Cosmic Mirage Review

In Cosmic Mirage, as a lone surviving reliable pilot, players are tasked of going head to head with sinister forces who have taken over peaceful planets across the galaxy and turning them into mirages. Players will face a bevvy of enemies across different space landscapes. Are you up to the task?

Cosmic Mirage is a 2D side scrolling shoot’em up, a.k.a. shmup, where the goal is to survive the onslaught of enemies and randomly flying space rocks. When booting up the game, you can choose from three different power-ups: a shield, freeze timer and duplicate ship. All three are, obviously, temporary supports.

The shield will save you from damage, the freezer timer with freeze enemies for a short period of time and the twin ship will fly next to you and mimic your actions. At the top of the screen, you’ll notice three meters: one for your lives, one for your bullets and another one for leveling up.

While the first one is pretty self-explanatory, the meter for bullets means you are limited in terms of firing bullets. Once the meter is empty, you need to wait for it to replenish after a few seconds, leaving you vulnerable to enemy attacks. The third meter is filled progressively by picking up green gems dropped by killed enemies.

Once your leveling up meter is full, you’ll get a prompt to choose between three upgrades. It can be extra lives, shorter recharge time for your bullets or for example if you’re using the Freeze timer as a secondary attack, one of the options will be to extend the length of time enemies are frozen. Upgrades will vary depending which item you’ve equipped.

Nothing really special about the visual presentation. It looks fine. The dark spacey background makes it easy to see enemies and their projectiles. Your ship, which is grey, also stand out enough so you don’t lose track of your ship and get unfairly damaged. The soundtrack is filled with chiptune goodness, even borderlining Atari sounds, which is a nice little touch. For whatever reason, the level 2 boss theme sounds a lot like Megadeth’s Symphony of Destruction for some reason.

The game does have two annoying quirks. The first being having limited bullet in a shmup makes absolutely no sense. You’re expected to be on your toes and be able to dispatch everything to avoid certain death. The other, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword. I like being able to upgrade the ship, but being constantly interrupted during the action is quite the cockblock (for the lack of a better term). And if you don’t pay attention, it can leave you open for damage. Also makes boss battles very annoying and boring. Also, your upgrade resets at the end of each level.

I’m always a sucker for a good old shmup, but Cosmic Mirage is a disappointing one. The upgrade system, despite losing everything between levels, and the selection of power ups allow a bit of freedom in terms of gameplay, but the fact that enemies aren’t menacing and you run out of ammo after a handful of shots fired is irritating. Considering there are so many other, better, shmups available on Xbox Marketplace makes this an easy pass.