What kind of game shall we together this time? How about a shoot-em-up? Yeah, all right. What about the graphics? We could do that horrible, slimy, genetic look. All right then. Now, we need a plot to cover slimy genetic monsters and shoot-em-ups. Aha...
Deep in the heart of Galactic Centre, a strange organism is lurking, it's a strange genetic form feeding on the energy of the starts. Its name is Oncabloc.
Meanwhile, the Sapien inhabitants of the planet Terra have been spreading across the galaxy, assimilating the cultures and lifestyles of various planets into their own to form a galaxy-
Unfortunately Oncabloc was waiting. It had been watching the spread of the Sapien Empire and wished to absorb it into itself, harnessing the power of all the included species to become the most powerful organism in creation.
Its ambition was realised all too late by the Sapiens, resulting in the most horrific and blood-
Genetic engineering
Amnios is a symbiotic structure combining state-of-
Eventually, it was decided that the Amnios project was perfected enough to launch an attack on the Oncabloc. The tiny ships were the only remaining hope of the Sentient galaxy. And so they were launched, along with a handful of 'Fatherships' to allow the rescue of humanoids captured by Oncabloc, and also to build weapons from genetic material taken from the cancerous being.
The fighters must either remove the humanoids from the organism, allowing the base ships to nuke the mothers into oblivion or destroy enough of Oncabloc's living tissue to make it shut down.
As a last ditch attempt to protect itself, each portion of Oncabloc launches a twisted guardian to try and wipe out the Amnios ships. These too must be wiped out before the particular strain can be removed from Glactic centre. Once this has been achieved, the attack team must move onto the next spore, continuing their quest until the hideous culture has been completely eradicated.
What about that for a plot then? Naaah! That's far to pretentious!
You play one of the pilots in the Amnios programme, flying into the Oncabloc to try and wipe out the deadly menace. The levels fall into three categories:
Squama - A scaly being with rocket-
Foliage - Various types of mutated plants sprout forth to attack your ship.
Epidermis - A large mass of skin and flesh with loads of eyes, mouths and limbs to try and catch you.
The levels are all very similar, reducing the long-term appeal of the game by a substantial amount
Have DNA, will battle
Each level has a number of body parts, including eyes, brains, hearts and other living tissue. Destroying eyes stops Oncabloc from tracking you, while wiping out brains and hearts reduces its ability to defend itself.
If you manage to destroy a large enough percentage of these body parts, or rescue all the humanoids, you must then face the guardian before moving on to the next part of the organism. And... er... that's about it.
What little germs are made of
Amnios is a nice-looking game, if you can call well-
This would be all very well if they didn't try and doge you as you approached them! Although the designers have tried to put as much diversity into the game as they possibly can, the end result is just far too confusing to get a proper grip on.
Even when you have figured out, after several hours, what the hell you are meant to be doing. The levels are all incredibly similar, reducing the long-term appeal of the game by a substantial amount.
Shoot-em-ups with genetic-
What's needed is fluid joystick control and some absorbing gameplay, two points which Amnios unfortunately lacks. If the idea behind the various game elements had been properly executed, then Amnios would have been interesting, but they haven't, so it's not.