The Stack

Well, I’ve reached the penultimate level: Earthworm, which seems inspired by Centipede. Mostly superficially, it must be said: there are segmented bugs to blast apart, and spiders appear here and there, but neither the bugs nor the player bahave like their arcade counterparts. It’s possible that I wouldn’t have thought it similar at all if I hadn’t been anticipating the appearance of a Centipede-like level, due to all the other references to arcade shooters of yore.

Deliberate attempts at reaching new levels in this game involve some tension between going after points to buy extra starting lives, and simply trying to survive — that is, aiming for eventual or immediate progress. There’s always a bit of this balancing act in any game where points yield extra lives, but usually it’s a wash if you lose a life in the process of gaining one, and that’s not the case here. I’m finding that I generally decide at some point what the purpose of a particular session is, and therefore what kind of risks I take for the big scores. It get interesting when I change my mind about this mid-match, when I’ve gotten further along than I expected and suddenly feel like I have to start trying to survive.