These screen clearers are also triggered when your craft runs into fire, though they do less damage to other ships when activated in this way, so knowing when to conserve your limited supply and when to bring it out is crucial.Ī further layer is added when combined with the chaining system. Movement speed is also affected by this choice, with the laser reducing your overall manoeuvrability, allowing for finer movement under heavy fire but making quick dodges an impossibility.īombs are also available and can be launched to clear the screen of most smaller and mid-sized craft as well as enemy bullets, a perfect escape if the volley headed towards you is simply too much to handle. Switching between these types has the effect of either destroying targets across a wide area quickly, or focusing an attack on a single location. Two modes of primary fire are at a player’s disposal, a repeating shot for normal bad guys and a concentrated laser attack for the bigger ones. It’s mechanically deeper than one might imagine at first, it’s certainly not a simple case of holding the fire button and dodging anything headed toward you. It is one of the purest tests of patience, dedication and gaming skill that you can find on shelves today. Here credits are never used, risks are taken to pick up additional points and players understand exactly what is ahead at all times. The third is largely the domain of those that have mastered the second, exploiting systems in the title to rack up as high a score as possible. The second is much tougher, the onus being on making it through a hail of bullets from almost every direction, taking advantage of power ups to make it through in one piece without hitting a game over screen. This first state is easy enough, the game offers the option for unlimited continues, taking all the skill out of the game and is little more than a place for new players to become accustomed to how it plays. So in reality, within DoDonPachi’s four modes are three higher states of mind to approaching play, whether it’s just seeing the ending, seeing the ending in style or showing off your skills on the global stage.
Once a player can confidently beat the main game using one credit, it’s on to the a-synchronous multiplayer competition of leaderboards, here handled by uploading a highscore to Xbox Live. Within this main goal of surviving the five stages (there are also a couple of hidden areas), there are further objectives which the player sets upon themselves.Ĭompleting a run using just one credit is the next hurdle to overcome, as “coin feeding” – the process in the arcades of adding another credit to continue a game – is largely looked down upon as taking the fun out of the experience. In response to this it’s true that now, more than ever before, games can be played by a wider audience, the barrier to entry steadily dropping lower each year.Ĭhoosing from one of four modes – the main game, novice and two special “arrange” versions of the central offering – the aim of Resurrection is ultimately to blast anything and everything that moves on the screen. The industry learned that punishing gameplay just wasn’t going to cut it for big budget releases. Players wanted to see the entirety of the product they had shelled out for as, now, paying £40 for a mainstream title and not getting past the fifth level was unacceptable.īack to the store that game would go, into the second hand market, damaging new sales for a publisher, harming the chances of a sequel being made. Yet by the end of the sixth generation of consoles, as we moved into the current era of hardware and the potential audience for the medium had grown massively, attitudes towards difficulty had changed. Not more than ten years ago, seeing a title through to its conclusion was still considered an impressive task: “Have you played Deus Ex mate?”, “Played it? I’ve completed it!”, “High five!”
Video games are steadily becoming easier, which is a very good thing indeed.