For the most part, I'm what the kids call "old school" when it comes to my game preferences. I like my RPGs heavy on combat and light on the cutscenes. I like to sink my teeth into an action game that doesn't require save games. But, more than anything else, I enjoy a good side-scrolling shooter.
Gradius V for the PS2 is the latest in the venerable series of Konami's side-scrolling shooters. This one moves the series into the realm of pseudo-3D, a slight departure from the previous entries in the series.
If you haven't played Gradius before, it's a pretty standard side-scrolling shooter. That means the screen slowly scrolls from right to left, and you move your ship shooting everything you can. Yeah, it's a bit light on plot, but it's fun to see stuff blow up. You get power-ups by collecting little orange capsules dropped by some enemies. These pods advance your power-up bar at the bottom of the screen one rank, then you can hit a button to gain that power-up. The first rank is always "Speed up", which makes your ship move a bit faster. The second rank is a type of missile that shoots from your ship, etc. When you gain a power-up, you lose your rank on the power-up bar and must collect orange capsules once again. There's some strategy involved in getting the right mix of power-ups at the right time.
One power-up that is a staple of the Gradius universe is the "multiple". These are little orange orbs that move near your ship, firing weapons and missiles just as your ship does. However, these are invincible, allowing them to travel places that would destroy your ship. Careful movement will allow you to strengthen your attack against a single target, or spread out your multiples for wide-angle flaming death. Gradius V adds in the ability to have different types of multiple configurations. You have the standard configuration that follows your ship, ones that flank your ship, ones that orbit your ship, and finally ones that can be moved around to fire in any direction. This variety allows the player to use the type that fits his or her style.
I mentioned above the game is pseudo-3D. Yep, that's right; there are 3D models in the game. Some enemies lurk in the backgrounds of the state and can only be attacked when they come into the foreground. The gameplay, however, is still strictly 2D, much to the delight of the old school gamer in me. The transition to 3D adds some interesting aspects to the game, but for the most part it's distracting. The bright explosions and auras around lasers make it hard to see other things coming at you, notably bullets. It's sometimes hard to know when an enemy will hit you or not. One of the bosses you encounter suddenly warps out in front of you. If you assume it will hurt you if you run into it, you get stuck in one corner of the screen, barely able to touch the dastardly boss without proper multiple arrangement.
One of the best parts of Gradius is the large variety of weapons. In the original Gradius your weapon selection was set, but with sequels came the ability to customize your weapons. In the SNES version of Gradius, I enjoyed using rotating multiples and the energy laser to have rotating shields of death surround my ship. Sadly, this customization isn't available in Gradius V. You must first complete the full game with just the options provided before you are allowed to edit your weapon configuration. The different options for your multiples are nice, but the other weapon options are lacking. There is only one type of laser provided, and that's the simple blue beam laser. The other types must be unlocked by obtaining the edit mode. It would have been nicer to play with the weapons options more before having to complete the whole game. Perhaps opening up more options as more stages are cleared would have been nice.
Of course, completing the game one time isn't for the faint of heart. This Gradius throws challenges at you left, right, and center. If the stage isn't going in strange directions (and making you think that the multi-direction multiples are the only rational choice), then it's throwing mini-bosses at you from those strange directions! Your dexterity will be tested when playing this game, even on the easiest setting. Get ready to lose some lives trying to figure out the patterns to the stages and learning where to fire to have the best chance to hit the tough enemies.
How does this game measure up? It's a good shooter with solid gameplay. It's got a few annoying parts, but enough variety to keep the game fun. It's definitely old school, though, with death aplenty awaiting the novice; it takes quite a bit of patience to get through the entire game.
Graphics: Pretty good. The 3D aspects pasted onto an essentially 2D game were a bit disorientating at first. It was sometimes hard to tell what would cream your ship and what wouldn't. The bright explosions also provided some distraction, and covered up enemy bullets. Overall, the graphics were good, if a bit distracting.
Sound: Average. The music is largely forgettable and blends into the background. The sound effects are nice, but there's only so many ways you can make an explosion sound different than all the others. The sound is average overall, not very notable but not terrible, either.
Control: Excellent and responsive. You can use the analog stick to get a bit more precise control in your movement, which is nice. The smaller than average bounding box for your ship makes for a more interesting game, allowing you to dodge out of the way of bullets a bit easier.
Challenge: HARD, and unapologetic. Boy, this game isn't for the faint of heart or the lacking of dexterity. Features such as enemies that come at you from all directions certainly add spice to the game. Thankfully, there are features like the rotating multiples to help you out of tough spots. Expect to spend quite a bit of time trying to master the game to unlock the weapon edit mode. It's great for the old school gamers, but not so great for people that didn't grow up dodging bullets in spaceships.
Extras: Opening up the extra weapons edit mode after you complete the whole game is nice, but it would have been great to have those options at the beginning or perhaps let the new options become available gradually as you clear levels. You also get more credits to allow you to continue more times in the main game.
Overall: I have to admit, nothing gets me more excited than a good side-scrolling shooter. Gradius V is a solid addition to the proud franchise, and I'll spend many more hours playing with the different weapon configurations. While it isn't the top of its field, it certainly is a solid game, and a worthy challenge for shooter fans.
I'm an introvert that extroverts well (especially online). I'm a pretty typical computer geek, able to spend long hours in front of a computer focusing on a project or game.
I was born to be a gamer. Some of my most vivid earliest memories are of creating games to play while I was bored. As a child, I was naturally drawn to computer games. Even though my conservative religious friends thought D&D was "evil", we still got into fantasy role-playing through computer games. I played on the computers at school when I could, and played on the game consoles I could afford to buy at home.
It was my love of games that lead to me to programming. I finished my assignments in class and then spent the rest of the hour working on little games. This continued into college, where I learned about text MUDs. I started coding on them and spent many late nights in the computer lab.
It was around graduation in college when I realized that a career in the game industry might be a good fit for me. After working in a boring corporate job for a bit and thoroughly hating it, I started looking for work in the industry. I was hired on at 3DO to maintain an online game called "Meridian 59".
After working at 3DO then working at Communities.com (both currently out of business through no fault of my own!), I helped start Near Death Studios, Inc. We bought the rights to Meridian 59 from 3DO and have relaunched the game commercially. (Details at: http://www.meridian59.com/)
I'm currently doing design and programming work on Meridian 59 while sneaking in as much gaming of all types (computer, board, paper RPGs, etc) that I can.
