Forum Overview :: Deleted Posts :: It kicks ass.

[quote name="Frank McGillicutty"]My ass, mercilessly. If controller throwing was an olympic sport, R-Type Final would be the perfectionist celebrity trainer riding you to international glory. It is a fucking hard game, one I can recommend only to the very hardest of the core shmup fans, and even then only if they also dig R-Type. If you're one of those people, skip the next few paragraphs. For the uninitiated: R-Type is different from most shmups in that it requires you to suffer through death after BULL FUCKING SHIT!!! death at the hands of fiendish enemy patterns and cruel level design in order to memorize a safe path from start to goal. Now I know it seems unlikely that this formula sparked such a successful franchise with such a devout fan base, especially considering the fact that it was a originally a coin-op game and all, but the gameplay is fairly addictive. You have your ship, which has a standard primary weapon that can also be charged up by holding the fire button. There's three different powerups for your weapons: Red for a forward-firing laser, Blue for a zig-zag reflecting type shot and Yellow for shooting vertically. There's also two little drones you can pickup - called "bits" - which flank either side of your ship and and a small ammount of firepower and defense. What really sets R-Type's gameplay apart from the other shooters is the drone that attaches to the front of the ship, called the Force. This can be attached to either the front or back of the ship and fires your main weapon in whichever direction it is facing. Hitting the secondary fire button launches the Force away from your ship and hitting it once again calls it back. The Force also comes in handy defensively, as it can block most enemy bullets and can be used to ram into the enemies for damage. Sometimes, it's useful to disengage it from your ship and let it float out ahead of you while you tap the fire button, which also makes it fire. The enemies are pretty much standard shooter fodder, save for the fact that a fair ammount of them are shaped like dicks. Same goes for the level bosses(in both regards), who conform to the shooter standard of having roughly 3 attack patterns, the lynchpin of which is trying to chase you into the borders of the screen. The real challenge in these games is the level design, which is equal parts clever and evil. There's really no way to guess when or where enemies will appear until they do, or which path is a dead end until it's killed you. It's once you're taken back to the continue point that you're expected to figure it out. Part shmup, part puzzler, all infuriatingly hard - and when you've finally beaten it, undeniably satisfying. <h3>R-Type Final</h3>It's good, assuming you're a fan of the series. First thing, the negatives: 1). It's a little shortish. There's 7 levels, athough using different ship variants sometimes yields different paths through the level. Sort of a "mission branch" deal. 2). There's slowdown. To me, this isn't such a huge deal because all the R-Types I've played had slowdown, and it usually occurred at some point where it was beneficial to me. 3). It's motherfucking HARD. As a rule I always play a game first on normal difficulty to get the feel. If I feel the game isn't challenging me sufficiently I'll up it a notch and take it from there. Let me go out on a limb here and suggest that no one, not even Japanese gamers, will be tempted to raise the default dificulty first thing. "Normal" means AAAARGH! The good shit: 1). HOLY MONKEY TITTIES IT'S GORGEOUS. I'm all homo for oldschool 2D games with oldschool 2D hand drawn art, but R-Type loses zero character in 3D. It doesn't just look good for a shmup, it just looks good. 2). The ships. There's 101 of them to unlock, and their differences are far from cosmetic. Some ships will have super-duper charge beams, others might be more defensive. The option to change ships in between levels and continues adds a strategic element to the gameplay, not to mention replay value. Playing with certain types of ships unlocks variants of that ship, at least that's the way it seems to work for me. The message I get: Keep playing! 3). It's challenging. Nowadays, this isn't really in the mainstream as a positive feature, but for the few of us who find a good challenge rewarding, it's worthwhile. And at $30, totally worth every penny. Suddenly I'm very interrested in Gradius V. [/quote]