Speaking of the weapons, in addition to the default Pulse gun, there is the Blast, which can be charged to deform the terrain; the Seeker, which fires auto-targeting missiles; the Orbit, which releases defensive drones; the Stun, which auto-targets and stuns multiple enemies; and the Eruptor, which can be charged to raise the terrain. It ought to be said that the ability to deform the terrain (which the Pulse can do at higher levels) isn't just cosmetic. There are some enemies which can't be hurt by your blaster fire, and can only be lured into lava pits, which can be caused by deforming the terrain to be deep enough to expose lava in certain environments. Um ... spoiler alert.

Additionally, right-clicking the mouse button pauses the action and brings up a radial menu in which you can select one of your other weapons, which is completely handy. Success in Caster relies on precise targeting, and this is the source of my simulation sickness. When you need to target enemies who move quickly while you are also moving quickly, it's extremely important to calibrate the mouse sensitivity properly. However, ratcheting up the speed of the mouse tracking also ratchets up the sense of nausea. Dramamine, you are my only friend.

One of the ways in which Caster challenges is in the way it effects health. You begin with one bar, and it will slowly regenerate to full over a few seconds if you've been hit. Upgrading this gives extra bars, but only the initial bar regenerates. The only way to bring these extra bars back to full is by counterintuitively firing at the withered-looking trees that sporadically dot the landscape; doing so will cause the tress to drop health energy balls. However, these tress are a finite resource and do not themselves regenerate.

Picking up new weapons is a matter of finding them on the field as glowing balls that must be touched. This automatically gives you the new weapon, which can then be upgraded. It should be noted that a level can be completed before picking up all the energy balls/currency, so it's worth going back and re-doing levels to get as much buying power as possible. Missions are selected at the geographical screen; old missions are represented as blue dots, new missions as red dots. The Shop can also be accessed at this screen -- otherwise, it appears at the end of each successful mission.

Quite possibly the greatest thing about Caster -- in spite of its effect on my health -- is its sense and use of the character's speed. Accessing the accelerated speed by double-tapping the control uses up a speed meter, after which time it must recharge to be used again, though it can be used before it's back up to full. Using speed is both fun and necessary. I once had a whole phalanx of Flanx after me, and there was simply no way to outfight them all with the weapons I had. Fortunately, the actual objective of that level's mission was to collect a given number of energy balls, so I was able to zip past enemy fire and complete the mission without taking too much fire.

Caster is a game every gamer should grab, and you can get the Mac demo and the PC version right here on BigDownload.