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Saturday 9 February, 2008
SUMMARY
Gradius III is a shmup for the SNES. The objectives are simple, survive wave after wave of enemies by dodging and shooting them while collecting powerups.
GAMEPLAY
Gradius III is an extremely hectic game. This is often par for the course for shmups, but I haven’t played too many of them. This series shares a common core gameplay mechanic. This is a unique powerup system. A set of upgrades chosen before playing is attained by collecting the right number of powerup tokens and pressing the powerup button. This turned out to be a very important to succeeding in the game. The player is faced with a fairly limited number of powerup tokens and so must choose whether it is worth saving up for the more expensive upgrades. Furthermore, you have to spend all your tokens at once, so if you pass up a less expensive powerup, you can’t go back.
Each powerup has a distinct effect. The speed upgrade is the most useful and the cheapest, but the least impressive as there is no graphical change when it is activated. The missiles are useful for attacking land based enemies. Laser weapons are more powerful and look cooler. The second most useful upgrade, but one of the most expensive, is the “option” upgrade. This creates a little invincible drone that mimics the players actions and increases the firepower at the user’s disposal considerably.
The game is very hard, but I can see its appeal. After losing soundly for a while, I started to get into the sort of zoned out pure reflex mode you have to be in to play the game successfully. I started to see significant increases in my ability quickly. It was a very good example of flow. I hope that the game continues to be interesting, and that I don’t end up playing the same levels over and over again.
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