From: Zach Keene Subject: Zach's Shooter Reviews: RayForce/Layer Section/Galactic Attack [SAT] Date: 1999/05/16 Message-ID: <373E1CC3.7DEBFB36@bellsouth.net> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Accept-Language: en,de Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Organization: /dev/null/ MIME-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 21:22:31 EDT Newsgroups: alt.games.video.shooters I'll probably start doing these on a fairly weekly basis, if no one objects. :) Next week's review will probably be RayStorm, then I'll probably do the Darius series. --- Begin Review --- Three names, one great game. For the record, the original name of this game in the Japanese arcades was Rayforce. Due to some copyright problem, when the home version was released in Japan it was renamed "Layer Section". Finally, when Acclaim got a hold of it for the NA release, it was renamed yet again, this time acquiring the incredibly lame moniker "Galactic Attack". (I understand the European release got stuck with this name, as well.) In fact, thanks to all this renaming business, I almost didn't get my copy. When I was raiding my local Toys R Us for $10 Saturn games, I saw an Acclaim game with the really stupid title of "Galactic Attack". Now, what idiot would buy anything from Acclaim with such a dumb name? Unfortuantely, by the time I realized what it _really_ was and got back to TRU, they had sold out. Fortuantely I later found a copy on EBWorld, but had to wait 6 weeks and pay $5 more. Oh well, at least they didn't screw up the cover art, like they did for Darius Gaiden. STORY: The manual provides a 6-page story section that I shall attempt to sum up in one sentence below. Basically, it's another one of those "Humans create wonderful supercomputer thingy that solves all problems and makes the world a better place until it malfunctions and/or becomes sentient and decides it is superior to humankind and decides to kill 'em all" storylines. See also: Magmax, ZANAC. Of course, your typical nameless group of scientists manages to put together some prototype fighter doohickey that's supposed to singlehandedly save the world. PLAYERS: 2P simultaneous. GAMEPLAY: Your RVA-818 X-LAY ship has two main weapons systems. First, you have your usual vulcan cannon doohickey, which fires straight ahead and increases in power for every three red power-ups or every one yellow power-up you collect. Second, you have the Lock-On Laser, the staple weapon of the RaySeries. In front of your ship, you have a crosshairs not unlike in Xevious. As it passes over enemies on the ground (or otherwise at a lower altitude than your ship), it will "lock-on" to them, and when you push the Laser button, your ship will emit lasers that will track down all the enemies you've locked on to. The amount of points you get for destroying an enemy in this manner increases exponentially, depending on how many enemies you had targeted. Laser power-ups increase the number of lock-ons you can do at once up to a maximum of 8. DEATH PENALTY: Dying simply reduces your main cannon one level and removes one from your maximum lock-ons. Continuing puts you back to square one, but the game will throw out a number of power-ups (usually three yellows and a laser) to get you back on your feet. CHALLENGE: Whew! This game is not easy by any means, but it is difficult without being cheap for the most part. You have a limited number of continues (although there are probably some codes that will increase them), and seven levels to fly through. The bosses start out fairly easy, then become more and more difficult. But once you get a hang of the patterns, the first five shouldn't be too difficult. GRAPHICS: Again, this is all straight 2D sprite graphics, so if that's not your cup of tea, you may want to move on. You will want to take advantage of the game's Vertical mode, if possible without damaging your set (or yourself). The translation to a TV set's dimensions was handled quite well, IMO, without any severe letterboxing or stretching. However, a few things got lost in the translation. Level 6 and a portion of level 2 take place in various trenchlike environments, and the feeling of being in the trench gets lost entirely in the default horizontal mode. Otherwise, the graphics are well-done, if not spectacular. The game sort of plays like Raiden in reverse; you start out in an asteroidy space level, then make your approach toward Earth (with some nice graphics as you enter the atmosphere), then eventually go underground. AUDIO: Is this the same Zuntata that did Darius Gaiden's soundtrack? (Possibly not, since apparently Zuntata is about 15 people, half of them programmers. I can't imagine that the whole group works on every single Taito game, but what do I know?) Anyway, it's not really bad, but IMO it's pretty forgetable. For the record, a few of the tracks got used again in RayStorm. Unfortunately, RayStorm also had a pretty forgetable soundtrack, so the only track I can positively ID as being reused is the first level music. The sound effects don't quite pack the same punch as Raiden 2's, but do the job quite well. CONTROL: No complaints here. Fortuantely, Acclaim was smart enough to leave the option to readjust your controller to a rotated TV set in the NA version, unlike the bozos who handled The Raiden Project's NA localization. OVERALL: 9/10. An excellent effort from Taito, and much better than its sequel (which I'll get to later.) And if you can endure the lame name, the NA version can be found extremely cheap. So, if you can live with the guilt of knowing how horribly you ripped off some game store by buying this game for $10 or less, do yourself a favour and pick it up. Zach Keene ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Author of many FAQs: MK2, FF1, Einhänder, CSOTN, and the AGVS FAQ ftp://members.aol.com/fnlfanatic/arcanelore/ Shooter fans: Visit the new alt.games.video.shooters today! ----------------------------------------------------------------------