The Spirits’s alive
Saturday, March 29th, 2008This week I’ve “acquired” a Japanese copy of Bangai-O: Spirits.
Allow me to shove everything else aside…
*shoves*
There we go, now lets get crackin’.
Bangai-O on Dreamcast was silly, bizarre, and of course lots of fun. To n00bs of Bangai-o it may seem boring, difficult, and somewhat confusing at first (ex: “why am I destroying these houses?”). Then you discover the magic… of… the R button. Missiles galore! Keep in mind with this move the more enemy fire surrounding your hit-box the more missiles you’ll send back. In the Dreamcast version you could send up to insane amounts… I don’t even know the limit. The highest I think I got was 400 or so.
With the DS version, it’s pretty much the same idea with less missiles. This isn’t to say the game dosen’t have AMAZING animation and explosions - just less of them. In fact when you fire off the missiles at the right time in this game, instead of getting more missiles, you get these enlarged low resolution missiles. I laughed the first time I saw it(”holy crap! lol!”). Even with that the sprites are so much for the DS it starts clipping and slows the game down. Usually if this happens you’re probably about to complete the stage anyways so it’s not a real problem.
Along with the classic missiles and primary fire, there’s three new moves. One is sort of a charge/ram that allows you to blow through enemies, destroyable obstacles, and move certain blocks. Sometimes a level will have random soccer(football), baseball, and basket balls in them. You can ram into these and start a chaotic chain reaction using the game’s impressive 2D physics. Hint: Use this to your advantage to destroy a whole bunch of enemies or certain objectives. Thank me later. The second is this beam-sword-thing that seems pretty useless to me. Yea… unless I’m missing something here. The third is the ability to stop time for about 4 seconds max or so. Pretty useful if you want to fly in and destroy a target/objective that’s covered with tons of enemies.
I haven’t tried every mode in Bangai-O: Spirits yet, I’ve only completed the short story mode. Which this time is only made up of about 17 short tutorial missions. The rest of the stages are in a separate mode which are more scenario/objective based than the Dreamcast version. You could almost call Bangai-O: Spirits an action puzzler, which certainly fits the DS platform quite well when you think about it.
Well besides this preview I don’t think I’ll review this one… I do recommend purchasing it when it releases here in the states though. *thumbs up*
Speaking of purchases, I’ve caved into some internet peer pressure and preordered a game I won’t be able to play for quite some time.
Or at least until I can buy a cheap PS2, which may not happen for awhile. I still want the game on hand until then since I know it’ll disappear from store shelves fairly quickly (and quietly). Now that I think of it, I should probably track down a copy of Luminous(1) for PSP as well… oh boy, I need a job. Maybe I should apply to Gamecrazy?… hm… what would I put on my resume though?…
Nick Cecchi - previous occupation(s): Saving the world from General Gray, and Gold silver. Also is responsible for the downfall of General Morden’s regime. High score: 768730