|
Wednesday 23 January, 2008
Gameplay:
During the second 45 minutes the game got much harder and also much more fun. I was able to collect enough powerups to get an 'option', which at first I thought was some sort of extra rocket (it's a little orange ball), but is really a nifty little thing that will fire when you fire, doubling your fire rate. The game allows the player to have up to four options, and those, along with a missile upgrade, lasers, and a shield bonus, allowed me to progress quite swiftly through the next two levels.
However, the increased amount of friendly fire on the screen made it much more difficult for me to see the enemy fire (it didn't help that their shots looked exactly like my missiles), and so I never managed to progress much further than that.
Design:
One of the best features that I saw in this game was the ability to use the options to increase not only the rate of fire, but the area that I could cover with them. This made shooting through a swarm of enemy craft a whole lot easier, as well as the boss levels.
As stated above, this made the enemy shots a lot harder to see. However, that could be looked upon as the penalty for the ease of killing, and if so would be a credit to the design, rather than a flaw.
The levels (those that I saw) mostly consisted of the same alien ships and turrets, though there were other enemies that varied from level to level.
The game creates conflict by throwing wave upon wave of enemies at you from all sides, which forces the player to move in all directions, instead of just up and down. On the other hand, the boss fights didn't really seem that hard, but there wasn't much space to maneuver, so perhaps that is more of a blessing than a curse.
On the whole, Gradius III is a good diversion, a game that is good if one has half an hour to kill, but not something that a gamer would spend hours on, trying to beat the next level.
|
