Christmas is that special time of the year. Its that time when trees are decorated, families gather and exchange presents and love and peace are praised. Well a gift has been given to us all by Inti Creates for this Christmas. Available now and only until the end of Christmas is Azure Striker Gunvolt Pack Christmas Mode. This is a special bonus mode for the game, and it offers some new challenges, rewards and changes. You should not expect a major amount of content, but instead a clever remix of what was there already.
The new Azure Striker Gunvolt Pack Christmas Mode brings some ideas such as making all the floors slippery, which is explained as the floors being covered in ice. This forces you to reconsider how you go about the levels, since your strategies before will no l0nger work and the levels require more care. This can admittedly get in the way sometimes, and does feel a bit cheap every now and then. Inti Creates did say this would be challenging but maybe less in some areas would have been even better.
Another massive change, is that the Hexapyle gates will now become Christmas trees and then will rain down presents for you to collection. This is a major part of the mode, and you will be challenged to get as many as you can. These can rain down at surprising times such as during a sequence that may require you to keep moving quickly. The challenge then becomes to get as many of the presents as possible, while still getting through the levels. Its a minor touch that somehow manages to make the game even more difficult but in a very good way for the most part, although the fact that some presents end up obscuring some enemies during certain areas does get annoying and lessens the fun a bit.
Another great thing that this mode changes is that the boss fights become much more somber encounters. Considering everything else in the mode, this is a nice touch and does make a lot of sense, The music helps these encounters and in fact, the music in general has had slight alterations to make everything sound more festive. It is rather amazing just how much effort was put into this brief event.
I may surprise a lot of people by saying this, but I feel this was worth making into DLC and the fact that it is completely free, albeit only available until the end of Christmas, is rather shocking. This is something you really should check out.