A testament to the transformative power of a well-crafted hard mode.
About a year ago, I shuffled through the game on normal, and felt like it was a little lacking, but playing through it now on hard, and it’s revealed itself as one of the sharpest retro revivals- where every mechanic has some bit of utility you can wring out of it, and briskly paced in a way that few games are, with some new environmental hazard or enemy type that subtly changes the dynamic of combat appearing on basically every level.
Something that really stood out to me as I was grinding away at attempts on some of the later stages, was despite having fixed enemy spawns (which should make the game extremely memorization-intensive), because you have to keep track of your ammo and a million different angles of attack at once, play the same stage over and over and there’s a remarkable variety to each attempt. Really impressive stuff, a combination of strong scenario design and a fleshed-out player kit that makes the game feel fully realized in a way that few titles are- I was never left wondering “what could’ve been” by the end.
That said, even on this revisit, I still had some problems with the structure, with the countdown timer revealing itself as more akin to hitting a quota for collectables in a platformer so you can progress to the next zone, than a constant source of anxiety that could factor into the standard course of play. The game is so compartmentalized and so demanding on hard, that just by virtue of being able to finish a level, you’ll clear each stage with a cushion of time to spare, your speed and survival fundamentally linked, with little reason to go back brush up on your time once you hit an “A” rank. (It would be a totally different game, but I still ended up wondering how the game would play if you had a few credits and had to go through all the stages in succession, racing against the pressure of a ticking clock. Lack of a scoring system also seems much more pronounced now.)
Honestly, I don’t know if my thoughts have changed all that dramatically from my original review; I’m certainly warmer to it now than when I first played it, and I feel like I finally got to see the mechanics at their best, but the bigger thing for me is that it’s been a great reminder of what you might miss if you just blast through every game without ever looking back.
About a year ago, I shuffled through the game on normal, and felt like it was a little lacking, but playing through it now on hard, and it’s revealed itself as one of the sharpest retro revivals- where every mechanic has some bit of utility you can wring out of it, and briskly paced in a way that few games are, with some new environmental hazard or enemy type that subtly changes the dynamic of combat appearing on basically every level.
Something that really stood out to me as I was grinding away at attempts on some of the later stages, was despite having fixed enemy spawns (which should make the game extremely memorization-intensive), because you have to keep track of your ammo and a million different angles of attack at once, play the same stage over and over and there’s a remarkable variety to each attempt. Really impressive stuff, a combination of strong scenario design and a fleshed-out player kit that makes the game feel fully realized in a way that few titles are- I was never left wondering “what could’ve been” by the end.
That said, even on this revisit, I still had some problems with the structure, with the countdown timer revealing itself as more akin to hitting a quota for collectables in a platformer so you can progress to the next zone, than a constant source of anxiety that could factor into the standard course of play. The game is so compartmentalized and so demanding on hard, that just by virtue of being able to finish a level, you’ll clear each stage with a cushion of time to spare, your speed and survival fundamentally linked, with little reason to go back brush up on your time once you hit an “A” rank. (It would be a totally different game, but I still ended up wondering how the game would play if you had a few credits and had to go through all the stages in succession, racing against the pressure of a ticking clock. Lack of a scoring system also seems much more pronounced now.)
Honestly, I don’t know if my thoughts have changed all that dramatically from my original review; I’m certainly warmer to it now than when I first played it, and I feel like I finally got to see the mechanics at their best, but the bigger thing for me is that it’s been a great reminder of what you might miss if you just blast through every game without ever looking back.