Galaga is one of my old-school arcade favorites, so when I saw a fancy, flashy new game pop up on Xbox Live Arcade, I felt the need to give it a spin. I mean, given all the quarters I pumped in back in the day, what's a few more bucks given to Namco?
First up are the visuals. I really, really like the look of this game. Whomever did the artwork and visual effects really had a good grasp on Galaga as far as "retro updated." That's PURELY a personal preference, but I really felt like someone had taken the old Galaga enemies, pumped them up on some BALCO steroids and sent them into the future to do battle with me once again. Lots of flashy battle effects make the battles furious and cool, but I never really feel overwhelmed or irritated that the screen is too busy. The sound also has some old samples that it uses to connect itself to its predecessor, but I felt that the sound was generically lost in the roar of explosions and laser fire (another tie-in to old arcades, no doubt). My only complaint is that the original Galaxian skins are titled "Ancient." Hey, I remember those! Where's my cane? All in all, though, I heartily approve of the multimedia presentation in Galaga Legions.
The gameplay adds some different flavors to the classic, with the first and simplest being complete field of motion. As before, your main space fighter can only fire straight up, but you're now given two satellites that dock with your ship. These serve as extra firepower when attached to your ship — where they also can only fire upwards — or they can be placed around the screen as turrets and can face in any of the four primary directions. Remember when you used to get your fighter captured and win him back for dual-fighter butt-kicking? In Legions, the tables are turned. The Galaga will occasionally hover around space anomalies, and when you blast these warps, they implode, gathering enemy ships into their vortex and enslaving them to your satellites. This means that each of your turrets can have a small horde of enemy fighters attached to it and can lay waste to whole segments of the screen at once! A neat concept that once again speaks to the old-school Galagaand evolves it nicely.
The entrance waves of old are replaced with a new code to decipher. When each flotilla of Galaga starts to make its entrance, you'll be presented with a series of lines that indicate the path they'll take, and it also gives you clues as to their behavior AFTER their entrance. Sometimes they follow the old patrols, sometimes they enter formations and peel off to chase you, and sometimes they just plain chase you about the screen. The lines will help you know what to expect. A series of boxes also flashes around the screen and show you where the aliens may spawn. No longer do the Galaga merely swoop in from off screen; now they'll warp in right on top of your fighter if you're not careful!
The boss battles are fairly generic as far as these things go. You'll face an enemy you have to shoot a whole lot, it will fire large volleys of shots and it will force you to fly very tight spaces in between lots of its little buddies. Also, it will make funny sounds at you, which I assume are some form of Galagite taunting.
There are five levels in Galaga Legions, and they are presented in two modes. Adventure forces you to run the gauntlet of all five levels on one ration of lives, while Championship is a points-based mode that allows you to play any level singly and try to get high scores. Tied in with this concept are the firing modes: continuous and manual. Their meanings are fairly obvious. What is slightly less obvious is that manual firing mode allows you to hunt "lead" Galaga — which create chained explosions that result in more points than just slaughtering everything.
Legions is 800 points, or about $10. I tend to compare these things to movie tickets, and while Galaga Legions isn't the deepest game, it should get you more distance out of your money than whatever's playing at the cineplex. I had a blast (a blast — ha!) with Galaga Legions because it was a simple, fun throwback game with some crazy visuals and JUST enough of a new twist. If you ask me, XBLA is the perfect vehicle for Legions and a good example of what I expect to find there. My biggest, and only, complaint is that there wasn't a multiplayer option, but we can forgive Namco because Galaga never had multiplayer either, and it did just fine.
I'm a volleyball playing nomad who's been blowing up aliens, scoring touchdowns/goals, dogfighting, slaying dragons, mowing down hordes of enemy tanks, headshotting, and saving damsels in distress since my dad brought home the very first Atari system. My game-tastes are very diverse, as I enjoy street racers, sports games (especially "hyper" sports games like, say, NFL Street), shooters, RPGs, a good MMO here and there, and pretty much anything else that doesn't involve a Pokemon!
