Much like the rest of Kenta Cho's games, GearToyGear has graphics and sound that are extremely abstracted. Unlike the rest, however, this actually poses a problem in GearToyGear. Since you will be moving at an incredibly fast pace, you need clear, distinctive objects to recognize, which GearToyGear provides. However, all objects except for the player object look quite similar, leading to a mess of geometry that can be incredibly confusing. After all, it's almost impossible to tell the difference between an obstacle, a bullet, and a player. Combined wiht the control scheme, this is probably the biggest barrier to overcome for new players. However, the sound is spot on, as always, with pulse-pounding electronic music and shattering noises appropriate for destroyed ships.

The theme of GearToyGear is best described as "dodging". There is no actual manual shooting in the game. Rather, your ship will automatically fire homing shots upon nearby enemies, most of which are destroyed in 1-3 hits. The faster you are going, though, increases the multiplier that you get for killing enemies, meaning the harder it is to dodge, the more points you get. It's an interesting trade-off, and while not being able to shoot might be mildly irritating, it lets players focus on the real heart of the action: avoiding projectiles. You only have three lives, so you'd better become good quickly. The game becomes more difficult (increases in stage) every 1 million points.

For clarity's sake, I'm going to explain the different types of ships you will encounter through GearToyGear, as it can be formidable to try and figure them all out on your first go. Keep in mind that the only ship you CAN'T mistake the identity of is your own, as it is quite prominent. You know, pulsing rotating circles in the center of the screen. Hard to miss that one! Note that everything listed here will kill you if you collide with it, and collision only occurs if you are on the same plane as the enemy (so it is true 3D).

• Standard enemies are red and orange ribbed circles. The red circles come in large lines around the perimeter, firing bullets at you the whole time. Orange circles, by contrast, do not move and they are far more accurate with their shots. These are you cannon-fodder.
• Laser enemies are red asterisks, and they shoot large, green lasers (hence the namesake). These enemies also come in two flavors, although you can only tell the difference by the kind of lasers they shoot. The first is the sweeping laser, which moves across the screen in a large sweep. It is, thankfully, easily avoided. The second is much more difficult, as it creeps along the perimeter until it is close, and then it suddenly homes in on you. I call it the snake laser. Not fair whatsoever, but sho said shmups were fair? The easiest way to avoid the lasers is to just constantly move in a completely random pattern.
  
• Bullets are grey ovals fired from standard enemies. If they touch you, you die. SImple as that. THe problem is in confusing them with enemies, as they are definitely not. Be wary, as the amount of bullets onscreen ramps up fast.
• Obstacles are white ribbed circles. These guys do not attack, move, or do anything special at all. However, they will kill you if you so much as nick them. Easily confused with standard enemies, so watch out.

The game's difficulty is a combination of factors. First off, the way you fire (only upon nearby enemies) makes it almost impossible to prioritize which enemies you take out. Hence, there are a lot of deaths to enemies you tried to kill, and the actual killing of enemies is extremely spotty.. Second, in order to get a decent score, you have to hurtle so fast that it becomes near impossible to actually react to enemy bullets and obstacles. Sure, there is a brake button, but who is gonna use it? Finally, the enemies are hard to distinguish from one another, which is an absolute kick in the pants given the already very difficult combination of speed and auto-targeting. So the mixture of speed, controls, and visuals make GearToyGear extremely tough. Tougher than any other Kenta Cho game by far.

There is no multiplayer in GearToyGear, and no online leaderboards. This is a time-waster, pure and simple. See how far you can get while dodging enemy obstacles and bullets, and then brag to your friends about how great you are. Some sort of leaderboards function would have been nice, but Kenta Cho is not known for leaderboards. However, the game does create demos, and you can record the demos after you are finished to show off. They do not create demo files, though, and it only shows the latest game in the demo

Overall, GearToyGear is a prototype in the vein of other Kenta Cho games. It has that newly-minted game snazz about it, and it's addicting despite its faults, mainly due to the clever dodging-based mechanic and the excellent use of abstract graphics and sound. This is one of Kenta Cho's first games in XNA, so you will need the latest version, the 3.1 redistributable, in order to play. Otherwise, the game will just crash on you. You can download the game for PC or, surprisingly, Xbox 360 on Kenta Cho's site. It supports keyboard as well as 360 controller input.

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