Raystorm, bless its little cotton socks, followed a pretty well trodden path when it came to a scenery line. You start off flying over the Earth, attacking an invasion force, and eventually making your way into space to give the Mothership what-for.
This isn't exactly the most unique flow of scenery. Gekioh shooting king follows it, Rayforce followed it, all shooters seem to follow it. But who cares in honesty? It's not the scenery that's important, it's the shooting. Isn't it? Well, clearly, Taito seemed to think it was important.
Raycrisis is the last game in the Raystorm / Rayforce series, and it is the prequel to Rayforce. What is clear is that Taito wanted the series to go out with a bang. They clearly wanted Raycrisis to be the most unique SHMUP ever created. So, the question Taito asked, was clearly, how do we make Raycrisis a unique shooter?
The answer to this seemed to be to over-engineer everything. It some places it works. The plot is busy, the graphics are excellent but then the game mechanics are all over the place. And it just smacks of over industrious and a bit confused.
Take the plot: The Neuro-Computer Con-Human super computer gains sentience and rebels against it's human creators. Well, okay, so-far-so-Terminator. It, Con-human that is, rebels because a mad scientist tried to bond a human clone to the Supercomputer. Reason in itself rebel? I don't know. I never been there. The plot witters on, suffice to say, the only solution is for you piloting a Wave Rider, that's the name of your space ship, to go into this world and shoot stuff. That's a lot of theoretical science just so we can tap away at an X button.
This leads me to a general gripe about Japanese games. They plonk us in these highly convoluted worlds, taking part in highly convoluted stories, and our only contribution is shooting-shit. That's not a big problem, but I'd like a giant Raycrisis story book please. Plus a Raycrisis Anime and a Raycrisis model kit, because the hugely colourful Raycrisis universe looks great, and I'm interested in it, but all there is, is three SHMUPS – I want more. Well, my bank balance doesn't, but I do.
The only link we have to the Raycrisis Universe is the graphics. And in places they are awesome. Raycrisis graphics are best described as sci-fi book covers. Any geek worth his salt, and therefore on this blog, has spent many hours looking at the front covers of science-fiction literary works. Raycrisis looks like a bit of Asimov (Foundation series) combined with a bit of Ian M Banks. Obviously with a bit of Japanese sparkly flying about bits all over the shop. They're good, but a bit weird in places.
From the plot and graphics, this game does have some promise, but then it starts to descend into why-oh-why did they do that territory. In the quest for unique, like so many before them, Taito decided to toss "linear" in the bin. I mean if they had made it linear, like Raystorm was linear, no complaint right? But they didn't and the player can choose what level to play in which order. Sigh.
Raycrisis has better soundtrack than Raystorm. (Raystorm always seems to have elevator music.) but Raycrisis just doesn't feel joined up.
Add to that the disjointed feeling the ever joyous bullet-hell brings. Oh what great fun that is. Not. That's when the screen is full of bullets and the only thing you can do is die. It never really materialised in Raystorm, but Raycrisis is full of it. I don't know. Some people, namely the SHMUP hardcore, seem to thrive on it, but I hate it. The game doesn't have to kill me, incompetence, lack of dexterity and momentary lapses of concentration will do that, but it kills me anyway. And so that makes Raycrisis somewhat frustrating.
So it's hard, thanks to bullet hell, it's confused thanks to player choice, and the worst thing is the canon-fire and the ray-fire now must be on separate buttons. Madness.
The final nail in the coffin for Raycrisis, is what also slammed the lid tight on Metal Gear Solid 2 for me. Namely, a final level that was inspired by the drug 'Acid'. There is, and you will have to excuse the profanity again, only one way to describe the final level of Raycrisis, it goes like this: What the f**k?
Better graphics, worse level-order, better sound track, worse end level? Arrrrg! No.
I want to love Raycrisis, so much of it is right, but I can't and I know in my heart Raycrisis doesn't love me.
3DOKid.
