I was a late arrival to the Mutant Storm Reloaded party. To be honest, I bought the game while I was chasing achievements for the Old Spice Experience Challenge. But once the contest had finished, I still played Reloaded obsessively.

Originally, I had avoided the game because I was so enamored of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved (it's still the game played for the most days overall). I could not have imagined cheating on my beloved Geo Wars, especially with a game like Reloaded which seemed so derivative.

Boy was I wrong. Mutant Storm Reloaded adds a beautiful mix of strategy to the staples of twitch gameplay. That combo sinks its hooks into you and never lets you go.

More fanboyish babbling and the real reason for this post after the hop.

Before buying Reloaded I had actually already played the first few levels of Mutant Storm Empire at DigitalLife in NYC back in October 2006. Empire eliminates the loading between levels by adding a series of corridors, through which you pass from level to level. It is a stroke of genius which makes the gameplay even more frenetic and fun. With that little taste of Empire, my Mutant Storm fanboyism was born.

At that point, Empire already seemed so polished, so slick, that I considered forgoing a Reloaded purchase and just getting Empire when it arrived. But the wait for Empire has dragged on and on since then with little to no news about the progress of the game.

I was craving Empire so much that I just broke down and bought Reloaded in an effort to ease my pain (and earn some achievements). And it did help relieve the pain of waiting, but it also intensified my desire for Empire.

We still don't know why a game that looked so great (albeit, just the first few levels) has been MIA for so long. We still don't know when Empire is actually coming out, but at least we've got some new videos. The only problem is that these videos just make the wait even more painful (in a good way though).

Video 1 (HD link, SD version here)

• 0:08 - Corridor boss battle
• 0:18 - Corridor sequence
• 0:22 - Death (So fast you almost don't notice it and the action never stops. Almost like Hit Points rather than lives. Looks good to me.)
• 0:26 - Fish battle! (Notice the bar at the bottom showing you exactly how much life the fish has left.)
• 0:33 - Corridor Sequence 2
• 0:39 - Standard style level
• 0:42 - Mini-bosses
• 0:51 - Weapon Activation (This seems to be driven by the blue bar to the right of the HP/life counter and can be activated at will once full.)
• 0:56 - The lovable Pom Pom mascot

Video 2 (HD Link, SD version here)

• 0:03 - Standard style level with heat-seeking bombs
• 0:11 - Face off against a boss spewing multi-colored ooze
• 0:16 - Level filled with environmental obstacles
• 0:22 - Level with rolling environmental obstacles (Notice that one of the obstacles is slowed by shooting at it around 0:25.)
• 0:27 - A motion-limited level with those rotating lasers (Those can be so hard! Super weapon is activated here too.)
• 0:30 - The mascot again

[via GameTrailers, thanks Hexx]