Einhander
When you think "side-scrolling shoot-em-up," the first developer on the tip of your tongue is probably not Square, home of the cutscene and spikey-hair angsty protagonist. But back in 1998, Square stunned the world with the criminally under-appreciated Einhander, a shmup with something to prove. The side-scroller takes the conventions of the genre and adds something that really hasn't been seen since - honest-to-goodness RPG-like choices in loadouts.
The Einhander ship itself is your first choice - there are three different configurations to start with, each with their own set of advantages. They all look, like the rest of the game, completely fantastic - Einhander compares favorably with any game of its era, and really a little bit into the next era. Because it uses 3D models in a 2D setting, its 2.5-D display looks great, and allows them to play quite a bit with your expectations of what "side scrolling" really means. The bosses are gigantic, but it's the drawn backgrounds, like Final Fantasy's, that will really blow you away.
Music is suitably epic and post-apocalyptic, and the standard gatling gun on all ships is deep and resounding, but pretty grating after a long play session. The special weapons, in all their creative glory, are fantastic. The lighting-call and lightsaber are both highlights, but the RPG launcher also stays with you.
The challenge is up there, and while this is far from a bullet hell style shooter, it does have plenty of problem-solving elements that you'll have to work with (solving paths on the fly with limited information, or enemies with conditions that must be met before destroying them) all while handling an upper-level challenging shmup.
Graphics: Mind-blowing. Shows off Square's specialty in a genre known mostly for endlessly tiled forests or clouds. 5.
Sound: While not Final Fantasy-quality orchestrals, a cut about simple horn-based battle loops common to the genre. 4.
Controls: Rewards canny manipulation and hot-swapping your limited-ammo special weapons while managing turret placement on your main gun. This is all handled decently, but the PS1 controller was not designed for such tortured manipulations. 4.
Tilt: Einhander was the hotness when it came out, and it continues to be a misunderstood classic. 5.
Overall (not an average): 5.
Showing posts with label PSX. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PSX. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Driver
Driver
I have never played Driver. Perhaps that's the wrong phraseology. I have never played the campaign mode of Driver, not seriously, not for more than a few minutes back in 1999 when the game first came out. It may well be a very good game, who knows? Driver comes with a number of gameplay modes out of the box, including a full story to play through that pits you as an undercover cop working as a wheelman for a gang, or something.
That is irrelevant, you will never select anything at the starting screen other than "Survival" mode.
Survival mode is a very, very simple game. You start out in a slow, poorly-handing beast of a '70s muscle car in the Art Deco district of Miami Beach, the Barnett Building viewable in the exceptional-for-1999 drawn distance. And every cop in the city is psychotic and out to kill you.
Not pit you out, or take down your car, but kill you. They fling their super-powered, slingshot-launched cars at you with reckless, Blues Brothers-like abandon. They spawn endlessly, accelerate, turn and ram much faster than you. You have no chance, and you will die. The only question is, how long can you survive?
The cops spawn with some regularity; one we've dubbed "Hell Cop" comes screaming in at your starting point every time from about the 2 o'clock position, and after endless hours of passing a controller back and forth, my roommates and I worked out a couple "best practices" to get your time up to about 1:20.
While the fun of ramming roadblocks and swerving at the last second so that the cops following you slam into and pile up on an invincible palm tree is fun enough to make this game a top pick, it has another feature that puts it over the top: a real, robust movie editor. The movie editor has a number of different cameras you can swap through on the fly and save the replay, and really get an idea of the carnage you cause (a personal favorite - after sliding along the shoulder past a roadblock on a bridge, the cops chasing me clipped the cars making up the roadblock, flying into the sky hundreds of feet before disappearing in the skybox).
Graphics: Great for 1999; humdrum compared even to today's PS2 games. Everything that matters is visible and clear, so no complaints. 3.
Sound: Funky '70s music, and great smashing sound effects, but a limited number of both. 2.
Controls: Floaty, arcadey driving that sends you spinning out of control the instant you clip anything - and I wouldn't have it any other way. 2.
Tilt: Handing a controller back and forth has never been better, mostly because you can't stop laughing at how hilariously your buddy just crashed. 5.
Overall (not an average): Top Pick.
I have never played Driver. Perhaps that's the wrong phraseology. I have never played the campaign mode of Driver, not seriously, not for more than a few minutes back in 1999 when the game first came out. It may well be a very good game, who knows? Driver comes with a number of gameplay modes out of the box, including a full story to play through that pits you as an undercover cop working as a wheelman for a gang, or something.
That is irrelevant, you will never select anything at the starting screen other than "Survival" mode.
Survival mode is a very, very simple game. You start out in a slow, poorly-handing beast of a '70s muscle car in the Art Deco district of Miami Beach, the Barnett Building viewable in the exceptional-for-1999 drawn distance. And every cop in the city is psychotic and out to kill you.
Not pit you out, or take down your car, but kill you. They fling their super-powered, slingshot-launched cars at you with reckless, Blues Brothers-like abandon. They spawn endlessly, accelerate, turn and ram much faster than you. You have no chance, and you will die. The only question is, how long can you survive?
The cops spawn with some regularity; one we've dubbed "Hell Cop" comes screaming in at your starting point every time from about the 2 o'clock position, and after endless hours of passing a controller back and forth, my roommates and I worked out a couple "best practices" to get your time up to about 1:20.
While the fun of ramming roadblocks and swerving at the last second so that the cops following you slam into and pile up on an invincible palm tree is fun enough to make this game a top pick, it has another feature that puts it over the top: a real, robust movie editor. The movie editor has a number of different cameras you can swap through on the fly and save the replay, and really get an idea of the carnage you cause (a personal favorite - after sliding along the shoulder past a roadblock on a bridge, the cops chasing me clipped the cars making up the roadblock, flying into the sky hundreds of feet before disappearing in the skybox).
Graphics: Great for 1999; humdrum compared even to today's PS2 games. Everything that matters is visible and clear, so no complaints. 3.
Sound: Funky '70s music, and great smashing sound effects, but a limited number of both. 2.
Controls: Floaty, arcadey driving that sends you spinning out of control the instant you clip anything - and I wouldn't have it any other way. 2.
Tilt: Handing a controller back and forth has never been better, mostly because you can't stop laughing at how hilariously your buddy just crashed. 5.
Overall (not an average): Top Pick.
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