Grind-your-teeth-to-sand frustrating, but satisfying.
For all of the shmup gamer cred I like to talk up about myself (so much so that I've started calling them STGs to really flex my terminology on the genre noobs), I've never actually played a Gradius game. Not a single one! I've seen plenty of media with the Vic Viper in it, but I've never actually gotten into the source material. This is probably a weird entry to dip my toes into the franchise with, but it's what was suggested to me. Sometimes a recommendation helps to keep things fresh. After all, it's not as if I would have ever given this a look if I hadn't been told to play it.
What's most striking about The Interstellar Assault — and Gradius as a whole, I suppose — is how much of a snowball the Vic Viper is. Seriously, this thing is the idea of "win more" made manifest. Your upgrade path includes something like four speed upgrades, three tiers of missiles, lasers, double fire, two Options that float behind you copying your fire pattern, and a front-facing shield that soaks three shots that would insta-kill you at any other time. It's ridiculous how much shit you can put on the screen at once. But far from just allowing you to be carried by spamming the screen with projectiles, the game doesn't hesitate to humble you. Enemies come from behind, teleport in, or require absurd amounts of precision to take down. You have to start relying on weird little tech options that you discover through play, such as orienting yourself in weird flight paths to maximize your Option coverage; since they can float through walls and you can't, you can end up positioning them to exploit the geometry and cover virtually the entire screen so long as you're clever with your maneuvering and resist your primal urge to wiggle the D-Pad.
I don't especially love the idea of giving a game credit solely for the fact that it came out on archaic hardware, but this is a packed cartridge. Considering this was on the OG green-and-gray Game Boy, it's kind of a miracle that there's as much content as there is, and that it flows as nicely as it does. The laser sound can be a little grating, but the sound chip is doing some serious work to crank out these ear-worm tunes to keep pushing you forward. I'm kind of clueless as to how anyone was expected to play this on a two-inch wide screen, though; you've gotta make some really specific movements through tight hallways and between boss lasers, and it was already hard enough to peek through the gunfire and enemy spam on my monitor that's ten times the size of the system this originally released on.
It's as snappy as it is brutal. I had the distinct thought at one point that it felt like a modern indie de-make of an ancient arcade title, and that's probably exactly what the developers were shooting for. The act of getting through some of the hazards was making me experience enough gamer fury that I could have bitten chunks off of myself, but what was here was compelling enough to encourage me to see it through. Blitzing through a stage that not even ten minutes ago completely kicked your ass is the universal serotonin constant.
The final boss has three phases and an escape sequence. My blood pressure was probably high enough to be considered a medical emergency.
For all of the shmup gamer cred I like to talk up about myself (so much so that I've started calling them STGs to really flex my terminology on the genre noobs), I've never actually played a Gradius game. Not a single one! I've seen plenty of media with the Vic Viper in it, but I've never actually gotten into the source material. This is probably a weird entry to dip my toes into the franchise with, but it's what was suggested to me. Sometimes a recommendation helps to keep things fresh. After all, it's not as if I would have ever given this a look if I hadn't been told to play it.
What's most striking about The Interstellar Assault — and Gradius as a whole, I suppose — is how much of a snowball the Vic Viper is. Seriously, this thing is the idea of "win more" made manifest. Your upgrade path includes something like four speed upgrades, three tiers of missiles, lasers, double fire, two Options that float behind you copying your fire pattern, and a front-facing shield that soaks three shots that would insta-kill you at any other time. It's ridiculous how much shit you can put on the screen at once. But far from just allowing you to be carried by spamming the screen with projectiles, the game doesn't hesitate to humble you. Enemies come from behind, teleport in, or require absurd amounts of precision to take down. You have to start relying on weird little tech options that you discover through play, such as orienting yourself in weird flight paths to maximize your Option coverage; since they can float through walls and you can't, you can end up positioning them to exploit the geometry and cover virtually the entire screen so long as you're clever with your maneuvering and resist your primal urge to wiggle the D-Pad.
I don't especially love the idea of giving a game credit solely for the fact that it came out on archaic hardware, but this is a packed cartridge. Considering this was on the OG green-and-gray Game Boy, it's kind of a miracle that there's as much content as there is, and that it flows as nicely as it does. The laser sound can be a little grating, but the sound chip is doing some serious work to crank out these ear-worm tunes to keep pushing you forward. I'm kind of clueless as to how anyone was expected to play this on a two-inch wide screen, though; you've gotta make some really specific movements through tight hallways and between boss lasers, and it was already hard enough to peek through the gunfire and enemy spam on my monitor that's ten times the size of the system this originally released on.
It's as snappy as it is brutal. I had the distinct thought at one point that it felt like a modern indie de-make of an ancient arcade title, and that's probably exactly what the developers were shooting for. The act of getting through some of the hazards was making me experience enough gamer fury that I could have bitten chunks off of myself, but what was here was compelling enough to encourage me to see it through. Blitzing through a stage that not even ten minutes ago completely kicked your ass is the universal serotonin constant.
The final boss has three phases and an escape sequence. My blood pressure was probably high enough to be considered a medical emergency.