Review!!
The idea of the game is to get to the end of each stage, scoring points along the way by collecting DNA globules. The more you collect, the higher your score multiplier goes. Go too long without picking anything up and that multiplier droops and your score suffers.
Swarm can be pretty tricky to control. Mastering all the different moves your blue buddies can made requires some quick fingerwork on the sticks and shoulder buttons, and judging the height and distance of objects is harder than it looks. The game won't let you move on to the next level until you get the right score, so even by Level 2 you can find yourself going over and over the same ground, trying to get more points.
Funny and grisly, Swarm is a lot of fun. At least it is to start with. Because it forces you to replay levels over and over until you score enough points, and the controls get fiddly, it's easy to become frustrated and stop enjoying yourself. That's a shame as Swarm should be absolutely fantastic. As it is, it's just pretty good.
Controlling one character. How old fashioned! Swarm lets you control fifty characters. All at the same time! OK, so these Swarmites are identical blue idiots who get squashed, sliced, burned and splattered, but like the name suggests, they swarm about like giddy bees and you get to tell 'em where to go!
Things are complicated by the fact that each level is absolutely packed with deadly hazards. You can bunch your Swarmites together to get past tricky traps, or spread them out to grab as much DNA as possible. You can also make them perform a fast dash to escape from danger, or pile on top of each other to reach floating objects. Not that it'll save all of them - if you want the big scores, you'll need to sacrifice some to the gruesome obstacles along the way!
Swarm is out now on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.
