Ok i put in Fast Striker after reading this, as my first impressions of the game were simply that it was trash.
Fast Striker is an shmup released recently for the Dreamcast and one i had pre-ordered long before it came out. Initially i was far too excited to play it and so when i did felt incredibly let down by alot of the features being far far inferior to what i had imagined. However i gave it another shot and 1cc'd it on Novice, Original and Maniac. Each mode is very different with the novice mode basically playing the game for you so long as you hold down fire and can dodge the bullets, but i guess its for those new to the genre. Original is far more challenging and to me seemed like the game the designers wanted with both the shot types and the shield function. Maniac is pretty much the same as original but harder still and with far too many point bonuses and multiplyers to explain. However all three modes have the same enemies and levels.
Firstly my intial disapointments are still there. "Secrets" simply involve destroying large enemies with you high powered shot (missles or beam mod depending) To me this is a cop out as everyone does this anyway due to it being the main function of the high powered shot. My second disapointment was the graphics, graphics dont generally matter to me except on shmups. They dont have to have any fancy effects just be appealing to the eye and clear. In Fast Striker the "3d backgrounds" are exacpt 4 rows of scenery looping over and over. This scenery varies each level from grey blocks to silver blocks. I find it really distracting to find the same background appear every 3 seconds (litterally). This is made worse by the fact that in later levels there are environmental hazards, which look exactly like the scenery. The ships and bullets are pixilated and look alright as a whole but for a new release dreamcast game i was expecting Gigawing 2 or Ikaruga standards. My final issue was the controls. Like all control issue this is hard to explain but the best i can really say is that it feels floaty. Every action is about 0.25 seconds behind and whilst you dont notice this at first it becomes a problem when you need to stop moving say left and you see your ship float into a wall. Very playable but can take 15minutes to get used to, expecially after playing a cave shmup.
In spite of these bad features Fast Striker does one thing very very right. The gameplay is incredible, it vaires slightly but generally entials killing loads of weak enemies before they shower you in bullets, finding gaps in larger enemies intricate patterns, and dodging some very strange enemies which fire laser into each other forming a tight grid to weave through. When you combine this with a decent sound track and the multiple modes you can see what NG:Dev was going for and its awesome. But the truth is, its a very simple shmup which after you 1cc your not going to want to play again for score due to frustrations on later levels with environmental hazards. Maybe the graphics wont distract you, in which case you got a great game but to me they really did as the thing i love most in shmups is the ability to "zone out"
Overall my views havnt changed much, but im glad i went back to it as its not a bad game by any means. Its just not one of best like i initially expected.
I'll probably join in, though I'm not sure what I'll play, I have a huge backlog to pick from. Not to mention I'll be acquiring a Saturn soon (Not to mention the new 3DS) and will add even more games to that list.
I totally agree with this topic! I feel lame every time I browse games I might buy, then realize my backlog looming over me. Here's a few I can choose from:
Castlevania Bloodlines
Shadow of the Collossus
Secret of Monkey Island CD-ROM edition
Resistance Fall of Man (the PSP version)
sevin0seven wrote:hmm...(looks at his collection and saw Super Man 64) ...... sorry i can't do it.
man up and show us what you got! :p
you have no idea what i went through with that game... rings, rings....and another one...it never ends.. m..u...s...t hit eject button.. that pretty much sum it up.
i can probably find a game from my collection. i have tons i haven't played yet..
Yeah! This sounds like a great idea. I am ALL ABOUT playing your collection and have a hard time fighting my urge to collect for collecting sake.
I'll be the first to encourage others to do this. I'm going to jump on also, though there aren't too many games in my collection that I've never played a lick of. My list is going to be...
RPG: Phantasy Star 4 (GEN) - My brother gave me this and a few other RPGs when he got them on Virtual Console or other digital copy.
Adventure: Nightshade (NES) - Have played Deja Vu plenty of times so I bought this (CIB for $12) along with Shadowgate (which I also haven't played any of yet). Given that Shadowgate is the same interface, wanted to play the different system.
Platformer: Astal (SAT) - Spotted this last time at my local shop, disc only, but recalled it from the Saturn Hidden Gems article and snagged it for a cool $4, stuck it in to make sure it worked but didn't play any of it.
Currently in the middle of the first Lufia, so will begin to tackle this project when completed with Lufia. Great idea!
we started it at Playstationcollecting.com thats why i said Playstation in the clip
...... sorry i can't do it.
