Thursday 24 January, 2008

"$#*%!", "%$@*", and "$%?@!@#$%&~!!!"
That's all I found myself saying while playing Gradius III. This game is HARD. Unforgiving. Unrelenting. Almost impossible.
Before the start of the game, you select your power-up tree. Throughout play, you receive a power-up that highlights a branch on the tree. When a branch you want is highlighted, you have the option to either activate it or wait for another power-up that highlights the next branch in the tree. The game lets you create a custom tree or select from a few pre-made templates. At first, I went with the custom method in hopes of picking the best weapons possible. Selecting from the templates forces you to compromise, so I thought this was the best option. I THOUGHT WRONG!

The game starts off slow. Your ship moves pretter solemnly, and there's a lot of empty space to just flutter around in. Then the game throws the first set of enemies at you, and they move ten times faster than you do. If you defeat the line of enemies, they give you a power-up. My first instinct was to save it, as the more powerful weapons occur later in the tree. However, this puts you at a huge disadvantage, because your ship wont move fast enough to even get past the first minute of gameplay.

I die over and over again. Creating custom power-up trees became tedious three lives ago, so selecting from a template is now the way to go. By now I've memorized the locations of the enemies up until before the first boss, because by then, the game sends SO MUCH STUFF at you that you have no idea what's going on. You have to dodge bullets, other enemies, even the environment (when present). That's not a big deal, I've dodged all that stuff countless times in the past. The problem is that Gradius III sends this stuff at you in such grand quantities that the game can't even keep up with itself. At times this is a welcome defect, because when this happens, human reflexes are finally enough.

I played this game for an hour. Why? Because I hate myself...

SUMMARY:

Gradius III is a horizontal-scrolling shooter in which the player uses a variety of weapons and power-ups to defeat lesser enemies. The lesser enemies act as an obstacle that stands between the player and each level's end boss battle.

GAMEPLAY:

"$#*%!", "%$@*", and "$%?@!@#$%&~!!!"
That's all I found myself saying while playing Gradius III. This game is HARD. Unforgiving. Unrelenting. Almost impossible.
Before the start of the game, you select your power-up tree. Throughout play, you receive a power-up that highlights a branch on the tree. When a branch you want is highlighted, you have the option to either activate it or wait for another power-up that highlights the next branch in the tree. The game lets you create a custom tree or select from a few pre-made templates. At first, I went with the custom method in hopes of picking the best weapons possible. Selecting from the templates forces you to compromise, so I thought this was the best option. I THOUGHT WRONG!

The game starts off slow. Your ship moves pretter solemnly, and there's a lot of empty space to just flutter around in. Then the game throws the first set of enemies at you, and they move ten times faster than you do. If you defeat the line of enemies, they give you a power-up. My first instinct was to save it, as the more powerful weapons occur later in the tree. However, this puts you at a huge disadvantage, because your ship wont move fast enough to even get past the first minute of gameplay.

I die over and over again. Creating custom power-up trees became tedious three lives ago, so selecting from a template is now the way to go. By now I've memorized the locations of the enemies up until before the first boss, because by then, the game sends SO MUCH STUFF at you that you have no idea what's going on. You have to dodge bullets, other enemies, even the environment (when present). That's not a big deal, I've dodged all that stuff countless times in the past. The problem is that Gradius III sends this stuff at you in such grand quantities that the game can't even keep up with itself. At times this is a welcome defect, because when this happens, human reflexes are finally enough.

I played this game for an hour. Why? Because I hate myself...