Strong points:
The game carries out the theme very well.
The diversity in weapons and levels.
The difficulty.

Weak points:
The difficulty.
Not for everyone.

Phobia III is a top down action game, it's similiar to CrimsonLand in a way, but pretty different too...
Also, it's got a notable theme throughout it, I don't know the specific story, but all the menus have ads like 'Buy product1336 now!'. And theres just tons of random little touches to the menus, like a counter on the left (below the fake ads) it will show 'Enemies killed by you:' 'Enemies killed' 'Humans killed'.

Gameplay (4/5): The game, as noted before, is similiar to the independent title 'CrimsonLand' in the fact that you'll be killing alot of enemies; and I mean ALOT, there are more than 2,000 enemies on each level and each level will last a maximum of 6 minutes.
The big 'gimmick' about Phobia III is the aiming mechanism: you shoot at about a 65 degree angle to the left, this causes the game to be a real 'love or hate' situation. I saw on a site with a download for the game, a comment saying something along the lines of "This game is stupid, you can't even shoot straight", but what is important is that shooting at the wierd angle means you can shoot something while circling around it, which trust me, is important in this game.
Next, there are heavy/mounted weapons: In most levels there are weapons spawning (Or prespawned in fixed locations) in random spots, these are what really keep you from dyin'. While most guns in the game are pretty even in power-ammo ratio, some CANNOT be used in certain situations, such as the 'blue gun'(As I like to call it) which if it hits even a single pixel of barrier it's useless (Presuming the enemy's are behind the barrier).
On stationary guns, there are as far as I can tell, two types, with no practical difference. Both are large machine guns that blow everything nearby to hell; of course, they have limited ammo so it's best used when you're in a grim situation.

Graphics (3/5): The graphics are pretty good and the textures on the aliens are great and all, but the game is missing from easy-to-do minor tweaks, and the character doesn't have many frames so he jitters alot. There's also no speck of semi-transparency, which means your blood looks more like a lump of kidneys that you regurgitated carrots onto.
There's alot of room for improvement in the graphics department, but other than the minor things, the graphics are high(not top)-notch.

Sound: I don't really pay much attention to sound while I play games, which is why there's no score. As far as my goldfish like memory can remember, the sounds are good. There's some loud metal music blaring while you play, but you can turn that down/off.

Theme (5/5): The theme for this game is that you are a marine in a corrupt iron-fist government. There are a lot of minor things that relate to this, suchs as the menu. This game has good menus, with army ads and messages that say things about what you clicked on, such as when you are saving a game (The save/load screen is called the cryo center) on the right side of the screen there will things like 'Organs frozen'.


Overall (4.3/5): It's not a game for everyone, and you should give it a little time before you decide you don't like it. Also, as a tip, in the first level, once the wall is breached by like 700 bugs you can go outside the wall and circle around the aliens; keeping them in a large and easy to contain ball.



-Porky Odello