Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

Back in the days of the arcades, you had rather simple games.  Games mostly consisted of fighters, racers, and side-scrollers, with a few other games mixed in there.  Arcades are mostly memories of the past now, and those who remember playing in those arcades have a lot of nostalgia regarding the games that populated the arcades.  When you think of shooters, games like Space Invaders and Galaga often come to mind.

Shooters evolved so that your environment moved along with your ship.  A lot of these games were popular on the 16-bit consoles.  Contra, Axelay, and R-Type were a few of the side-scrolling shooter series to really take advantage of the 16-bit consoles.  Gradius is another side-scrolling shooter that shined during the 16-bit era.  Now a compilation of the Gradius games is here for your PSP in Gradius Collection.

Scoring graphics in a compilation like this is always a tricky situation because most of these games are a bit old and really pushed the hardware available for the time.  What’s great about this game is that you can see the evolution of the series from the beginning.  The first Gradius looks very simple, with simple explosions and animations, but more colors become available and more work was done with the graphics in each subsequent game.  Still, all of the games look pretty good.  If it had a scrolling background, it would look like something you’d see from this generation of games.

Some nice touches show that the developers took their time when they originally designed the game.  You can see the ship shift as you move up and down.  When you gain the option ship copies, they follow the path of your ship exactly.  The shields you gain pulse and swirl.  While there are some areas where the frames of animation skip pretty drastically, the developers did a lot to overcome the limitations of the systems.  Later games do have animated backgrounds that add more depth to the game.

As with the graphics, you don’t expect the sound to simulate a string orchestra.  The old arcade and 16-bit music is there, and it is recreated successfully.  Just hearing the music brings you back to the days of the arcade and early consoles.  The music is animated and while it isn’t unique sounding, it’s well done for the era.

Shooting enemies and destroying them are the typical bleeps and bloops.  Again they won’t impress you by going by today’s standards, but it’s successfully recreated from the original games.  You will hear phrases like, “You need more practice,” if you don’t complete the level successfully, so it does add a bit of personality to the game.

A shooter like this doesn’t have a need for complex controls, but it isn’t the type of game where you just use one button to fire all the time.  Movement is done with the D-pad or analog nub.  Circle shoots missles and X shoots your default shot.  Square activates your power up in the Power Meter, and Triangle shoots everything continuously as you hold it down.

The D-pad isn’t quite as sensitive as the analog nub for movement, but the analog nub is almost too sensitive for using at times.  Sometimes you might want to move just a little bit and you’ll move too far and crash into the environment.  It does take some getting used to.  You can also use the Triangle almost exclusively with the occasional Square button hit for the power up.  This makes the controls simple and is reminiscent of old shooters.

I am admittedly a fan of shooters.  If you like shooters, you will love this game.  If you don’t, then this game won’t make you change your mind.  You need to take that into account when reading the review.

While the Gradius gameplay evolved over the series, the basic gameplay is the same.  In the original Gradius you are given a ship to pilot.  As you pilot the ship you collect power-ups to upgrade your ship’s capabilities.  Your power-up depends on the Power Meter.  The Power Meter contains a marker for the different power-ups which include Speed Up, Missile, Double (fires straight and at an angle), Laser, Option (creates a ship copy that also fires at enemies), and Shield.  If you turn on the “Semi-Auto” option your ship powers up automatically, while “Manual” gives you total control on how you want to upgrade your ship.  When you collect power-ups, the marker moves up the Power Meter until either the automatic upgrade kicks in or you select to upgrade the ship with that power up.

In Gradius II, the gameplay stays the same, but you have four different ship configurations to choose from.  For example, you can choose the original missiles, spread bombs, photon torpedoes, and two-way missiles.  You can also choose between the shield from the original game, which protects from frontal attacks, and the force shield, which protects the ship from any direction.  The different configurations dramatically change the way you try to play through the missions.

Gradius III takes the ship customizations a step further.  You have four ship types that you can select from.  However, if you don’t like any of those configurations you can go into the Edit Mode and edit the ship to include exactly which weapons you want.  You also have three different shields that you can use.

Gradius IV gives you six different configurations to fly in with two different shields.  New weapons that weren’t seen in the other games are added to this game.

Gradius Gaiden takes the series even further by being able to update the Power Meter.  In the previous Gradius games the Power Meter always went Speed Up, Missle, Double, Laser, Option, and Shield.  If you want to get your Options a bit earlier, you can switch it.  Don’t care about the Speed Up function?  Move it back.  The combinations are endless.

The Gradius games are tough shooters.  I haven’t had any issues where I was ready to throw my PSP and break it, but I could see some people having issues with it.  If you have played Gradius before, you know what you are getting into.

The levels are varied between each mission, and the enemies you’ll encounter change with each stage.  This makes you change your strategy depending on what you are fighting, and the boss battle to end the stage is fairly typical.  Also, some stages have a floor and ceiling, so you have to navigate your craft carefully through the level or else you find yourself crashing into the environment.

If you think that five different Gradius games isn’t enough, then don’t forget about the different ways to play the game with the different weaponry within each of the games.  Still not enough for you?  There’s more!  You have several different difficulty levels and the ability to change the number of ships for each play of the game.

If you play on the easier difficulty levels you can get through the games fairly quickly.  You still get a nice challenge with the easier difficulty levels.  If you play through the game just to get through it you will miss the fun and challenge of the game.  You can also save during the game, which will make the game easier.  That really removes a lot of the challenge of the game, but it gives you the opportunity to practice areas over and over again until you are comfortable enough with them to get past them.  The load times are pretty quick though, much better than most PSP games out there.

Five different Gradius games.  Five different ways to play.  If you play from the first and go to the end, you will see the progression of the Gradius series.  Sometimes nostalgia can disappoint because of how childhood can blur how bad something really was.  Gradius doesn’t disappoint though.  It’s one trip through memory lane you’ll want to take.  If you haven’t played the Gradius series and enjoy scrolling shooters like this, then you should pick this up and you will instantly get an appreciation for the series.

Gaming Trend Score

85

1. Graphics: 82
2. Audio: 80
3. Controls: 84
4. Gameplay: 88
5. Value/Replay: 85
6. OVERALL:85