The problem with Raiden IV when it first debuted here in North America back in 2009 on the Xbox 360 was simply that it was overpriced for the amount of content it offered. $40 was just far too high of a price point for anyone outside of the hardcore shoot’em up fanbase. This was unfortunate, though, because what Raiden had to offer was actually quite mechanically sound. Ultimately, this resulted in a game not being experienced by as many people as it maybe should have been. Now fast-forward to 2014, and we have UFO Interactive’s PS3 enhancement Port, Raiden IV: OverKill. With a much more digestible digital sticker-price and some new gameplay additions, loyalists of the shooter genre have a solid game to sink their teeth into for a long time to come. Let’s find out why.

Raiden IV: OverKill is a vertical-scrolling shoot’em up in the vein of classics such asDoDonPachi, Radiant Silvergun and Espgaluda. But while those particular titles are fairly hardcore manic shooters, Raiden is a more methodical series less concerned with hypnotic patterns of death-dealing projectiles, and more about using a sound-mind and various weapon options to make it through all the chaos (though it’s still very bullet heavy, mind you). This approach is a breath of fresh air considering the SHMUP genre was mostly dominated by CAVE’s mega intense bullet-hell shooters last generation. Thus, this more straight-forward approach ultimately means a more accessible title with a less infuriatingly steep learning curve, making it a great title for folks wanting to cut their teeth on these types of games. That being said, Raiden IV is such a special game in that it doesn’t just pander to newbies. In fact, genre-veterans will find themselves right at home with the various difficulty settings and overall number of ways there are to play the game, and play it well.

While many of the aforesaid SHMUP titles shoehorn folks into one style of playing, by only providing a small amount of ways to actually make it through each stage without dying a dozen times, Raiden IV is more about providing players with a series of avenues to explore, all of which feel viable. Sure, the game is still very much so entrenched in the foundation of shoot’em ups — meaning that a great deal of success will come from trial, error, and memorization of enemies, but it doesn’t solely hang its hat on this mechanic. For starters, there are three ships from which to choose, all of which play somewhat differently from one another (though not terribly so), and a handful of weapon-types. Weapons are upgraded throughout the stages in real-time, and are acquired through picking up items that drop from blown-up bad guys. This all sounds like standard stuff, but it’s the small change-ups that make OverKill a unique and rewarding game.

In most shooters, power-ups act as loot-drops and are totally static. Enemy A drops Item B, and that’s that. Here, though, Enemy A drops Item X which turns into items B, C, and D depending on how long a players wait to pick it up and at what point in its rotation it’s acquired. It’s a cool system that demands extra attention; knowing that a certain stage is not one in which a player wants to use a straight-firing laser means that when an item drops and its first rotation is said laser, the player will have to buy time until that item rolls over to the next, more useful upgrade. It’s a tense system that makes the player fight for their survival in ways that aren’t strictly dependent on dodging bullets. In truth, Raiden IVdoesn’t burden itself with this one-tricky pony mentality. So in essence, while other games of this ilk will make dodging the primary means of winning, OverKill focuses on a healthy blend of dodging and shooting, making sure that players are doing both in a sort of inspiring harmony. In some ways, this system is more challenging, or at least more rewarding, than the usual “learn bullet pattern, avoid bullet pattern” stuff that has become practically synonymous with the genre as of late.

Speaking of challenging, Raiden IV is no walk in the park. With over half a dozen stages and a litany of difficulty selections, there’s quite a bit of variety to experience. Fortunately, the game rarely feels unfair in its difficulty. Instead, it strikes a nice balance of giving folks a breather from some of the more intense, bullet-ridden battles and then ratcheting up the intensity during final showdown encounters that cap off each chapter. Of course, there are several modes to try out as well to better understand which gives the right challenge for each individual player.

Obviously, there’s an arcade mode, which is probably a good place to start for newbies, as it’s more barebones and transparent in its expectations of players. This specific mode has various difficulty options too, so that makes it even more pick-up-and-play no matter the level of skill being brought to the table. There’s also a score attack, Additional Mode as well as a few others. And then we get to that which acts as the game’s subtitle: OverKill mode.

OverKill mode is what this game should be played for, truthfully. It adds just enough to feel fresh while not changing the base mechanics at play. Chief among its defining qualities is the fact that now many of the larger ships are able to be given extended damage beyond their initial life. When they are being destroyed in this way, there are five degrees of “OverKill” that decide just how many points are given from the medal’s that are dropped as a result of the shooter-y. This simple concept adds much to the gameplay and stage strategy, as to achieve a full OverKill, it will require folks to point-blank or bomb the eligible ships like a mad-man. The point in all of this is really basic, though: the medals earned from this method reward players with an exorbitant amount of points. Collect enough and players will be soaring to the top of the leaderboards. What’s even better about this mode is that two brand new stages have been included in its level library.

On top of that, there is an assortment of play-style options for some of these modes, which allow folks to even control two ships at once. This clearly is pretty insane, and is probably best left for the experts, but the mere fact that it’s a possibility is enough to make the player feel as if there are more things to do here than just run through the stages — which can be completed in the expected 25-40 minutes, maybe more, depending on any level-looping. To top off this drink of shoot’em up goodness, there are of course the aforementioned learderboards in addition to a replay feature, sure to satiate the desires of the truest diehards.

Of course, not everything is wonderful in this package. Most notable is the fact that Raiden IV is an old game at this point. As such, its visuals are less than impressive. It’s not a particularly ugly game, but it certainly looks like a title that was originally released in arcades way back in 2006. The texture work is particularly unimpressive, backgrounds can be noticeably sparse and lacking in detail, and explosions won’t blow your socks off. Yes, ship models are nice enough, and the weapon effects, such as neon blue and purple lasers, do look lush against the drab backdrops, but on the whole, this is far and away not a looker of a game — especially when put up against something like last year’sDoDonPachi: SaiDaiOuJou.

Thankfully, the sounds of Raiden IV fair a bit better, at least in terms of soundtrack. The audio effects are pretty run-of-the-mill: explosions sound like explosions, and missiles have a nice whirling sound to them as they set eyes on their intended target, but it’s nothing spectacular. The soundtrack on the other hand is pure rock brilliance. It has a decidedly throwback style to it, making most tracks sound like they just crawled their way right out of a 1980s arcade shooter. There’s an excess of synth and wailing guitars to be heard, and the pulsating beats of the more anthem-like rock tunes supplement on the on-screen carnage quite nicely. Sadly, we did encounter an audio glitch during play where the music just cut out abruptly. While it picked back up after a few heartbeats, it would seem to indicate some careless work on the part of those responsible for ensuring an audio-perfect experience.

Closing Comments:

The 360 reigned supreme last generation when it came to SHMUPs, leaving PlayStation enthusiasts out in the cold. Over the last 18 months, though, things have gotten better, what with the release of Under Defeat HD, Ketsui and the forthcoming Caladrius Blaze. Hence, UFO and developer MOSS bringing Raiden IV to the PlayStation 3 should be acknowledged with great excitement by fans, as this is one hell of a shooter, even if it is not lighting the world on fire with innovation. The upgradable weapons, tight gameplay, accessible (but challenging) level of difficulty, silkly smooth controls and insidiously addictive OverKill mode all come together to form a game that can’t be missed for genre fans — especially for its steal of a price-tag. Sure, it’s an old game at this point and certainly shows that age in its aesthetic, but its gameplay conventions are rock-solid and time-tested all the same. Simply put, this is the definitive version of Raiden IV. If you’re a fan, there’s a lot to love here.

In most countries, in most fields, it’s highly debatable who reigns as the “best of the best.” This is not true of the Japanese comic industry. Hirohiko Araki is almost inarguably the greatest manga-ka (comic artist) working today. His magnum opus, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, is one of the longest running and most influential manga ever written. Gucci of Japan held a promotional event where his famously stylish fashion designs were showcased alongside their own products. He’s the only manga artist in history to do a show at the Louvre. To call JoJo a cultural phenomenon would be to grossly downplay its significance.

Yet the most we’ve seen of the series in North America is a terrible straight-to-video movie and a PS1 fighting game from Capcom that’s best known for starting an internet meme. At the moment, broken US copyright law is the main barrier between us and the series, which names many of its characters after popular rock groups and songs. It would take mighty big deal for a localization firm to risk lawsuit over this series, but Namco Bandai’s latest licensed fighting game based on the franchise is nothing if not a big deal. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure:  All Star Battle sold over 400,000 copies in its first week (more than doubleFinal Fantasy XIV, which released the same week) and earned a rare 40/40 from weekly Famitsu. With a hit like that, they hardly had a choice but to translate it.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it’s great to see anything from this vaunted franchise make it to our shores. On the other, while a solid fighting game in its own right, All Star Battle is above all else a love-letter to fans, and its arcane references to already strange source material might not make it the most friendly entry point for newcomers. The addition of the new JoJo anime to Crunchyroll’s spring lineup alleviates this problem somewhat, but All Star Battle will likely struggle to find the same traction as Namco and CyberConnect2’s Naruto fighting games.

For all those uninitiated, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is the centuries-spanning, dimension-crossing saga of the Joestar family and their battles with evil. The first two parts of the series deal with impossibly muscular men fighting impossibly flexible vampires using magic breathing techniques that send sunlight ripples through their fists. After that, it gets weird. From part 3 onward, characters develop “Stands,” psychic manifestations of their fighting spirit (not unlike Personas) that allow them to do things like stop time, transform inanimate objects into living matter, or break their entire body down into string. Those are among the more normal powers.

All Star Battle takes 40 of the most popular characters from across all eight parts of the series and pits them against each other in a massive battle royale. As a fan of the series, I can tell you it’s an absolute delight to see Joseph Joestar predict Funny Valentine’s taunting monologues, or hear Akira Otoishi ask Rohan Kishibe for his autograph in their pre-fight dialogue. The game presents an exciting opportunity to take part in the best moments of the series – like Jotaro stopping time after DIO’s Road Roller finisher – while also allowing you to explore new possibilities, like deciding once and for all whether Mista Guido with his Sex Pistols is a better gunman than Hol Horse with The Emperor.

If you’re not a fan, that’s all Japanese to you, but the game still has plenty to offer. CyberConnect2 excels at building simple but robust fighting engines with gorgeous cel-shaded graphics, and this is their best work to date. All Star Battle is essentially a 3-button 2D fighter, but with the ability to dodge around your opponent in 3D space. It makes for a subtly different experience than most fighting games, forcing you to think in 3D space while still maintaining the overall precision of a 2D fighter. It’s not as deep as BlazBlue or Street Fighter, but it’s considerably meatier than other mash-up brawlers like Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm or Super Smash Bros, and the stand and ripple mechanics give its roster a satisfying sense of variety.

There’s a fair bit of overlap in the basic mechanics of the characters – you’ll see  a lot of punch flurries and basic projectiles – but there’s enough difference between them that they all feel distinctive  More importantly, they all feel very true to the source material. Their stand powers allow them to do cool things like stop or even reverse time, but beyond that the little details in how they’re animated and rendered really help to set them apart. I could go on and on and on about the little touches in characters’ walk cycles, or the subtle variations in how they throw punches, or the incredible care lavished on each of their character models, but suffice it to say that CC2 have put as much effort into bringing these characters to life as they have into emulating Araki’s renowned art style.

You would think it would be difficult to balance Stand and Ripple users in the same game, considering that certain stand users can turn people into bombs that explode forever, erase time at their leisure, or even just straight-up end the universe (all of those, by the way, are special moves in the game). However, CC2 have done a fantastic job balancing them out. The R1 button allows Stand Users to turn their stands on and off, effectively giving them access to two different move sets. Ripple users, meanwhile, can hold the button down to breath and charge their super meter. In fact, that ability puts ripple users (especially Joseph Joestar) ahead of the balance curve. It’s not enough to throw the whole system off, but the game could definitely do with some tightening. Just not in the way you’d expect.

All Star Battle is a little light on modes beyond versus. There’s a paltry story mode, more or less a CliffsNotes of the manga’s 30 year run that will only serve to confuse neophytes. Unfortunately, you have to play through the story to unlock most of the game’s characters (a common problem with CC2 games) but it can be finished quickly enough that it’s not too much of a pain. The English release also has a tacked-on arcade mode, which is more or less what you’d expect. It mainly exists to distract from the campaign mode, which I expect will be a sticking point for many western audiences.

Campaign mode lets you go online and fight through variants of each character in the game in order to earn rewards like extra costumes, taunts, and poses.  These are great bits of fan service, but I wish there were some other way to unlock them. See, the problem with campaign is that it’s structured like a social game. In order to go into fights, you need to spend energy, which you can only replenish by waiting or paying a microtransaction. Namco’s no stranger to predatory business models, but this just seems excessive, especially when you consider that nine of the game’s characters have to be purchased as DLC. The waiting times aren’t terrible (only five minutes per unit of energy, though it was 20 when the game launched in Japan), but these just aren’t mechanics that belong in a $50.00 game. Japanese gamers have more patience for this sort of nonsense, but it doesn’t fly in the west. Fortunately you can get plenty of bang for your buck without touching the mode at all.

Unfortunately those looming copyright fears haven’t gone away, and Bandai Namco has found a less than elegant solution. If I were to use one word to describe this localization, it would be “butchery.” Almost every character and stand name has been changed to something more copyright friendly, and in most cases not nearly as imaginative. “Sticky Fingers” has become “Zipper Man,” “Aerosmith” was bastardized into “Li’l Bomber,” and fan-favourite “Jean Pierre Polnareff” is now “Jean Pierre Eiffel.” A lot of these don’t even make sense – why change “Killer Queen” to “Deadly Queen” when the Tactics Ogre series has been using Queen songs in its titles for decades? You can still get the gist of everything, but those references are a big part of Jojo’s distinctive flavor. As were, for that matter, the hand-written character names that have been replaced by ugly comic-sans type.

Closing Comments:

Despite an atrocious translation and exploitative microtransactions, the gameplay in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle holds up incredibly well. JoJo aficionados will delight in all the fan-service, while newcomers will find a solid fighting game that sits somewhereNaruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm and Persona 4 Arena in terms of accessibility and depth. The huge roster ensures that boredom is a long way off, so long as you have someone to play with. With a visual style derived from one of the preeminent artists of our day, there are few games that look this striking. Pick it up if you’re looking for a fighting game that’s a little different and packed with personality.