Games I Have Finished (as far as I can remember)

[A Black Falcon]

Xbox 360
--
Otomedius Excellent - Beat on Easy and Normal. This mediocre shmup has to be one of Konami's worst ever, so it's sad that it'll probably be their last console shmup, considering where Konami is going now. This is a Gradius-styled game (or Parodius-styled, maybe more appropriately), but with anime girls. That alone isn't the problem; if it sells copies, whatever. I mean, I'd rather have a real Gradius game, but any Konami shooter is better than none, the Gradius series is my favorite shmup series ever. No, the problem is that this just isn't a very good game. The level designs just don't have that Gradius charm, or level design styles. This is a 2.5d game, with polygonal graphics and side-scrolling gameplay, and it looks mediocre at best. The presentation is also hurt by the constant talking, because it's all voiced in Japanese and the subtitles, when they bother to provide them (which is only maybe two-thirds of the time), are in a tiny little box in the lower lefthand corner that you can't look at if you want to stay alive, because the talking happens during missions and not in cutscenes. The script in the Ultimate Shooting Collection set for Wii worked the same way, or rather didn't work. The level designs are the worst thing here, though. This is a Gradius-style game, but it mixes in some elements of bullet-hell... but doesn't go all the way. The result is a somewhat confused mix of styles. The game is obnoxiously difficult on Normal (I only finished it because of the infinite at-point continues), but a cakewalk on Easy. I'm sure bullet-hell fans won't find Normal all that hard, but I'm terrible at that kind of game. Easy gives you a full shield to start on each life, and the game almost feels like it was balanced for this, but then the short length becomes obvious; shmups are often short, but this could have used some more levels. The game has the usual Gradius issue where if you die the game punishes you HARD, but it feels less balanced here than usual. Usually, in Gradius games, even at minimum power you can get through the game if you're good and avoid damage. Here that really is not the case, there are points where you MUST have powerups in order to not die, or in order to actually kill the boss. It's bad stuff compared to its predecessors in the franchise. I don't think this game has the replay value of a great shooter, either, it's just not fun enough. There are some familiar enemies, enemy patterns, and such to fight, and that's fun, but it's all so much worse than the real Gradius games that it's disappointing. Another disappointment are the bosses -- you see, if you take too long to kiill a boss, it'll just leave. And the amount of time you have for some bossfights is fairly short; I beat the game a few times, but there are some bosses I haven't managed to defeat yet. No other Gradius-franchise titles have bosses that just ... leave. Dying a lot isn't fun either of course, but that feels unsatisfying. Of course, as I said the also always did a much better job of balancing how much damage you need to do to beat bosses with different power levels. Annoying.

So yeah, this game has a lot of problems. It's also the second or third, and last, game in the Otomedius series, but is the only one with a Western release so what IS translated in the story doesn't entirely make sense, there are references to the other games. At least the enemies are still called the Bacterions though, so there is that connection to the series. Oddly there isn't the expected easy giant brain final boss, though... too bad. Still, this is a decent, if below-average game and it was worth playing at least a bit of.