• Posted June 26th, 2008 at 13:28 EDT by Eric Blattberg
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NovaStrike released a few weeks ago on the PlayStation Network to mixed reception. While some wholeheartedly loved the objective-based top-down shooter, others had several corcerns with the game, including the insane difficulty, lack of customizable controls and the like. According to Kevin McCann, President and Creative Director of Tiki Games, all such issues and more will be addressed in the game's first update.

"When we shipped the game we had three difficulty modes: RECRUIT, SOLDIER, and VETERAN. These modes were meant to be along the lines of casual, normal, and hard difficulty. Based on responses we've seen so far it looks like we ended up with something more like hard, harder, and hardest. Umm, oops?" McCann joked.

"Our goal is to provide a game where the difficulty scales from the very casual to hardcore - we didn't achieve this at launch so we're working to make this the case now," he continued. "Those of you that like the challenge of the current difficulty - don't worry - you'll still have challenging modes awaiting you."

The full of changes is as follows:

* Difficulty - tuned to be easier in existing modes while adding a HARDCORE mode for those that really want a challenge
* Fully Customizable Controls - a secondary control layout that has an alternate control mapping scheme will be included, but you'll also be able to customize the controls to your liking -- you can map weapon selection to face buttons and/or the digital pad, put the afterburner on a trigger, etc
* Trophies - 15 trophies will be added
* Player ship - the Scythe will be larger in size
* Fine Aim mode - those having trouble lining up the Shredder and/or Trembler bomb will be able to hold a button down to slow down the Scythe's turning which this makes lining up on ground targets a lot easier
* Megapacks and repair packs - will now replenish the capacitor bar for the afterburner (so if you burn up your capacitor trying to pick up a megapack or repair pack now you'll get a nice refill, at a fraction of today's gas costs!)
* Slight performance increase - overall game optimized slightly

The team at Tiki Games is aiming to release the first NovaStrike update to the US this August, with the full (updated) game set to release in Europe later this summer.