Hello fellow 3DS owners! Welcome to the 3D SEGA classics thread!. This thread has a few purposes. To congradulate or to shame SEGA based on the effort put into these ports. SEGA has a horrible history of not giving their Origin titles to kind of love the original developers gave to them resulting in crappy ports like Sonic Genesis, to introduce and to persuade people have never played these game's to give them a chance, solve the question of is it worth it for those that played the hell out of these game's and maybe still do and finally just a place to chat about SEGA at their unstoppable prime.
Every week I will buy, play for few day's, then review the game. The review is broken down into these categories:
Gameplay - Most important
Presentation - Does it still hold up..if it ever did.
Sound - Music, sound effects, anything that has to do with your ear's
Replayability - One time deal or continous fun
Special features - Every 3D classic has a new feature not present in the original
3D - How great is 3D used in this game and does it add anything.
Now obviously this is my opinion and there may be some that disagree with me and they will be taken into account in the..
PROOF SYSTEM
Simple if you think I am wrong you may also submit a mini review which I will stick in the proof section of every review. It will be devided into people who agree,disagreed, or in middle and count will be kept for each.
and for my First Review...
GALAXY FORCE 2
DEVELOPERS: SEGA
PUBLISHER: SEGA
GENRE: RAIL SHOOTER
HISTORY
GF2 was built upon the SEGA Y Arcade board which was known for its "Super Sprite Scaling" capabilities. It has a bad reception amoung fan's that never got to play it in the arcade as the console port was sub par in evry category. Lucky for us the 3D version is an enhancement of the arcade version.
GAMEPLAY - GF2 is a foward flying rail shooting game in which your job is to fly through each of the 6 levels, the sixth being locked untill you complete the available 5, and destroy the core of each enemy base. The level's are broken up into large outside areas and claustrophobic enemy base areas. Your ship TRY-Z is outfitted with a rapid fire canon with unlimited Ammo. This weapon is useless at long range and should only be used when when any enemy has managed to get into your comfort zone . You are also have the much better missle launchers which are also unlimited. These will be the primary form of attack as they are able to lock on to multiple targerts at one time and can be upgraded by power ups at certain checkpoints granted to you if you do well.
You have a life gauge that that will deplete if you run into anything or you get attack, but the most painful feature about life gauge is that it is also ticking clock. If it happens to reach zero..your dead, game over. There are no lives and this leads to another uncomfortable feature. The game is a gauntlet. You see, when you start the game you can choose any level to start at and game will treat that as the first level. So if you choose level 3 first you will continue in this order 3-4-5-1-2-6. Each new level you start does NOT replenish full health or Shield, which is pretty much a damage reducer that can be destroyed by taking hits from enemy fire or even worse hitting objects, and combine that with fact that as stated already your health id also clock can be intimidating and will lead to many game overs. They only way to replenish health is through checkpoints. Your health is restored based on how well you do up that point. Each level does have its own difficulty so you could choose to tackle the hard ones first and do save then levels your better at for later.
There are no bosses in this game. The bosses come in the form of enviornmental hazards and a kamakaze of enemies. Each level has its own hazards. The Fire planets has the sentient fire that jumps all over the place. The green plant has vegation growth that decides to sprout right in fornt of your ship and so on. Learning how to get your ship through as many levels as possible without losing your shield is crucial to beating the damn game. You have a accelerate and decelerate button which I ignored at first but then realized how important they were. Slowing down to make those incredibly sharp turs in enemy bases or to kill to get better accuracy with the shooter and missles saved alot of damage but speeding through each level as fast as possible is important to conserving energy too.
PRESENTATION - The game looks freakin great. The screens do not do it any ustice and after all this time I am still amazed by the sprite work from SEGA's arcade line up. The scaling is wonderfully done. The enviornments virbrant, distinct and are fun to look.
SOUND - Shooting stuff, blowing stuff up, crashing.. everything sonds great. Typical of SEGA back in the day, they use alot of bass heavy tracks and thay all sound great. Not amazing though. Planet 4 happens to always be the only tack I remeber when I turn the game off.
REPLAYABILITY - YES. Mainly because it will probably take you a few try'e to beat it! Even on the easy 1 start diffulty level( 5 in total) its tough getting to the end of zone 6 without getting shot down or time running. Also just playing levels in any order that you want to get better in practice for the full gauntlet is enjoybale. I beat the game twice already and I'm still trying to get better at certain levels.
SPECIAL - Nothing significant. Customize your difficulty alittle by choosing how much life you start with, the rate at which it reduces and the shield level on top of difficulty setting. Typical of all 3D classics. You can adjust screen size and moving hud effect.
3D - This is best I have I seen 3D being used on 3DS so far. There are no 3D objects in this game but man does the 3D effect give the impression that there could be. The amount of depth you receive in this game is awesome. Spacial awareness has always been kind of an issue with with forward moving rail shooters. That is eliminated here. I would never play this game with the 3D off. It makes the game look even better than it already does and it helps.
OVERALL - I am enjoying Galaxy Force 2 and I do not regret my purchase. If I had to point out some short coming's it would be the lack of power ups. A gun that sucks and spammable missles doesnt not really make super compelling rail shooter. I also would have appreciated some boss fights. I would have also made the target cursor bigger. Your ship automatically locks on to enemies which is good for missles but you still have to aim with the energy canon and the cursor is so small and gets lost amoungst the chaos. For fans of rail shooters that like to keep playing them and getting better and for previous GF2 players, I would say go for it. I wish there was alittle more meat in the game, but the full package is worth it. For everybody else just ask a few questions. Do you like rail shooters? How do you feel about challenge? playing the game multiple times to increase skill? This is a very arcade experience and if you the kind of person who just wants to buy a game just to play it through once..you wont get the full enjoyment out of it.
NEXT UP....
*sigh*.....Do you need to buy this game...again? find out next week
