Gradius - Review
Title: Gradius
Genre: 2D Action
Platform: NES (originally)
Maker: Konami
Players: 1 - 2 (individually)
My Grade:
2/5
Gradius and I had a very deep love-hate relationship, I loved the first two levels because they were easy and you could basically gather weapons rendering you almost invulnerable... unless you fly into something...
The first gradius game was apparently an arcade game, I played the first console version of it on the NES, one of the few games we actually owned. (yes game cartridges were seen as being ridiculously pricey). I never ever ever read the in-game story and I'm not even sure there is one.
Gameplay:
You fly a ship...in space.. it can move in all 2d directions...
ok, it's not quite that simple. (even though it looks like it on the first part of the first level)
We have already established that you can move, there are of course enemies in various shapes with a whole bunch of different movement patterns. When you kill enemies you gather points, probably a remnant from its Arcade era because they are useless for everything unless you like to sit with a pen and paper and record your score. Certain enemies (or if you kill a cluster of the same kind of enemy) will give you power-ups. The power ups can be used to select various upgrades for your ship. there are 6 different upgrades:
Speed Up - costs 1 power and can be selected multiple times for increased speed.
Missile - costs 2 power, it enables your ship to shoot missiles towards the ground when you shoot your normal weapon.
Double - costs 3 power, Gives you normal shots in a straight line and slightly upwards, overwrites laser.
Laser - costs 4 power, Gives you laser that shoots straight forward, this is incredibly powerful, it also continues through enemies when they die. overwrites Double.
Option - costs 5 power. Option gives you a sort of wingman that shoots when you shoot, it travels in your path so with a bit of practice you can position it as you want. The wingman is an exact copy of you when it comes to weapons. Option can also be selected twice (Imagine three lines of lasers... *drool*)
"?" - costs 6 power, the "?" is not called "?" in the later games, there it is known as "shield" which is precisely what it does in this game as well.
What I think:
As I said above, Gradius and I have a love-hate relationship. The first levels are relatively easy and you can pretty much gather every weapon you want, after that, you are pretty much invulnerable to enemies. But the issue is that you tend to run into walls a lot more than getting shot at by enemies. And the reason I hate this game is... when you die, you lose ALL your weapons. This is the single most annoying feature of this game, I could have accepted losing one, two or maybe three powers (like the laser, missiles and an "option") but all of them ? I just spend an hour carefully navigating these "easy" levels to stand a chance against the later levels... but no... one crash and you may as well start over from the beginning.
Gradius still deserves a 2 though because it IS a good game, and I'm sure players who are way better than me likes it a lot more (since they either don't need the weapons, or they simply never crash). Gradius is also a very nice looking game, with varied obstacles and a creative way of coming up with challenges.
Genre: 2D Action
Platform: NES (originally)
Maker: Konami
Players: 1 - 2 (individually)
My Grade:
2/5
Gradius and I had a very deep love-hate relationship, I loved the first two levels because they were easy and you could basically gather weapons rendering you almost invulnerable... unless you fly into something...
The first gradius game was apparently an arcade game, I played the first console version of it on the NES, one of the few games we actually owned. (yes game cartridges were seen as being ridiculously pricey). I never ever ever read the in-game story and I'm not even sure there is one.
Gameplay:
You fly a ship...in space.. it can move in all 2d directions...
ok, it's not quite that simple. (even though it looks like it on the first part of the first level)
We have already established that you can move, there are of course enemies in various shapes with a whole bunch of different movement patterns. When you kill enemies you gather points, probably a remnant from its Arcade era because they are useless for everything unless you like to sit with a pen and paper and record your score. Certain enemies (or if you kill a cluster of the same kind of enemy) will give you power-ups. The power ups can be used to select various upgrades for your ship. there are 6 different upgrades:
Speed Up - costs 1 power and can be selected multiple times for increased speed.
Missile - costs 2 power, it enables your ship to shoot missiles towards the ground when you shoot your normal weapon.
Double - costs 3 power, Gives you normal shots in a straight line and slightly upwards, overwrites laser.
Laser - costs 4 power, Gives you laser that shoots straight forward, this is incredibly powerful, it also continues through enemies when they die. overwrites Double.
Option - costs 5 power. Option gives you a sort of wingman that shoots when you shoot, it travels in your path so with a bit of practice you can position it as you want. The wingman is an exact copy of you when it comes to weapons. Option can also be selected twice (Imagine three lines of lasers... *drool*)
"?" - costs 6 power, the "?" is not called "?" in the later games, there it is known as "shield" which is precisely what it does in this game as well.
What I think:
As I said above, Gradius and I have a love-hate relationship. The first levels are relatively easy and you can pretty much gather every weapon you want, after that, you are pretty much invulnerable to enemies. But the issue is that you tend to run into walls a lot more than getting shot at by enemies. And the reason I hate this game is... when you die, you lose ALL your weapons. This is the single most annoying feature of this game, I could have accepted losing one, two or maybe three powers (like the laser, missiles and an "option") but all of them ? I just spend an hour carefully navigating these "easy" levels to stand a chance against the later levels... but no... one crash and you may as well start over from the beginning.
Gradius still deserves a 2 though because it IS a good game, and I'm sure players who are way better than me likes it a lot more (since they either don't need the weapons, or they simply never crash). Gradius is also a very nice looking game, with varied obstacles and a creative way of coming up with challenges.
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