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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fun attempt at a difficult remake, November 23, 2000
By A Customer
Just how do you modernise a classic which at it's heart relied on repititive, similar gameplay for minutes on end? I have to admit I never clocked Galaga. Why? Becuase the original, whilst fun and addictive, simply got boring past wave 15 and the diffculty level was managed by speeding everything up.Hasbro appear to have been very careful in preserving those elements which made Galaga a great shooter. In my mind those were: precision shooting, predictable aliens, captured ship - and the double ship action that inevitably followed - and a persisitent wave of around 40 opponents to shoot at. This game introduces: multiple camera angles (more later), upto four captured aliens (excellent for blasting), 15? new enemies, more weapons - via the captured aliens, a standard 'save the world' storyline backed by some nice FMV, 9 levels and a bonus techno style level for practising. Galaga introduces regular camera changes keyed to the background. There are 3 standard views (3D - like StarFox, top down and side on and 1 special view - a tip of the hat to Tempest I guess). You can also control some of the background surface guns to shoot up at the aliens for a few seconds before flipping back to your safely parked ship - this is actually pretty cool but could have been executed better. Throughout all the views the aliens stream in like trains executing their own complex patterns before joining a large central wave of aliens somewhere in the middle of the screen and then coming back at you in small groups of spiralling baddies. There's not many games on the PS where there are always 20 to 30 opponents on screen to shoot at and a fairly detailed background moving along at around 30 frames per second. 3D is a new view, like Star Fox as I said, and the gameplay is a little difficult here primarily becuase it's hard to stay on target when following the incoming aliens amongst the *sometimes* excellent but often cluttered background graphics. It's even harder once they've formed the wave and begun their attack patterns. It must have been diffcult when designing this view as, unlike StarFox, Galaga IS a wave based shooter. This version places that wave in the complexity of a 3D world and moves through it forcing the player to avoid obstacles and background elements whilst still expecting him to track and aim at up to 30 aliens moving and swirling around. Yet, it is strangley satisfy to kill an entire stream of aliens and be awared a bonus for doing it... Top down is the classic Galaga view and here the gameplay is very similar to the original with very few obstacles in your way. Side on is basically like top down but scrolling left to right in stead up top to bottom. Both these views are the easiest to master. On the whole I found the game enjoyable. The new features serve to enhance the core of the game, which is blasting aliens after all. The graphics are good and actually the sound is, for once, not bad either. Gameplay is limited but then so was the original but this has, at least, been substantially varied by the new views, gun control bits and extra 'capturing' ability of your new ship and new aliens. The game has been packaged fairly well with FMV and a decent back story. For the price, I recommend it especially for nostalgics and casual gamers alike.
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