Gaiares (1990)

Preliminary: Good music. And neat idea with the "leeching" power-ups, I already got one I really like from one of the early enemies. Tight controls too. But not a fan of this background where there are so many "sparkling stars" that cloud your vision and make it hard to discern what's happening in the actual shmup gameplay. Oh cool you "level up" the power-up by repeatedly leeching it.

Just finished the first boss? demi-boss? and I really like this gameplay. But sheesh I got a bti sick to my stomach with how fast they had the asteroids scrolling!

Nice I finished the first Mission, and there are only eight. I am really liking the gameplay, and the Mission 1 Boss had such a cool mecha look. But I am not exaggerating when I say the flinging background aspect makes me sick to my stomach. I will try to get through this next mission but if this is going to be a constant issue, this may have to be a 3 star and move on. Too bad because this could have been a 4 or 5 if my eyes/head/stomach could handle that (and the Look is otherwise great!).

Yeah I played this some more 2 days later and unfortunately my eyes could just not adjust. Sad because this is a high quality shmup, as far as shmups go at least. I didn't even want to leech any new power-ups cuz I liked the multi-shot big blue ball one that I had :-p

Look: 7.5/10 Lots of potential with those backgrounds and whatnot, but that dizzying factor is rough.

Sound: 7.5/10

Play: 7.5/10

Feel: 7.5/10 Neat idas

Attachment: 7.5/10 Is there a modified version without the fast-moving foreground objects feature?? Haha

Overall: 7.5/10

Completion: Partway through Mission 2

Playtime: ~20 mins

Gaiares (hard to spell but think about it as GAIA-RESURRECT which is basically the story of the game) is a liked horizontal shmup by some. It has a very long-winded anime style cutscene on intro that lasts a whopping five minutes (quite possibly the most effort put into story i've ever seen presented in a shoot em up) The game features a unique gimmick that lets you shoot your option/drone thingy to vampirically sap random enemies of their weapon type and that is the main way you collect weapon upgrades in this game. you can do this three times on the same enemy type to max out your weapon power. There are 9 weapons in the game. and 8 levels each with a mini boss and boss and a final boss as well.

The TOZ weapon-stealing mechanic is pretty fun and adds a 'lets try this out and see what this enemy can give me' type dynamic to the game which is a neat layer to toss into a genre that is at times repetitive. However, this game is incredibly hard. I feel it is best enjoyed by veterans and pros of shooting games. I could not beat the first level without resorting to cheating.

What makes this game so difficult is that it's not evading enemy attacks is not pattern finding like most are. ITs not random either. in this little beastie of a shooter the enemies will actually AIM at you and while that is fairly manageable in many places and you technically get some help by adding 'hit points' by upgrading your weapon to max so you can take a few hits, by the time you reach the boss your health is likely low, (and you better have a weapon suitable for killing bosses because some weapons actually cant do it and if you don't kill a boss after a certain amount of time they will just rush into you and kill you LOL) however the boss battles are something else. these bosses really know how to aim and they tend to occupy a large amount of the playing field so that leaves you with little room in which to dodge. surviving some of them requires both incredible timed moves and moving between shots in pixel perfect fashion (and i find that shooters like this are very hard to actually control your motions with) you can adjust your speed from fast medium slow gradius style which is pretty much necessary for most parts of the game.

All in all not bad. I completed it using an emulator (cant imagine many people completing it legit) I would have enjoyed it more if it was a little easier. It also has a real let down of a final boss battle that i didn't even realize was a boss, ZZ BadNasty (very Zzz Zzz)

Even though this game wasn't great imo, I would recommend checking out this game to those who have played a lot of games of this type. You're either good and looking for a challenge or you're looking for something different and the upgrade mechanic does that fairly well (at least until you find all the weapons!)