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Friday 25 January, 2008
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.
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