R-Type Final 2
What’s a pirate’s favourite type of shoot-’em-up?
Three rounds of crowdfunding later, one of the shoot-’em-up world’s best-loved series has a brand-new entry. Just as well; those skittish aliens won’t shoot themselves. If you’re not familiar with previous games and you just want to shoot stuff in an unforgiving environment, this will do the job. Ultimately, however, it’s a bit of intergalactic fan service, for better and for worse.
After a brief first-person intro, things are reassuringly familiar. Moving from left to right in shiny modern 2.5D graphics, it’s your job to shoot… well, everything. As is R-Type tradition, you will be joined by the Force. Nothing to do with midichlorians, this is your indestructible little buddy which enters the scene when you pick up a power-up. Your control over it is fairly limited, but essential to success. While moving around on its own, it fires whenever you do, the nature of its bullets affected by pickups (it can fire in both vertical directions simultaneously, for example). It can also be attached to the front or back of your craft, affording extra power and/or a way to shoot behind you. Add in the fact that the simple act of ejecting it can buy you breathing space by taking out enemies at a distance, and a surprising depth of tactics is revealed.
R-Type veterans will be pleased to see a variety of familiar ships, enemies, and areas. Indeed, those who have already mastered previous games will want to jump straight into the highest available difficulty. This offers (much) tougher, more complex bosses, and a faster descent into the pleasingly tortuous difficulty they’ll be looking for.
JUST YOUR R-TYPE
One intention with this game was to broaden the appeal with a variety of difficulty settings. While the general difficulty curve is well judged, the first level an excellent introduction to the experience before things become quickly but steadily more challenging, even the lowest difficulty (the mockinglynamed Practice) is destined to send those with little experience of the genre running to more familiar territory. Fans, however, will be pleased to hear that even harder difficulties can be unlocked.
How much you’ll get out of this depends entirely on your tolerance for old-school game design. Enemy spawns and attack patterns are always the same; the main challenge comes from learning through death, in that it’s impossible to anticipate many of the things that will kill you, which can prove frustrating. Even then, some of the things you can see coming are ruthlessly demanding with no margin for error (one hit means death). Yet with great frustration comes great satisfaction when you beat the odds.
Does exactly what it sets out to do – deliver a worthy new R-Type – very well, yet a little more ambition (and accessibility) could have gone a long way. Luke Kemp
R-Type veterans will be pleased to see a variety of familiar ships, enemies, and areas.