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jp's Space Invaders Extreme (PSP)
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| [September 6, 2011 04:57:44 PM]
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I'm glad I picked this up. I had heard good things and the price was right, but still. Sometimes it's quite easy to get caught up in hype and nostalgia. Most of all I was curious to see how a classic 2D shooter could be re-imagined considering 30 years of evolution and further design experimentation. It's easy to do it in such a way as too lose track of the "essence" of the original.
From that perspective, my experience with the game could be described as a success. The game's design is evolved in many ways, but never so far out there so as to be unrecognizable from the original. In some ways the game is "easier" but in others its more difficult and complicated. I'll try to describe what I think are the "innovations" that made their way into the new design.
(1) Score attack
The original innovated by allowing players to save a high score. This version adds a bunch of (now well-worn) incentives to allow players to REALLY differntiate themselves from their peers via high scores. So, there are bonus modes and jackpots that you can win. You can also go after "sub-goals" (kill the invaders in a column) to get even more bonuses. In many ways, this is reminiscent of pinball tables (multipliers and so on).
(2) Power ups
If you kill 4 of the same color invader, they drop a powerup which you can use to make it easier to clear the rest of the invaders. You actually have to catch the powerups when they drop, which is reminiscent of Arkanoid (2?). One of the insprirations for the original Space invaders was Breakout...which is kind of interesting.
(3) Stages (with boss challenges)
So the original had waves. This time around the waves are less relevant/distinct and the game favours stages. Once you clear one you can move on to the next (and they even branch). I think there's about 10 stages in total (in two branches) and I only got so far as the 3rd stage along the top branch (easy one?).
There are other things, but these are the main ones. In some sense the game is playing catchup rather than trying to shoot ahead of the pack. But, it's a good thing in my opinion...because it keeps the game from changing into something that isn't really Space Invaders.
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jp's Space Invaders Extreme (PSP)
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Current Status: Stopped playing - Something better came along
GameLog started on: Saturday 3 September, 2011
GameLog closed on: Tuesday 6 September, 2011 |
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