Country Discoverer

I hate to perpetuate American stereotypes, but I am notoriously bad when it comes to world geography. I know what Canada and Mexico look like, as well as most of the countries that are regularly in the news, but lately it feels like I'm better at locating fictional lands than real ones That's why I was excited to set sail with Country Discoverer, a brand-new game that mixes dual-stick shooting with a geography lesson. And while I'm not sure I actually learned anything by having countries thrown at me from all sides, I definitely had fun shooting them down. At least for a little while.

This is not going to be a very long review, because Country Discoverer is not a very deep game. It's a dual-stick shooter where you sail around the ocean blowing up countries that fly at you from all sides. There are power-ups, a score multiplier and every thirty seconds you'll have to answer a question about geography. That it's. That's the whole game. It's a shooter where we compete for high scores and maybe (if we're lucky) learn a little something about the world's countries, flags and capitols.

Country Discoverer plays out exactly like Smash TV, Geometry Wars and a whole bunch of other dual-stick shooters. The only difference here is that the aggressive game show villains and colorful shapes are replaced by countries. You'll find that small countries like Haiti, Kuwait and Rwanda are worth fewer points than their massive counterparts, such as Russia, Canada and the United States. The trick is destroy every country as soon as possible, that way you can take a break from shooting and charge up the score multiplier. Aside from that, the goal is to stay alive as long as possible and rocket to the top of the leaderboard.

The biggest change to the formula comes in the form of trivia questions. Every thirty second, the game will split the screen into four sections and ask you to name a country, capital or flag. If you get it right, you'll earn a shield, a long telescope, a seagull, rapid fire or one of the other special powers. But don't worry too much about getting the answer wrong, because nothing bad will happen to your ship and another question is just around the corner.

What makes these trivia questions tricky is that you have to answer them at the exact same time you're darting around the stage avoiding countries. Sometimes there will be massive countries in the way of the answer, making it nearly impossible to get to the right part of the screen. You'll also find that the flags will hide some of the smaller countries, which can be a whole other complication. And once the action heats up, there's almost no time to pay attention to the question. I missed a lot of really simple geography questions only because I didn't even notice them in time, the action can get that intense.

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The problem with this game is fairly obvious -- there's not enough to do. The background doesn't change, there aren't any bosses and don't expect to see anything resembling a story mode. What you see the first time you set sail is what you'll always get, no matter how many times you play. About the most you can do is earn rank points, but to what end? The only real hook is the online leaderboard, and even that isn't going to bring you back more than once or twice. You would think that this concept might lend itself to a bunch of geography-based modes, but that's just not the case.

It's also disappointing that Country Discoverer doesn't have mouse and keyboard support. While I tend to play most of these games using a controller, I know a lot of people who prefer the feel and accuracy of the mouse and keyboard combination. It's pretty standard for most dual-stick shooters on PC, so it's genuinely surprising to see that we don't even get the option. It's just one of the many things missing from Country Discoverer, which is probably why I doubt I'll go back to this shallow shooter now that my review is done. That's a shame, because there's a solid idea here.