One thing you run into quite a lot when you’re reviewing loads of games is the critical difference between a game both fulfilling and then surpassing what you’d expect from a genre or subgenre, and a game that’s merely managing to satisfy the bare minimum. Yes, there are games where it is clear what genre a game is from and even perhaps what its inspirations may be, but it just feels like there’s no soul there. It’s more of a product of satisfying a genre checklist, ensuring key elements are in place but then not making the most of them. That’s absolutely where I land with Xatrom Command, a title you can clearly appreciate as a twin-stick shooter, but that fails to distinguish itself in any meaningful way as being compelling, especially given its stiff competition already in place.

In this sci-fi shooter with pretty old-school arcade sensibilities and a pretty simple overall look, you’ll have the option of going it solo or with a friend, surviving waves of enemies until you end up dying and it’s game over. Along the way you’ll face a slowly-increasing threat level through each new stage, each of which are capped off with a boss fight. In order to make things a bit more manageable you’ll get periodic upgraded weapons (that only work for a limited time) as well as health pick-ups to aid in prolonging your run. 

Where things go wrong is really the fact that the game only somewhat minimally delivers on most of the elements described. There’s only a scant few weapon varieties, none of which are at all creative or exciting. Enemies will pursue or shoot at you, sometimes being able to catch you off guard when they spawn in closer to where you happen to be, but they’re generally easy to deal with. Even the boss fights tend to be pretty dull, with simple patient circle strafing being the only strategy you’ll typically need for success.

I suppose for less experienced gamers this may somehow feel like it could be decent budget fun, but for genre veterans I can’t see how it would be anything but disappointing. Yes, it does satisfy the core elements for being a part of the subgenre, but that’s all it does. Not only does it come up short against the majority of its Switch brethren, even against decades-old classic arcade shooters it doesn’t have the heart and variety to go toe to toe with them. In general I’d say this is a pretty big miss.