Darius (1987)

Preliminary: Great Sound, beautiful Look (tho wish I could see it on a real arcade machine), and a shmup so that means I will likely play to the end. But ah! Seems there are multiple different routes you can go to the end, each with a different set of bosses! I finished the first Zone and was on my way to Zone C before realizing that. It's already super hard but knowing me and shmups, I will likely push through over this week. The boss took forever, and I quickly noticed the fin and open mouth were (I believe) its weak spots! So this'll be a tough one. Maybe I need to learn more about the power-ups because I think I only found 1 or 2 of them throughout the whole Zone, so I might be missing something. Luckily, with such a good Sound and Look, plus a unique screen layout and good arcade-quality controls/collision masks (plus the possibility of 2player with a friend or family someday), this will likely get me to actually do my research and push through the difficulty. That seems to be the big indicator for overly complicated and overly difficulty games of this era: if it has something striking in its Sound and/or Look, I will likely push through. Without that though... there are so many games I still have to play!

Look: 8/10 Overall a good Look with nice backgrounds and a futuristic ship. I also liked the UI. Some of the enemy projectiles looked like the Red ball power-up, tho.

Sound: 7/10 Most of the Sound was good but some of the jingles, like the one during the Iron Hammer-U boss fight, were annoying. And overall it got less and less endearing over time. (This almost earned an 8 but then got repetitive and sometimes outright annoying in the later levels)

Play: 7/10 On 2nd play session, I realized spamming both attack buttons is the way to go. Suddenly I was loading up with power-ups. While I'm glad that turned the game more into that class shmup feel I love where basically I just spam attack and dodge projectiles, because it required both the buttons basically constant mashed, it devolved into a challenge for my right forearm to be able to alternate those buttons as fast as possible. Still, was very nice to finally get a lot of power-ups, and the Zone C boss was much more doable. We'll see if I can do 7 total Zones (which I think is the required number with the route I'm going) before my forearm cracks ha. Unfortunately I only had time for one Zone tonight, but in some ways that might be a good thing to take it in 2-3 Zone chunks :-p

My spamming both attack styles method continued to work into the later game! (Tho typically for bosses I'd just spam the normal attack). And I was getting much more loaded up with power-ups which made it more fun. (Seems, in general, that it's color-coded, so the greener enemies will give green power-ups which correspond with Bomb upgrades, though some of the colored enemies did not drop power-ups so that wasn't entirely consistent). As always, I'm glad that many of the enemy projectiles can be shot away.

Feel: 7/10 The delay for those convoluted explosion animations for the bosses is brutal ha. Like let's just move on! This is a shoot em up! As good of a shoot em up as this is, for some reason I just was never in love with it. Like I wasn't so much hooked as I was telling myself I have to finish it. You would think with the arcade-level controls, good Look, and overall nice Sound (wasn't in love with all the jingles though) I would be more enthralled with it. Since it's one of the beloved genres ha.

Maybe it's because basically every level boiled down to the same basic thing (which usually I feel like only the very end levels of, say, 1942 devolve into this): spam attack, dodge the insane number of bullets coming at you. I couldn't even really intentionally attack certain enemies or certain spots of the bosses because the onslaught of projectiles was just so incessant and pervasive (thank goodness for those arcade-quality collision masks). While I like that part of shmups, it just felt repetitive for every level from the second on to already be at that level. Plus, the bosses felt repetitive, tho some cool Looks with them (and I liked the song for Dual Shears). Perhaps that early devolving into a repetitive all-I-can-do-is-dodge gameplay is why I only ever did 2ish Zones each play session. (And Zone U really was hard enough to be its own session, sheesh not a fan of the enemies spawning so fast to the left and swarming at you at same time as the darn fire barriers need to be shot away. uff. But after that was the last Zone so I had to press on)

Attachment: 7/10 Cool replayability idea of the multiple routes in a shmup. Also interesting that only on Zone J (so about halfway through the game) did I learn/experience that fully upgrading a weapon leads it to its next version. I.e., the Missile became a Laser. While I was excited to explore the Laser, boo that I lost my powerful and 3-pronged Missile attack! I assume I will soon have that with the Laser too :-p Regardless, that's another example of the complexity and replayability of the game. (Wellll, I'm already hating this Level 1 Laser lol, cuz the Fatty Glutton boss is already lame enough I didn't need a smaller attack range to top it off! Like I almost stopped playing during that boss ha, not cuz it was too hard but just took forever to kill him with the Laser and wasn't a fun mechanic to it... just very repetitive again). Gosh, these bosses really do take just way too many hits to kill, plus the between-zones segments are so slow and dragged out. (Writing that last sentence as I enter the final Zone... hallelujah. my forearms are definitely getting stronger from this ha)

As I mentioned before, this game gave me a lot of burnout. I could only play it in chunks. It didn't have that hooking factor that Fairyland Story and 1942 (and many other shmups) had. Too bad cuz it has a lot of things I usually love. Anyway, at last!

The credits music was... interesting lol. I am proud to have beat it, but unlike 1942, I can't say it made me feel like I became a better gamer. I mean, I'm proud I dodged that bullet hell situation but a) the final boss I had (Strong Shell-V) was easier than former 2 levels and their bosses and b) the only tactic I really had at that point was due to the Laser so I would just sometimes, gasp, not spam click and time it when there was a swarm of enemies coming or the boss was in sight. Good game, but not one of my favorites.

Completion: Main Story, though there are other routes I could take. 2, 854, 180 Score though that's with copious use of savestates ha Playtime: ~55 mins