Graceful Explosion Machine

All in all, Graceful Explosion Machine does what it advertises, offers a fun arcade shooter experience, with a significant amount of replay value after you finish your first go round with the game. The vibrant colors and the background music, along with the simplistic yet deep controls, make for a fun experience on and off the road. Graceful Explosion Machine is definitely a must have for your Nintendo Switch.

Graceful Explosion Machine is the perfect arcade style shooter, and one of the best Switch games available right now. Its fluid, addictive gameplay and flashy yet minimal visuals pair well with a variety of challenging enemies, and it’s great for sessions lasting for a few minutes or a couple hours.

I’ve been a fan of arcade shooters ever since my days of Galaga, however as you might imagine, 30 plus years and thousands of games later, it’s becoming more and more difficult for developers to find ways to reinvent the genre. This is precisely where Graceful Explosion Machine excels, giving players everything they’ve ever dreamed of in a fun and colorful 2D arcade shoot-’em-up. Although the levels do become quite repetitive, offering small and confined spaces time and time again, it’s very easy to forget this with all of the intense fun Graceful Explosion Machine brings your way.

Graceful Explosion Machine builds an intense, addictive shoot-em-up around a satisfying weapon-juggling system and smart enemies. The Switch’s HD Rumble adds a unique feeling to every explosion in this colorful shooter, and earning a good spot on the leaderboard is an intense challenge thanks to dense swarms of enemies. But even when a pesky foe slapped down my scoring run, I always had the urge to jump back into these crowded corridors and try again.

There are plenty of arcade shooters on Sony consoles; Housemarque's Super Stardust HD and Resogun pretty much set a gold standard on PlayStation. Other than shifting perspectives and prettier graphics, there aren't that many twists left in the genre. Vertex Pop’s Graceful Explosion Machine distinguishes itself from the rest of the pack with a striking art style and some interesting mechanical twists on the traditional shmup.

More intense shmup action arrives in the form of claustrophobic skirmishes and geometric madness. Four planets full of foes await a tiny ship armed wing to wing with different guns and killing capacity. Strategy and a quick trigger finger are required to survive these tiny halls and overcome the immense challenge. It's not easy, but players will find a lot of influence from other shmups as well as a brand new package that takes some bold leaps into uncharted space with Graceful Explosion machine.

Suit up and strap in for a colorful action-filled shooter with a really great name.

If this was the only sideways scrolling, Defender-esque shooter on PlayStation I would be more enthusiastic but we already have Resogun and in comparison to the Housemarque game Graceful Explosion Machine is rather simple and even more forgettable. All four weapons are earned within a couple of levels and there is no difference between the four worlds the levels are set on other than the colour of the background. The enemies themselves are simple geometric shapes with no personality, the weapons are generic, the levels are tiny you’d need a keen eye to tell any difference between them, and the...