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TranceJunkie's Gradius (NES)
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| [January 18, 2007 08:00:08 PM]
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On my second hour of playing, I am starting to get a real grip on the mechanics of the game. I could almost consistently pass the volcano and almost could beat the boss. I adjusted my formula of power-ups a bit, one [?], missile, double, laser, and a speed or two if I could afford it. After another try or two I beat him and its off to the second level.
The second level begins almost the same as in the first, empty space followed by the first line of crafts. However this time one of the craft shoots at your ship as it is destroyed. This is the games way of introducing a new enemy, or in this case, a variation of an enemy to the player in a controlled environment. An situation where the enemy is easily defeated. Soon afterwards this momentary lull in action turns into an intensely difficult level, introducing additional environment scaffolding to avoid while also avoiding bullets.
The music for Gradius is also another aspect that makes the game so enjoyable. Instead of the customary beep boop music so often found on the NES the music is quite complex for the NES. There are many layers to it and it never really gets old. It must have taken a lot of work to get the music this good. I did however realize a little glitch, it seems that in the first 3-5 seconds as the background music is going there are no sound effects. This is probably one of the limitation of the NES. The sound effects are also well done and do not really distract from the game play at all. The balance between the two is also very well tuned. Neither the music nor the varies lasers and explosions outweigh the others creating a very tight sounding game.
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| [January 18, 2007 07:41:12 PM]
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I have played a lot of side scrolling shooters, but had never played Gradius before so I was excited to finally play it. I started off by simply shooting any ships that were in my path. The ship controlled a little slow and I was worried about how this might detract from game play, however I soon realized that this could be fixed by obtaining power-ups from the enemies which could be immediately spent on speed, or could be collected to gain more powerful weapons Missile, Double, Laser, Option, and [?]. However, I couldn't really get very high up the power-ups list because I really couldn't find many power-ups. After a few runs through, I realized that power-ups are not simply dropped by any enemies, and are the dropped randomly. The player is rewarded for destroying chains of enemies and harder enemies, marked with red paint instead of blue.
This aspect of the game lends itself well to replayablity. Not only does the player want to beat the level, but they probably also want to beat it with missiles and lasers. That way, beating the boss at the end of the level is much easier, and in respects, more enjoyable because it is not much fun to shoot at something with a dinky blaster for half an hour.
While trying to beat the first level boss I was constantly adjusting which power-ups I bought with my tokens, and which amount of speed and firepower was enough to beat the boss. Missing even a single red enemy or a group of enemies could mean that I would not be able to get the [?] which is in fact a shield. The shield is a necessity for beating the first level because of the two invincible volcanoes that come before the boss. Each of the volcanoes projectiles is almost guaranteed to hit your ship and without the shield you die and start a the middle of the level again.
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TranceJunkie's Gradius (NES)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Thursday 18 January, 2007
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