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Akai_Tenshi's Gradius 3 (SNES)
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| [January 26, 2008 12:03:41 AM]
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Gamelog #1
Summary:
Gradius III is probably one of the most influential 2D space shmup ever created, and is by far one of the most revolutionary games of its time. As with any space shooter, Gradius III unfolds through a multitude of different levels in which the player plays as a super spaceship known as the “Vic Viper.” Within each level, players are supposed to kill a bombardment of enemy ships and other creative doodads.Instead of killing, the player may also choose to dodge enemy ships at the cost of possible score points. Within each level, your goal is to destroy a powerful boss at the end of each level. All in all, Gradius III takes a conventional 2D space shooter and innovatively introduces an intricate space world, a countless variety of obstacles, and an intriguing “life or death” award system.
Personal Gameplay Critique:
I thought Gradius III was overall a great game within the hour in which I beat it. Playing the game reminded me of my rich childhood experience on the SNES, and I really enjoyed the short-lasted fun. Despite its simplicity, I would probably end up spending many hours maneuvering throughout the world of Gradius, just to try out each different skill.
Primarily, Gradius’ main objective is to kill/maneuver through as many obstacles and bosses as possible. In my case, I attempted to kill everything that appeared, however I can see how some players would take a pacifistic attempt and try to evade obstacles. In the end, Gradius III only requires you to stay alive and kill the bosses in order to beat the game.
Since Gradius III is an SNES game, the controls shouldn’t be hard for anyone to learn. All you really need to do is maneuver (arrow pad), hold down on fire (“B”) , and select upgrades (“A”). Despite the simple controls, Gradius is not an easy game for the literal noob.
Gradius III begins its nonstop bombardment of pixilated bullets and spaceships right from the start, but it is very straightforward. Due to its repetition, I’m pretty sure almost anyone will eventually get the hang of it. Towards the beginning of the game, players will find that the game will get easier and easier as they upgrade their ship accordingly. Eventually when the ship becomes fully upgraded, the game progressively increases in difficulty. Gradius makes this increase apparent by littering the player’s screen with more and more obstacles. Despite Gradius III’s repetition, its award system is what separates it from other space shooters and makes it so damned fun to play.
This entry has been edited 2 times. It was last edited on Jan 26th, 2008 at 00:05:43.
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| [January 25, 2008 10:24:38 AM]
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Gamelog #2
Personal Gameplay Critique:
As the Gradius III progressively gets harder, Vic Viper’s customizable upgrade-set keeps this game a synch. With the help of several rewarding power-ups, players are able to improve and upgrade their ship to make it virtually unstoppable.
Gradius III’s reward system is what earns the game its rank on the podium. By killing specific rows of enemy starships or by destroying any orange colored starship, players are left with flashing orange “power-up” thingies at the site of death. These “power-ups,” are meant for the player to accumulate and spend accordingly on ship upgrades. Each ship upgrade is separated into 7 levels of classes. Within 6 of these classes (“Speedup” does not count) lie 4 different ship upgrades, which the player must select wisely before the game even begins (players will be stuck with this upgrade throughout gameplay). As the players accumulate power-ups they can either spend or save, depending on which class they want to upgrade. Each power-up only increases by one level at a time and upon receiving a power-up at lvl7, the power-up loops back to lvl1. The classes and an explanation of each are listed as follows…
• lvl1 Speedup *5 - (speeds up the ship)
• lvl2 Missile *1 - (An additional weapon. Useful for enemies cruising along the top and bottom of the screen)
• lvl3 Double *1 - (Adds an additional machine gun [Vic’s Stock Weapon], but removes the Laser upgrade)
• lvl4 Laser *1 - (Turn Vic’s main attack to lasers, but removes the “Double” upgrade)
• lvl5 Option *4 - (Adds an orange ball that hovers around Vic and copies all its attacks [including missile]!)
• lvl6 ? *1 - (Player decides whether Vic adds a protective full-body force field, reduces Vic’s size, provides a frontal protection shield, or generates a rotating protection shield)
• lvl7 ! *1 – (This class is weird for me to explain, because it’s composed of 4 random/useless skills)
“*”- Shows how many times players are able to upgrade the specific class. (ie. Option may be upgraded 4 times)
I won’t go into details about the 4 specific upgrades within each class, but I personally beat the game with 2 levels of speedup (most of the game), hawk wind missile, E-laser, circular rotation option, reduce, and speed-down. (Tap "B" for semiautomatic E-laser when plowing through a level and hold "B" to destroy bosses) This combination brings new meaning to "Haxxorz."
Despite its amazing reward system, Gradius III also has amazing creativity as far as level design and enemy design. Each level contained new themes, new environmental obstacles and new enemies. An often overseen famed gameplay feature of Gradius is its centralized aiming. Each detailed boss requires players to aim accordingly (typically at the blue orbs for spaceships or some random body parts for the monsters) while maneuvering in order to kill the boss and stay alive. However, I sometimes found myself baffled at certain boss battles that did not utilize the “blue orbs,” as the centralized aiming point. For example the big brained final boss was just randomly defeated by me flying around the screen.
Another thing that I noticed during gameplay is that it would really suck if I died. Like its Konami bretheren Contra, Gradius doesn’t have too much mercy. Gradius’ death penalty strips Vic from all upgrades and puts him back at the last achieved checkpoint.
Throughout the game, Gradius III kept me enticed and encouraged me to keep playing. Regardless of the repetitious maneuvering and my imbalanced spaceship that obliterates bosses in a matter of seconds, I enjoyed devastating level upon level just to see how hard Gradius was really going to get. Another interesting point in the game was towards the end, in which I had to face 5 bosses in a row. After defeating the bosses another level began and it gave me incentive to play on. In reality, the reward system is what made Gradius III fun for me. However, even though I maxed out Vic’s upgrades by the second level, Gradius kept me on my toes for more action and adventure.
This entry has been edited 9 times. It was last edited on Jan 26th, 2008 at 00:59:55.
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| [January 25, 2008 10:03:56 AM]
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Gamelog #2 CONTD.
Design:
Gradius III in my opinion is a monumental space shmup because it brought popularity to horizontal-scrolling (The original Gradius alone brought upon a horizontal shmup revolution), the centralized aiming system (I’m sure it inspired the “headshot”), and finally the amazing reward system (which also had its fair share of copycats). With these themes, Gradius III is a great game not only because it serves the incentive of beating levels, but it also awards survivability, and allows players to become ridiculously powerful.
As stated earlier, Gradius is a horizontal-scrolling 2Dimensional space shmup, which scrolls from right to left. In this constantly scrolling world, players are able to maneuver Vic anywhere within visible range of the player’s screen. However, some levels extend even further than the top and bottom of the players visible screen. When this happens, the camera view is typically centralized on Vic. As the scrolling progresses, new monsters appear and the level unfolds itself.
As far as actual gameplay, Gradius III plays by having the player control the Vic Viper that is constantly traveling from the left to right. Players are able to move Vic virtually anywhere across the screen as it automatically progresses through the level (meaning towards the top, bottom, left, right, center, or corners of the screen). Like many other space shmups, Vic never runs out of ammunition or needs to reload. This allows players to hold on “B” and constantly unleash Vic’s firepower. Also like other space shmups maneuvering is the key to survival and is probably the most important factor of the game. If players do not maneuver accordingly, they will die and lose all their upgrades, therefore making the game much harder than it should be.
The complexity of the gameplay arrives when, players attempt to interpret the reward system. I found myself running through a couple test runs just to pinpoint the differences of each skill within the 6 class sets. However, once players get the hang of it, the tides turn in favor of the player. Basically, Gradius III introduced a complex reward system that is “required” (unless you are space shmup messiah) to beat the game. That factual theme eventually gets players to understand the reward system’s intention and I believe will add a lot of fun to whomever decides to decipher these skills.
The design and graphics of Gradius III aren’t particularly great, but what you’d expect from any SNES game isn’t great either. Gradius made a multitude of enemies and bosses, but in reality they’re really all the same. Each of them shoots the same laser lines, rhombus bullets, and circular ball thingies that try to kill Vic. The variety of enemies and their location on the screen is quite complex, but in reality most of them are the same ships with different sprites and skins. Each level is also created quite complexly and the player faces harder environmental obstacles (usually special walls in which Vic can crash into and die) as the game progresses. A typical level in Gradius III lasts about 5-10 minutes depending on how fast the player is able to kill the level’s boss. Since I don’t know how to classify the standard 2D and 2.5D graphics of the SNES, I need to say that the graphics in Gradius III do not matter because all SNES games look pretty much the same to me.
Despite my appeal, Gradius does fall short at giving a helpful introduction to features and gameplay. I’m quite sure that many players will be confused about what each upgrade does without a proper explanation. Also players may need to play several test runs before finally learning the basics of the game and knowing what to expect in the future. Repetition is another mixed bag because as it may help players become good at the game, other players will complain about its boring and sappy recurrences.
Since the original Gradius, Konami has revolutionized the game world in general with this series. For those willing to understand its reward system, Gradius can become an immensely fun and replay-able. Players are in total control over Vic in this installment of Gradius. They are able to choose what kind of ship Vic has potential to become and get a chance to unleash different combinations of overwhelming firepower. Gradius III has potential to be lots of fun for any average open-minded gamer and I can definitely see how it has inspired modern game themes.
This entry has been edited 24 times. It was last edited on Jan 26th, 2008 at 00:18:07.
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Akai_Tenshi's Gradius 3 (SNES)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Friday 25 January, 2008
GameLog closed on: Saturday 26 January, 2008 |
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