Alpha Mission II and Graceful Explosion Machine Impressions for Nintendo Switch
A couple of 2D shooters, shoot-em-ups, or shmups, appeared on the Nintendo Switch eShop yesterday, and I played them for a little bit.
Let's start with the bad. Alpha Mission II, originally released on Neo Geo in 1991, is a mostly vertically-scrolling shooter (with some horizontal leeway) that has some questionable design-decisions. There are two "planes" that enemies exist on: the air and the ground. Enemies in the air can be attacked with your lasers, and enemies on the ground can be attacked with your missiles. A lot of 2D shooters have this feature, but usually the enemies on the ground are less numerous than the enemies in the air. This is because usually your main weapon - the one that can be fired the most rapidly, can only hit airborne targets. This is not the case in Alpha Mission II.
In Alpha Mission II, most of the enemies are on the ground, which is fine. Just increase the rate at which your missiles fire, right? Nope; SNK did not do that. Okay. What if you could switch the plane at which you fire with a tap of a button? Nope; SNK did not do that, either. Missiles can be upgraded to shoot a wider spread of missiles, but they still come out very infrequently, compared to the laser.
Before knowing any of this, and after playing the game for a few minutes, I was shocked that my lasers weren't hitting my enemies, and only my missiles were (which come out about once a second). This really frustrated and infuriated me, and I turned the game off. Eventually, I forced myself to play through the game because I could use however many credits I could to beat it. It wasn't fun.
It doesn't change at all for the rest of the game. Most of the enemies can only be hit with missiles. I don't know why the developers designed the game this way. Maybe they just wanted the player to be continually dodging projectiles. It's just not fun to be shooting at something, tapping the button multiple times a second, and only getting one effective projectile per second.
The armor-system is kind of cool. There are a bunch of different armors you can find, but the game is very difficult, so I lost my armors very quickly. On the plus-side, if you like challenging games and spending hours learning a game, this game has you covered.
Alpha Mission II
Let's start with the bad. Alpha Mission II, originally released on Neo Geo in 1991, is a mostly vertically-scrolling shooter (with some horizontal leeway) that has some questionable design-decisions. There are two "planes" that enemies exist on: the air and the ground. Enemies in the air can be attacked with your lasers, and enemies on the ground can be attacked with your missiles. A lot of 2D shooters have this feature, but usually the enemies on the ground are less numerous than the enemies in the air. This is because usually your main weapon - the one that can be fired the most rapidly, can only hit airborne targets. This is not the case in Alpha Mission II.
In Alpha Mission II, most of the enemies are on the ground, which is fine. Just increase the rate at which your missiles fire, right? Nope; SNK did not do that. Okay. What if you could switch the plane at which you fire with a tap of a button? Nope; SNK did not do that, either. Missiles can be upgraded to shoot a wider spread of missiles, but they still come out very infrequently, compared to the laser.
Before knowing any of this, and after playing the game for a few minutes, I was shocked that my lasers weren't hitting my enemies, and only my missiles were (which come out about once a second). This really frustrated and infuriated me, and I turned the game off. Eventually, I forced myself to play through the game because I could use however many credits I could to beat it. It wasn't fun.
It doesn't change at all for the rest of the game. Most of the enemies can only be hit with missiles. I don't know why the developers designed the game this way. Maybe they just wanted the player to be continually dodging projectiles. It's just not fun to be shooting at something, tapping the button multiple times a second, and only getting one effective projectile per second.
The armor-system is kind of cool. There are a bunch of different armors you can find, but the game is very difficult, so I lost my armors very quickly. On the plus-side, if you like challenging games and spending hours learning a game, this game has you covered.
Graceful Explosion Machine
Graceful Explosion Machine is a 2D shooter that scrolls horizontally in a loop, much like Defender or Resogun, and in which you can change direction at will. You have access to four weapons at any time, mapped to the four face-buttons. You have a dash that you can use to dash through enemies without taking damage, but it does no damage to enemies, and you can't dash through projectiles without taking damage. You can change the direction you're facing with ZL.
My biggest complaint came with the main weapon. It overheats, so you can't spam or hold the button down without overheating. This takes away from the fun of the game because it forces you to use other weapons, even if you don't want to. While playing, this reminded me of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's weapon-breaking system. Why are all games going to this paradigm?
The other weapons do not overheat, but they cost energy, which you can collect after you defeat an enemy, but you have to be very close to collect it, and it disappears quickly.
The basic flow of the game is this. You start shooting things with your main weapon. It overheats. You use another weapon. You lose all energy. You switch back to your main weapon. Rinse and repeat. When you have to change how you play out of necessity instead of choice and freedom, it's not fun; it's not good game-design. In Resogun, your gun never overheated, and that was one of the best launch-titles of the PS4.
Comments
Post a Comment