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Jetpac Refueled is a game with only one small problem. Everything else in this zippy single-screen shooter works great, but sometimes even the smallest detail can turn a fun, fast-paced helping of arcadey goodness into more trouble than it's worth. Who knew that something as basic as art design could take a game from “Bring it on!” to “Oh screw this!” with just a few bad color choices?
Jetpac's basics work just fine. A guy with a jetpack flies around a 2D side-view level, gathering fuel for his rocket while shooting the aliens in his way. Fuel and other goodies drop from the sky, and snagging them is a matter of simply flying over them. Gun powerups and point bonuses kick in as soon as they're touched, of course, but the fuel canisters need to dropped off over the rocket. Retrieving six fuel containers makes the rocket ready to take off to the next level, but the brave and patient can hang out for a while zapping aliens and picking up point bonuses. The jetpack only has so much gas, though, and any left over is converted to a point bonus on level completion.
Jetpac Refueled has all the elements of a great little shooter, it's not good enough to counteract the aggravation of pointlessly cheap deaths.
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Like most arcade games, Jetpac Refueled is all about the high score. Figuring out how to maximize each level is a balancing act between risk and skill, especially seeing as scores for the item pickups increase the longer you stay alive. An item worth 500 points at level's start will be worth 2000 later on, for example, assuming you can survive long enough. This isn't made any easier by the fact that the longer you stay in a level, the more critters will teleport in to clutter up the screen. The risk of hanging out after the ship is fully refueled is balanced out by the enhanced points of the pickups, and more creatures to kill can mean more points as well if they don't kill you first. A horde of aliens scooting across the screen should be a frantic, fun challenge, but then some poor color choices pop up to make it not worth the risk.
The problem is that the backgrounds use the same colors as the enemies and many of the powerups. Avoiding a yellow enemy while looking for a yellow-orange powerup against a backdrop of a giant sun isn't fun. Picking out the white fade-in of an arriving enemy when the background is one of a foggy planet is more trouble than it's worth. If there was an option to turn off the backgrounds this wouldn't be a problem, but there isn't. “Death by color” is too stupid to put up with, and while Jetpac Refueled has all the elements of a great little shooter, it's not good enough to counteract the aggravation of pointlessly cheap deaths.
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