What is so unfortunate, is not so exceptional. Thus, Raystorm often degrades into a simple, bomb, die, bomb, exercise. To further cheapen the game’s ‘lastability’ and credibility, the bosses’ sheer dominance over your R-GRAY, (which will by now feel thoroughly underpowered) will induce you to bring your smart bombs into play to save your hide, as you desperately strive to avoid their relentless, crushing, violence. That is: because you will expect to die whether or not you play skillfully, you will simply accept frequent deaths as par for the course, as you utilize-out of necessity-any and all credits at your disposal. All these problems serve to make the game a disposable shooter. The hard to avoid nature of the enemies’ projectiles simply exacerbate the control issue. Aside from normal ‘bullets’, they fire pseudo-homing lasers as well as arcing lasers that are nearly impossible to dodge with any kind of consistency. The bosses are especially difficult, boasting varied attacks, and many tricks up their metallic sleeves. As your ship moves to one side of the screen, it slows slightly near the edge, and banks inexplicably, making the control of the ship in lateral motion feel dodgy and imprecise.Ĭonsequently, you will be frustrated often while playing the bosses and later levels of the game. Why this was included, I will never know. An on the fly speed adjustment would have been nice, (the speed of your spacecraft generally feels underwhelming) as would the omission of the ‘banking’ movement. Perhaps that is a failing resultant from the game’s arcade roots-it plays like a quarter muncher, often giving you no chance to get out of a given situation intact. This game is hard, bordering on the impossible in sections. If you’ve heard otherwise, disregard the misinformation. Your R-GRAY fighter must fly through 7 levels of mayhem, while you cross your fingers the whole way through. The craft with the simpler targeting system and wider area of fire might be more suitable for novices, and the more ‘complex’ craft, capable of focusing more firepower, for experts. Hence, there is an advantage in having the greater target capabilities on the second ship. After pressing the fire button, as the lasers begin descending, you can still pass your reticle over non-targeted enemies so as to create a chain reaction of ensuing death and debris. You can choose to hold your fire, and wait until targets build up, to score point combos, and because of the laser reaction time, killing in this fashion is also more efficient. (There are power ups that increase your maximum, as well as smart bomb items.) A targeting reticle a few ship lengths in front of your R-GRAY, (a la Xevious) will pass over enemies, and a touch of a button will fire lasers to destroy the unfortunate target. One has an eight lock-on maximum, the other, sixteen. The differences in the two crafts are not purely cosmetic-one has a thinner, more powerful main gun, and the other a dual cannon. So, are you ready? Enter the cockpit of your R-GRAY fighter-you have the choice of bringing a friend along, Earth’s Star Federation had the foresight to develop TWO R-GRAYs-and defend the Earth from the evil Secilia Federation.Įach R-GRAY is equipped with only two weapons: a straight-ahead laser and a lock-on laser. As such, the game is, as you might imagine, not exactly unknown to shooter fans around the globe. Raystorm also exists for play on the Japanese Saturn, in equally competent fashion, under the name Layer Section II. Raystorm is the sequel to RayForce, a Taito-developed vertically scrolling arcade shooter from Japan, which was ported over to the Japanese Saturn under the name Layer Section, and then to North America under the dubious name, Galactic Attack. Working Designs must be applauded for helping to keep the 2-D shooter genre alive and well in the next generation era, bringing solid entries like this one over from Japan under their ''Spaz'' label. But it could have been so much more it simply being good is disappointing. "Your R-GRAY fighter must fly through 7 levels of mayhem, while you cross your fingers the whole way through.
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