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Saturday 9 February, 2008
entry 2
GAMEPLAY
Upon further play of R-type Final, I've been able to unlock quite a few ships and found a few alternate routes (stages). While some of the alternate routes are re-hashes/modifications of the original stage, some of the stages seem to have completely random themes only possibly related to the R-type storyline iyou have a very active imagination. But then again, no storyline has been explicitly been told in the game (as far as I know/can remember), so nothing cabe ruled out, I suppose; looking on the back of the instruction manual, it turns out the game is rated E for everyone because it's only "Fantasy Violence"... which might explain some of the random oddities, such as the "Mr. Heli" R-type space ship. Aside from the few random oddities, I got relatively little satisfaction from the game overall apart from beating the story mode (albeit in the easiest difficulty). To summarize, my experience was that the game caused too much frustration through much of the game in comparison to the satisfaction of completing game objectives, thus leaving me wanting more (unsatisfied with the game).
The game may have been more fun and engaging if it had a co-op support, allowing players to play with the friends, adding a social element into the mix to help keep players interested. However, since players return to the last previous check point when they die, this would have to set back either both players or keep the deceased player out of the game until the other player dies and both respawn together. On this front, R-type Final loses out on the possibility of co-op functionality such as that in Gradius V. Without any other people to engage with, the game lacked sufficient motivation to make me want to legitimately play through the rest of the game.
DESIGN
Since I've played long enough to understand the mechanics of the game, for the purpose of "study," I've let the game fly through stages w/ the invulnerability cheat on so I can safely ignore the game and occupy myself with other activities while the game burns time with different ships so that I can unlock new ships and see if the boasted number of ships if R-Type Final isn't just advertising fodder. While the ships that I unlocked in my initial play through introduced new weapon types and wave cannons (special laser attack), they did not introduce any new bits (pods that follow the player ship and provide some support function).
Additionally, ships unlocked after the first set of ships turned out to be re-hashes of those prior to them, with mostly just minor changes to them. However, after cheating my way through many hours of flight time, I was finally able to unlock some new ships with new bits, and new weaponry, proving that there is at least some function for the 99+ unlockable ships. However, given the amount of time required to unlock the few ships that I was able to unlock, and that a normal player would not use the invulnerability cheat, most players would either give up the game (as I would) either after finding the game too hard or beating it once; only a hardcore shmup gamer would be able to put the hours in to legitimately unlock every ship and reap the rewards, rendering the use of the large mass of unlockable ships relatively useless except for 1 horrifying fact: the tougher difficulty levels seem to require much more powerful weapon arsenals--those carried by the late unlocked ships, turning the wheel of hardcore shmup gamers around once again, putting us back in square one again. While R-type Final does have an easy mode, most of the game content will never be accessible to casual gamers who don't have the dedication to get access to the best ships and experience the coolest flashing colors the game has to offer.
To me, this game content structure (discussed above) is the greatest pitfall of R-type Final. Without a good content and reward/punishment structure, players will be discouraged from playing and lose interest in the game--the end of a game. However, R-type Final did have a number of innovative elements that make can be learned from. The 3D graphics are used well in a number of background transitions to create the illusion of moving the active game space around re-orienting it in within the game world, zooming in, zooming out, moving into objects or areas, etc. While the underlying structure of the 2D shooter interface does not change, the 3D engine's effective implementation allows the designers to create levels with shifting perspectives to better remove the effect of one-direction linear movement in the game through the illusion of 3D movement.
Integrated well with the 3D graphical illusion was the level design, which utilized the 3D space to bring enemies in from different angled planes onto the player's plane of reference for combat, or by shifting the player's plane itself in several cases. The level design also implemented classic shmup spacial control and predefined enemy movement patterns with emergent attack AI script to automate enemy attacks to try and restrict the player's movement and require good tactics to and skillful movement to navigate to tight spaces and fields covered with enemies and bullets. R-type Final added the presumed usage of the Force for either lasers or remote shooting into the mix, specifically creating instances where the Force has to be docked to the read of the ship, or had to be undocked and shooting at something in an area inaccessible by the player, thus requiring the player to make good use of the Force and it's functions.
While the Force pod concept, stylized weapons and level design are well done, the implementation through the poor content structure leaves the player unable to experience much of the game content, leaving many players desiring more from the game, knowing that there is more content in game, but not seeing it as worth spending the time to acquire. Without a well balanced reward system to keep the player interested in continuing the play the game, there's little point to a mass of unlockable content that the player will never unlock.
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