- Joined
- Jul 24, 2001
- Posts
- 19,430
Well, rail shmups aren't my fave sub-genre, but there are some pretty cool games like Rez, Panzer Dragoon1/2/Orta and a few others that really are worth getting into.
I've put quite some time into Orta and Rez. Orta is strangely addictive and decently challenging on higher diffs... some unlockables are a bit freaky tho with all those story and "geographical" infos/clips about the PD world, but the extra missions are cool.
And Rez... some say it would be overrated and perhaps it is, but gameplay is spot-on, and I also like the music. I mean, you don't have to be a Japanophile to love Ken Ishii!
Oh, and I've seen a very short clip of an in-house presentation of Jeff Minter's Unity in its early stages, it looks like a hybrid of a rail shmup and elements of Tempest 2k/3k/X3... it's so friggin' sad that this game never will see a release, I would have camped in front of my fave vg store to be the first in town to play it... shame on you, mainstream fund raisers.
Edit: In case you don't know what the hell a rail shooter is, it's a shmup where the game controls most of your movements and takes you from place to place on a pre-set route (as if you would be on rails) with only little control over which direction to go/fly/drive next. In some games, all you have to do is to aim and shoot, others (like PDO) offer more freedom of movement and require the player to actively dodge obstacles, fly through narrow gaps, etc.
Examples:
Panzer Dragoon 1 and 2 (Saturn), Orta
Rez
House of the Dead-series
Star Wars Rebel Assault and most older Star Wars games, specially the early vector/non-filled polygon versions.
HyperZone (SNES)
Star Fox
Sin and Punishment (?)
I've put quite some time into Orta and Rez. Orta is strangely addictive and decently challenging on higher diffs... some unlockables are a bit freaky tho with all those story and "geographical" infos/clips about the PD world, but the extra missions are cool.
And Rez... some say it would be overrated and perhaps it is, but gameplay is spot-on, and I also like the music. I mean, you don't have to be a Japanophile to love Ken Ishii!
Oh, and I've seen a very short clip of an in-house presentation of Jeff Minter's Unity in its early stages, it looks like a hybrid of a rail shmup and elements of Tempest 2k/3k/X3... it's so friggin' sad that this game never will see a release, I would have camped in front of my fave vg store to be the first in town to play it... shame on you, mainstream fund raisers.
Edit: In case you don't know what the hell a rail shooter is, it's a shmup where the game controls most of your movements and takes you from place to place on a pre-set route (as if you would be on rails) with only little control over which direction to go/fly/drive next. In some games, all you have to do is to aim and shoot, others (like PDO) offer more freedom of movement and require the player to actively dodge obstacles, fly through narrow gaps, etc.
Examples:
Panzer Dragoon 1 and 2 (Saturn), Orta
Rez
House of the Dead-series
Star Wars Rebel Assault and most older Star Wars games, specially the early vector/non-filled polygon versions.
HyperZone (SNES)
Star Fox
Sin and Punishment (?)
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