Color Bandits is a side scrolling shoot em up. As you move to the right of the screen, waves of enemies bombard you until you reach the dreaded end of level boss. These enemies are all minions of the dastardly fiend who's stolen the color from your world. In defeating them, you restore not only color, but peace as well.

Moving and shooting is accomplished by two slider bars on the bottom of the screen. One moves you back and forth, and the other aims and fires your weapon. Your initial gun is powerful enough, but every now and then you receive an upgrade that momentarily unleashes destruction on everything around you (as well as bombs that do the same thing). As you kill your enemies a score multiplier increases, boosting you towards scoring 3 stars on each level. Leave too long a gap between kills however, and your combo drops rather drastically.

Presentation is all very competent, with the visuals and music being both pleasing and unobtrusive. One can't help but feel that the color theme wasn't taken far enough however. As you continue through a level you'll notice that the gray background slowly fades to color. This gradual shift lacks the positive feeling and punch of other games that revolve around restoring the landscape.

Color Bandits looks, sounds, and controls well, but something is missing. The game's pacing and difficulty is inconsistent. Ideas like the combo system and the additional weapons are great, but they tend to fall flat for not living up to their potential. In the end, Color Bandits is probably a good introductory game into the shoot em up genre, but most gamers will likely find the experience lacking.