I'm working on a written review but I will say this: Based on what i've played, i'm not impressed. Graceful Explosion Machine is caught between faithfully recreating the old school shoot em' up setup one would find in Defender and crafting a more subversive experience a la Resogun that, mechanically, becomes tedious in a rapid amount of time.
The attempt to translate achieving a high score with a skillful racking up of combos a la Devil May Cry is promising on paper but the end result is hurt by the unending wave of enemies that blend all too well in with the background. For a game trying to be all about skillfully making use of all the tools at one's disposal to rack up a high multiplier and score, it does a really poor job of making all the weapons useful beyond very specific scenarios, save for the sword which is particularly easy to abuse given enemies' tendency to crowd together and around the ship.
Moreso than Resogun, the game it's most reminiscent of is TxK with its stimulating visuals and adherence to arcade sensibilities, the difference being that GEM lacks the satisfying simplicity of TxK's arcade-like design while being necessarily frustrating by dropping your score down to zero when you lose a single life whereas TxK would let you continue a level with the score and lives you held before you lost all of the latter.
However stimulating its visuals may be when they aren't hiding enemies in the background, Graceful Explosion Machine lacks both the momentum of Resogun and the superbly simple approach to design of TxK. If you're a perfectionist to whom even the most minor screwup will cause you to reluctantly restart a level, you will hate this game. I'll be uploading footage later today so those who are interested can get a look at the first few levels but needless to say they did little to impress me.
