plain, and repeat quite a bit, there is no shortage of styles of chickens out to get you. The weapons are all fairly useful, but there are a few that are objectively not great, and you definitely don't want to get stuck with one before a boss fight (Riddler, I'm looking at you). Also, the devs keep the levels feeling fresh by rotating your position on the screen, having the enemies come in from all number of different places (top, sides, down, wormholes, you name it) to keep you on your toes. It's not just space invaders the whole way through. As you can tell in the store page, the graphics aren't anything to write home about. They're cute, and serviceable, though. I feel like the only fault with the visuals is the mostly bland backgrounds. Speaking of serviceable, the music, while isn't as ear-grating or repetitious as many games, also doesn't stand out; it's no more than your generic standard sci-fi quest music. It does the job, but you likely won't be humming it to yourself while doing dishes later. I only used a 360 controller for playing, and I found it to be responsive and accurate. Nice and tight, the way a shmup should be. I can't speak to the K&M, but other reviews cover that plenty. One thing I found was there is either a sharp learning curve, or just a frustratingly hard stage around levels 30ish (wherever Epsilon Thalassas is). Originally, I was playing on the medium difficulty, but couldn't get through it, and when I switched to Rookie, I started from the beginning, dominated my way through and still wound up getting screwed over quite a few times. Upon respawning, my ship would appear beyond the “bottom” of the ocean, where instant death was to be found, and as soon as my momentary invincibility wore off, I was dead, and had to wait to respawn again in a safer area. That was the only technical issue I ran into during my time in the game. They don't punish you for playing at a lower difficulty. Keys, which are used to unlock a selection of bonus goodies (extra backgrounds, ship modifications (my favorite!), and some extra buffs / handicaps for score hunters) drop just the same as they do at higher levels, and Steam achievements unlock at all levels for certain things (excluding the achievements for playing at higher levels, of course). In regards to the unlockables, to earn them all, you need something like 3k keys. I played for about 2.5 hours and gathered about 60. That's an insane amount of keys. At $4.99, this is a good buy for people who are fans of the series, or are diehard shmup fans. Otherwise, I'd say wait for a sale, but it's definitely worth playing.