R-Type Final review (PS2)

Read this paragraph very carefully. Make sure that you memorize the exact position of each punctuation mark and the correct spelling of every word. Then reproduce the exact same paragraph, identical in every detail. Made even the slightest mistake? Start again from the beginning. Made another? Start all over again. This gives you some idea of what playing R-Type Final will be like. But for some people, this is fun.

R-Type Final makes no apologies about being an old fashioned shoot ‘em-up. You move around in two dimensions, avoiding enemies and powering up your weapons as you go. When you die (in normal mode at least) you get stripped of your weapons and sent back to a restart point.

How it differs from most modern “old school” shoot ‘em-ups like Ikaruga or Psyvariar in that there is little room for choosing strategies. There is always an optimum path for survival and failure is never far from that path. Unlike other similar games it doesn’t even offer greater rewards (usually in terms of high scores) for greater risks taken.

Heads Up Display

The graphics are spectacular in places, with some of the Bydo enemies appearing truly repulsive. In one particular instance, someone was watching me play. “What is that?” They commented. “It looks like… cancer…” And it did. Some of the designs are truly outstanding, from the sleek R-9 ships, to the organic monsters that you really want to erase from existence. The costs of these designs are twofold, however. First, some levels do tend to slow down very noticeably at times, especially most of the third level. Secondly, the size and complexity of some enemies, and some of the scenery, can make it difficult to judge which parts of the screen are safe. Something that was easier in the earlier, purely two-dimensional versions of R-Type.

But the slowdown hardly makes the game unplayable; it doesn’t even grate that much at all. And learning the deadly features of the scenery is just another part of R-Type’s ‘learning by rote’ style of gameplay.

This is the core of R-Type Final’s gameplay, but there are additional icings on the cake, most obviously a fleet of a hundred different ships to unlock, each requiring more obscure conditions than the last. They do vary the gameplay, making each path through the game slightly different, but you need to be already absorbed into the basic gameplay in order to care about the variations you can unlock, otherwise it’s just nice window dressing.

A slightly more bizarre addition is the AI battle mode, where you pick ships that you’ve unlocked and program them to fight one another. This does make gaining new ships seem more worthwhile, as it’s another battleground to play with your toys in, but again it depends on how much you like those toys in the first place.

Smart bomb

As a modern game, the ruthless punishing gameplay of R-Type seems backward, but as an established style, it has the challenge of achieving that difficult road to perfection, which is rewarding when you finally make it through a seemingly impossible array of obstacles to victory. On one credit, or perhaps even one life. For those who would ignore the traditional challenge, the game reluctantly doles out more and more credits the more you play, making victory possible even for novice players. But perhaps by that time most gamers would feel too frustrated to enjoy their spoils.

Even as an example of its genre, it’s far from perfect, with the quality and atmosphere of the levels varying a bit too much, and music that fails to create enough of a dramatic atmosphere, even though it is serviceable.

But the sound and the fury of the high points make the game worthwhile, if a merciless shooting experience is what you crave. It’s not the best, but it provides some thrills while it lasts. R-Type Final proves far from disappointing, it’s just not the best in its series and not the innovation that some people might have hoped for.