Fox's Review: RayStorm\HD (PS1\PSN,XBLA)

[Fusion]

I know there's probably not a single soul that cares, but at least I try.




The Ray series was a landmark in shooters, the games were practically known for a few things.  The first was the stunning visuals, the second was the techno soundtrack performed by Taito's in-house band ZUNTATA, (specifically Tamayo Kawamoto) and the third was the unique gameplay that the Ray series brought to the table.  In-series canon, this game is the last.

(Graphics 8/10):

The game's visuals are rendered at a crisp 60 frames per second, with rare frame drops and distinguishable environments separate from one another.  From a city to the core of the enemy's space fleet, there's a lot of variety here and the game is not afraid to show off.  It's good that the game made such as successful transition from Arcade to Console, to the point that the two are virtually impossible to separate from one another if it weren't for the obvious nuances of an arcade version.


(Sound 10/10):

The music for this game is damn beautiful, and definitely fitting for a shooter.  It's actual video game music, where most other shooters would just throw in dance music and try to say that's a soundtrack.

As for the sound effects, I wouldn't be lying if Is aid I found them a slight bit weak.  But they're not weak to where it'd be your disadvantage.  Player shots sound weak, enemy shots do not.  It's easy to hear what kind of attack's coming, and easy to hear if you made lock-on.


(Gameplay 10/10):

Ultimately, the most important part of a game is the gameplay itself.  Does Raystorm falter?  No it doesn't at all.  It plays very similar to it's first game, in that you can lock on to targets and shoot them down.  The more you lock on the more points you get for each kill, one stage even going as far as giving you an easy way to rack up points like no tommorow.

There are two playable ships (and a 3rd I think, never found anything confirming it ever existed), the R-Gray 1 and 2.  The first plays pretty similar to the first game, while the second is a new style of gameplay.  Rather than locking on a set of lasers, the R-Gray 2 has a single lasers hot (themed after lightning) that travels from target to target quickly.  It's shots however, are simply beam attacks that go straight ahead.


(Overall 9/10):

An excellent example of just how good vertical shooters were back in the 90s.  I'd recommend this to anybody who happens to like these sorts of games.

[Fusion]

Raystorm HD



First spotted on PartnerNET, Taito's given the game a fresh coat of paint and not messed with what made it good to begin with.  This is for the fans, mostly, considering some of the additions.


(Graphics 7/10):

As said before, the graphics got a major update.  Everything has a new model with new effects, and I've never seen such high resolution versions of the images used.  Though I can't say it's perfect, because some animation problems can be spotted as well as some details that probably should've been updated a little differently.

The R-Gray fighters look even better than ever, significantly better than their original appearances in the home console version, with no model swap-outs.  The new fighters, R-Gray 0 and R-Gear, look just as good as the R-Grays, the former an updated look. 

(Sound 10/10):

See above review's sound.

The Neu Tanz tracks I've never heard before, and they're definitely different, a little more abstract.  Anybody who's familiar with RayStorm knows that the Neu Tanz set isn't exactly new or exclusive to this game.  But if you want to try this out, and are unfamiliar with the game, ZTT Mix is the original game soundtrack.

The R-Gray 0's sounds are ripped straight from RayForce, and I can't really say how well they fit in other than that they do.  The R-Gear is the only ship with really new sounds, and again I can't say too much about them.  They work, and that's that.


(Gameplay See Previous/10):

You honestly expect me to review the gameplay of a game that-Oh right, there's the R-Gray 0 and R-Gear...

R-Gray 0 is a faster version of the R-Gray 1 without any spread on it's standard laser attacks.  It has no SP Attack and cannot use Auto mode firing.  It's slightly stronger than the R-Gray 1, and it's sound consists solely of sounds from the first Ray series game.

The R-Gear, however, is brand new.  It's standard shot is a homing type of attack that seeks targets, is quite powerful, and fires fairly quickly.  The laser is brand new, behaving entirely different from the others.  To lock on, you must hold the Laser button.  The more locks you can get before you have to let go (or run out of energy), the more points you can get.  It's faster than any laser in the game and certainly more direct.

In addition, there's a replay feature and leaderboards along with a Ranking Mode where you play with one continue to score as many points as you can.  The top 10 players will have their replays up for download, so you can see how the pros handle certain stages. 

But you may as well buy the game if you wanna try it, because the demo royally sucks. 


(Overall 9/10

This re-release is pretty much for the fans.  Newbies might be turned off by the difficulty, or even driven to enough rage to post a YouTube Comment about how much they say the game sucks because they can't win easily.