Look out AVG, there's a new virus-buster in town!

I've never been a huge follower of shoot-'em-up games. While I enjoy playing classics like Ikaruga, R-Type, and my personal favorite, Darius Gaiden, I've never beaten a single one. Most of the time it's due to the games just having too many enemies to deal with, and not enough ways or lives to properly dispose of them. This is where a game like Chain Breaker differs from most shoot-'em-ups. Not only do you get potentially unlimited lives, but taking out multiple enemies is a cinch, and what the game primarily centers around. While I enjoyed my experience with the game thanks in part to those features, it manages to suffer from a lack of variety in every other department.

Chain Blaster, as I mentioned before, is a shoot-'em-up game from G-Style Games on the 3DS eShop. The game takes place in the future in which Artemis, a computer that controls the world's economy and environment, is infected by a virus that puts the world's nuclear weapons on standby, and it's up to you, an anti-virus program named Sagittarius, to stop the virus. The story is never really mentioned in the main game at all, so it never gets in the way of the gameplay, which is to shoot everything that moves. Everything looks nice in a minimalistic sort of way. Your ship, the enemies, and bullets all stand out clearly, and the 3D effects help out in terms of keeping track of everything going on.

The game is similar to Galaga, meaning you remain on a single screen as enemies fly in from all directions in waves. You have a general shooting attack, but what makes this game special is the Chain Blast attack. With a Chain Blast, you can fire a circular bomb that detonates the moment it makes contact with an enemy, and when it does, it triggers a chain reaction that destroys every enemy caught in the blast. If you time and align the Chain Blast correctly, you can wipe out an entire wave of enemies with just one attack. This makes the game instantly rewarding and satisfying, as you don't have to deal with each enemy one by one. It only allows you to use this attack about 3 times before needing to gather enemy debris to recharge it, but it hardly becomes an issue because said debris is plentiful if you can successfully pull off multiple chain blasts.

While the game's mechanics and controls are enjoyable, what really hurts the experience is the repetitive levels and music. The stages are numbered, but if you're solely watching the top screen, you would barely notice. Each stage looks identical to the last, just a black void with various laser lights going in a certain direction and the same generic techno music playing in the background. The enemies and bosses are exactly the same in every stage, and you'll be facing the exact same attack formations and patterns over and over again, only in a random order. This makes progressing in the game feel more like an endurance run rather than gradually ramping in difficulty.

In terms of replay value, there is an online leaderboard for everyone's high scores and maximum chain combos, but only for worldwide rankings, so don't expect to easily compare scores in your region or among your friends. Also, if you reach a certain point threshold, you can unlock a second anti-virus ship that doesn't have a general shooting attack, but can place a Chain Blast wherever the ship is located on the screen, rather than shooting it. I didn't feel like it made the game easier or harder to play, but it was still neat to have a second way of playing it.

Overall, I enjoyed what I played. I wish there was more imagination put into the level and enemy design, but if you want a cheap, fun high-score chasing shoot-'em-up, I'm sure you'll have a blast.