Review | Gradius ReBirth
Title art more impressive than the actual game? Check!
(Gradius ReBirth, M2 / Konami, WiiWare)
I could spend time extolling the virtues of the Gradius series, but really, that’d be pretty pointless, because I’m sure you played at lease one version of this game back in the day. And if you didn’t, I might as well just talk about Gradius ReBirth, because it’s perfectly representative of what Gradius is all about. ReBirth is a worthy addition to the series, but it is ball-bustingly hard, even with cheats. Newcomers to the series may be repulsed by the number of times they die in the first level.
Graphically the game is appealing, though the style of Gradius’ graphics is so iconic that ReBirth feels almost like a cliche. It’s still a pretty tasty cliche, though, so I’m not going to raise much fuss. Your upgraded weapons look pretty hot, if a bit standard, and filling the screen with fire from your four options (support fighters) feels as gratifying as ever. Small enemies blow up good, bosses blow up real good. No complaints here.
Music is, well, superfluous. I can’t say that I noticed it much, and I guess that’s okay. Wait, I take that back. The screeching “music” that greets you when you first power up the game is absolutely agonizing. Skip past the intro. Other than that, music is so unimportant to the shoot ’em up genre that it’s not really worth mentioning. The same goes for the story, which is vacuous at best. But that’s okay. Any story at all in a shmup is just getting in the way of more super shooty fun, so why bother? What story there is is suitably ridiculous, matching the tone of the original games, and that’s good enough.
I hate this boss.
Gameplay works the same as it has before. You shoot. They shoot more. You dodge. You win, after dying about a billion times. And you really will die all the time, because the difficulty starts at murderous and shoots like an arrow into soul-crushing. I, with my famous temper, didn’t even have time to get mad, I was dying so quickly. It’s not insurmountable, but it’s a pretty close approximation. I don’t feel I should grouse too much about the difficulty, though, because the entire series has a history of being brutally hard. The reason for this is simple. If the games weren’t incredibly challenging, there wouldn’t be anything to them. There are only five levels, and clearing them in one run takes maybe half an hour if you don’t die. That may be an artificial way to lengthen your game, but the game wouldn’t have any value if it wasn’t challenging. Shooting easy enemies isn’t very fun.
The biggest problem here is the matter of how quickly things go to pot once you die. Usually, checkpoints drop you in the middle of a level, where the expectation is for you to have a host of power-ups and options with which to defend yourself, and it’s often nearly impossible to build yourself back up in time for the boss. Most of the time you can’t even survive the immediate situation. Often it makes more sense to restart the level (or maybe even the entire game!). It feels strange to say, but I think the game would actually be improved by the removal of the mid-level checkpoints. Sometimes the situations you find yourself are just impossible.
I hate this entire level.
As for replay value, that’s hard to judge. Beat the game first, and we’ll talk about replay. I played the game once through, and I was satisfied, but that took me about a full day of striving. I’d gotten my fix by the time I was done. But if you need more, the game loops, there are 5 difficulty levels, and 5 different ships to try out.
In the final analysis, this is Gradius. If it didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it.
This game rates: Moai. (Come on, you saw that one coming.)
Critical Hit 