Platform: Xbox Indie Games (Xbox 360)
Price: 240 MSP / $3 USD


Dual-stick shooters are increasingly becoming popular in the Xbox Indie Games section and with this, expectations rise as well. Duologue succeeds at standing out from the crowd and provides a new yet still familiar fun experience to the genre.

Gameplay:
You move your tank with the left stick and shoot with the right stick (obvious, I know). However, that's not all there is to it, you also have to switch your bullet color to match the opposite color of the enemy by pressing either one of the two triggers accordingly in order to kill it. This is similar to the polarity found in Ikaruga except that you are not immune to bullets at all as in this game a majority of the enemies are charging towards you rather than firing. You also can't kill enemies with bullets that are the same color as them (which was possible in Ikaruga) but this is all good as it makes this game different, in a good way. Rather than dodging bullets like hell, in Duologue the goal is to clear every enemy in sight. Once you've done this, the next wave of enemies will appear. Also, while it is necessary to kill every enemy, you can repel some of the enemies by changing your always-on beam of light into their opposite color. This beam of light could be a bit confusing at first though as when your beam of light is red for instance, your bullets will be green instead and in this particular scenario, assuming it's a green colored enemy, they will be repelled by the red light but be completely immune to the green bullets so you need to keep this in mind especially in situations where repelling will become essential to stay alive. Just remember that when the light is the same color as the enemy, the bullet will kill it and when the light is of the opposite color, the bullet will not but the light will repel them if it's pointing at their direction. As far as a health bar goes, you don't have one. Once an enemy touches you, you're dead and upon respawning you'll have a few seconds of invulnerability which you should take advantage of by moving to a safe spot to spawn at that can be hard to find at times since the playfield is fixed meaning that you can't wander outside of the area shown on your screen (similar to Robotron in this sense).

Before I get into more details, I'll explain the 3 game modes found in Duologue that can all be played with up to 4 players (locally only). Campaign presents you with a limited number of lives and zero continues meaning that once you've ran out of lives you'll get the dreaded "Game Over" screen. You are able to earn more lives as you progress though so don't panic.

Infinite on the other hand gives you an unlimited amount of lives and instead tracks your deaths. The object of this mode is to complete the game with the least amount of lives lost and also unofficially serves as the "you can finally beat this game even if you suck" mode for those who want to complete the game without worrying about losing all their lives and having to restart due to the lack of a "Game Over" screen. According to the developer as well my own experience (I completed the game via this mode as I only managed to get a little over halfway through the regular campaign), it's essentially the same as the campaign mode in terms of content and difficulty (minus the life restriction) except that the cinematic ending is not present. So that's the only thing you'd be missing out on if you did not beat it via the regular campaign.

Survival is the other mode that's available which consists of endless waves of enemies and it ends once you've ran out of lives. At the time of writing this, my highest wave reached was 60 something. You'll encounter several of the enemies found in the campaign including some of the mini-bosses.

Note: There is no "save" feature in any game mode, so if you quit or lose, you'll have to start from the beginning again. The campaign's length is reasonable but if you can't play for more than about 2-4 hours continuously then this might be a problem.

I'm not going to explain every enemy in Duologue but for the most part, a majority of them are amoeba-like creatures that will either charge at you or just hold still. These amoeba creatures don't shoot at all and are not really a menace when they're isolated, it's when the wave first starts that they are a problem as you'll be overwhelmed by them at times. Another common enemy is this ghost-like creature that is more aggressive and that I'd recommend eliminating right away once they start spawning. There's also this plant-like creature that fires "bullets" at you and while dodging them is not hard, don't be surprised if they catch you off guard while you're dodging another enemy. As for the mini-bosses that I previously mentioned, they tend to be much larger than regular enemies and in the later waves (at least in campaign) you'll often be facing previously defeated mini-bosses again but with more accomplices. Note: You might consider these "mini-bosses" to be regular bosses, but I refuse to recognize them as that due to their nature and as such, there is only one "real" boss, the final one.

If you're wondering about the availability of power-ups or special attacks, unfortunately, there appeared to be none but at the same time, these things were not really necessary and probably would have interfered with the current gameplay as it was not meant to be played with such things as it might have made the game far too easy.

Graphics & Audio:
While the game does not boast stunning 3D visuals, it does showcase some rather solid 2D artwork. The backgrounds, enemies, and tanks all looked great. As for the music, it was fairly good but I personally opted for my own music while playing the survival mode as I found it more enjoyable like that. The sound effects were quite effective but perhaps a bit too well done as it actually sounded like there were fireworks outside my house when I was having rockets fired towards me (in-game, of course)...

Replay value:
There's a decent "achievement" system present that gives you some things to strive for such as completing the campaign, doing so with some friends, reaching wave 50 and some other things that seemed reasonable with the exception of resetting the score to 0 again which would require a lot of skill and time. However, maybe I'll be able to get that eventually...

Both the infinite/survival mode should provide hours of playtime as the infinite mode will test your skills to see how well you can complete the campaign by not losing as many lives and the survival mode will put your skills to the test by seeing how long you can survive. Also, the multiplayer co-op* will allow you to share the experience with some friends but keep in mind there is NO versus, only cooperative. So don't expect to be battling it out with each other, instead you should be focusing your bitterness and angry towards the enemy.

Note: Once your teammate runs out of lives, they will not respawn and the game will continue until every remaining player runs out of lives. There also is not a drop-in option, meaning that a friend can't join in once the game session has started.

Overall:
I thoroughly enjoyed what Duologue had to offer and would recommend it to anyone who's a fan of dual-stick shooters that wants to try something that's a bit more strategic yet still involves gunning down everything. There were some minor drawbacks though, one thing that I felt could have been improved was the enemy variety especially with the mini-bosses. Another thing is that once a teammate ran out of lives, they could not be revived again, it would have been better if one of the remaining players could have "donated" one of their remaining lives to bring them back if they wanted to do so or at least give them one last chance by having them respawn after X amount of waves with no remaining lives this time. Being able to select your tank color would have been nice as well and perhaps some sort of shield power-up that appeared after X amount of waves that protected you for a few seconds. I think that particular power-up might have still kept the gameplay balanced. Additional enemy colors would have enhanced Duologue's gameplay as well especially in the survival mode as after a while red, green, yellow, purple, blue, and orange become dull especially since there's only two different colors per wave. Silver/gold as well as black/white would have been nice. Overall, these "negative" things can be considered suggestions rather than complaints and as such, should not discourage you from experiencing this fantastic dual-stick shooter. While it's not as casual as say, "I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1", the polarity-like element gives it a different edge and keeps the gameplay both fun and innovative by eliminating the need for extra weapons as well as overrated enemies (don't get me wrong, I love zombie games but developers are starting to overdo it).

Pros:
+Great replay value for only 240 MSP
+Co-op (up to 4 players)
+Great use of polarity
+Medals AKA "unofficial achievements"
+Nice artwork (cool enemies etc.)
+Difficulty is balanced via the 2 campaign modes

Cons:
-Enemy & color variety could have been better
-Teammates can't be revived once they've completely run out of lives*
-Fixed playfield can be annoying at times (enemies cornering you etc.)
-Lack of online multiplayer (not expected at this price though)

*While some might find this current restriction reasonable, if you're playing with n00bs (they're people too, remember that) it might be a bit frustrating for them as they'll have to wait until all the remaining players die until they can play again. So perhaps this could be an option restriction that can be enabled/disabled via some options screen.

I'm giving Duologue a stunning 8.75/10, it's definitely a great contribution to both the dual-stick shooter genre and polarity-based games especially with a 240MSP price tag. I tried the co-op with only one other person but did see that it supported 4 players as claimed. It had the potential for a 9/10 but with "colorful" dual-stick shooters, it's essential to have a strong sense of variety or else the dullness kicks in so a 8.75 seemed more appropriate as the variety could have used improvement as stated before. I was surprised it only had a user rating of about ~3/5 stars according to the dashboard at the time of writing this review, but I imagine it was due to the fact that these kind of games are not for everyone and only players who actually understand what to do as well as have a liking for this sort of gameplay will truly get the most of out of it.

This game was obtained from the developer rather than purchased, for review purposes.

I liked this more than most two-stick shooters because of the slower pace and the 2 color modes. Although you can just repeatedly change colors when things get hectic while you shoot.