R-Type Final
Irem's swan song just may be the best game in the series. Find out why inside.
Published: February 4, 2004
Plenty of reviews for R-Type Final will doubtlessly open up with fond recollections of how the earlier games in the series whisked old-school gamers off to a realm where the traditional side-scrolling 2D shooters meant outrageous difficulty levels, patterned boss fights, and wildly imaginative locales. I'm not going to do that, since I've already done so in countless news stories and relayed press blasts about the status of R-Type Final leading up to the game's release.
Instead, I'm simply going to tell you that no matter what kind of gamer you are, seasoned and salty old-schooler hankerin' for a challenge or strapping young buck raised on a steady diet of 3D games, there's no reason why you shouldn't give this game a try. Period. Irem has, possibly more than any game they've made in recent memory, crafted a shooter that is at once faithful to the challenge of the original shooters that came before it, and utterly accessible to anyone experiencing it for the first time, and they've thrown in a remarkable amount of depth and just plain fun to keep both sides equally true to the source material. R-Type Final is a blast, plain and simple.
The R-Type series as a whole hasn't exactly rested heavily on any sort of story. There's always been a clear enemy (the Bydo empire), and there has always been a clear objective (shoot everything that moves). The same continues in Final, where a modicum of motivation provides you with enough info to know that the good fight still needs fighting, and that's about it. The big change in the classic R-Type formula is just the number of ships you can pick and choose from, and the level of customization found in them.
Over 100 ships are ripe for the picking, but the strategy and arguably the most involved part of the game comes in the form of learning which ships and their loadouts will work for a particular level, since at times you'll be zooming through open space while others you'll be confined to claustrophobic tunnels, and the weapon styles you choose will determine how easy a time you have swooping through the levels on the way to the final boss encounter. On the easier difficulty level, the choices you make are met with more subtle gradations in difficulty. On the harder ones, picking the right ship can mean the difference between blowing through all your credits in rapid-fire succession and plodding through the level in just a handful of tries.
Of course, difficulty levels do play a key factor in anyone's progress through a shooter, and Irem went well beyond just adding more enemies and making the boss battles longer. Starting at the lowest difficulty, Baby, nearly every advange is given to you from the moment you zip on screen; a wealth of continues, your dockable pod already attached, fewer enemies, better weapon damage, and a couple other more subtle additions. As you move up through the game's five difficulty levels, each of these little perks is stripped away. Fewer continues, having to reacquire weapon and special upgrades, and so on.
This shift in difficulty helps make the game more accessible and downright enjoyable for newcomers than the series has ever been, and it was a brilliant move on Irem's part, because it sucks you in and lets the rest of the game do the work, wowing with eye wateringly gorgeous visuals and some of the best old-school shooter gameplay found on a next-generation shooter. Since PS2 owners missed out on Ikaruga, and the genre as a whole is in steady decline, R-Type Final easily takes the crown as the PlayStation 2's best shooter.
Part of the reason why the game feels so good is that it does what all shooters should right now, and indeed most adaptations of a 2D game updated with 3D graphics. Aside from more cinematic moments, the camera never leaves the side-scrolling perspective, leaving the 3D engine to concentrate on replicating in glorious 3D all of the little details that would've previously been relegated to sprites. The result is a shooter that ranks among some of the most beautiful and wonderfully envisioned in the genre.
For those wondering, I'll just settle the matter for you as cleanly as possible. Yes, there is still slowdown in the game, but if you go into a shooter not expecting (and, in my opinion, hoping for) slowdown, then you're going to be disappointed time and time again. As was said in our interview with developer Irem, the whole slowdown issue comes from a desire to heap every last possible thing on screen, and R-Type Final does so with reckless abandon in some situations, literally filling the screen with succulent morsels of visual splendor, from the reality warping supershots that bend and flex the fabric of space to the nifty light shows that erupt at the destruction of an end level boss, there's nearly always something to focus on rather than your ship.
The ships themselves are fantastically realized in 3D, and boast a wealth of variety in their overall designs. While most of the ships you unlock near the beginning of the game tend to be slight variations on the basic starting ship designs, some of the latter models can skew quite a bit towards the downright bizarre. The plus is that the 3D treatment of the ships and especially the environments (Final loves to pull Silpheed-style loops and spins around the levels to the effect of disorienting you) not only keeps in line with the style and perspective of the original games, but really does thrust them more into the 3D era then the PlayStation efforts ever did. From effects work to boss designs to overall artistic style, everything about Final feels both old and new at the same time.
I wish I had more to say about the effects work and music other than the fact that they're simply good. Most of the music sticks to a formula of atmospheric loops and light, simplistic sustained notes throughout, and the sound effects feel lifted straight from the old audio libraries of the original games, albeit updated and a bit cleaner and with a bit more pop, but not especially so. The audio is, again, good, but it's nothing mind-blowing and certainly doesn't reach the level of improvement that the jump to 3D offered.
Let me say this again: there is no reason not to play R-Type Final. The traditional feel of the game might turn off some of the younger crowd, but these were probably the same people that rejected Prince of Persia, and likely don't know a good game if it bit them on the butt. For $30, you're getting one of the best send-offs a series has ever received, and will hopefully stand as the defining example of how to bring a game into 3D without ruining the classic gameplay that made it so good in the first place. Irem and Fresh Games in particular should be commended for bringing a fantastic swan song to the States in remarkable form. Play this game, folks, because there's a good chance you won't find one this solid in shooter form ever again.
Instead, I'm simply going to tell you that no matter what kind of gamer you are, seasoned and salty old-schooler hankerin' for a challenge or strapping young buck raised on a steady diet of 3D games, there's no reason why you shouldn't give this game a try. Period. Irem has, possibly more than any game they've made in recent memory, crafted a shooter that is at once faithful to the challenge of the original shooters that came before it, and utterly accessible to anyone experiencing it for the first time, and they've thrown in a remarkable amount of depth and just plain fun to keep both sides equally true to the source material. R-Type Final is a blast, plain and simple.
The R-Type series as a whole hasn't exactly rested heavily on any sort of story. There's always been a clear enemy (the Bydo empire), and there has always been a clear objective (shoot everything that moves). The same continues in Final, where a modicum of motivation provides you with enough info to know that the good fight still needs fighting, and that's about it. The big change in the classic R-Type formula is just the number of ships you can pick and choose from, and the level of customization found in them.
Over 100 ships are ripe for the picking, but the strategy and arguably the most involved part of the game comes in the form of learning which ships and their loadouts will work for a particular level, since at times you'll be zooming through open space while others you'll be confined to claustrophobic tunnels, and the weapon styles you choose will determine how easy a time you have swooping through the levels on the way to the final boss encounter. On the easier difficulty level, the choices you make are met with more subtle gradations in difficulty. On the harder ones, picking the right ship can mean the difference between blowing through all your credits in rapid-fire succession and plodding through the level in just a handful of tries.
Of course, difficulty levels do play a key factor in anyone's progress through a shooter, and Irem went well beyond just adding more enemies and making the boss battles longer. Starting at the lowest difficulty, Baby, nearly every advange is given to you from the moment you zip on screen; a wealth of continues, your dockable pod already attached, fewer enemies, better weapon damage, and a couple other more subtle additions. As you move up through the game's five difficulty levels, each of these little perks is stripped away. Fewer continues, having to reacquire weapon and special upgrades, and so on.
This shift in difficulty helps make the game more accessible and downright enjoyable for newcomers than the series has ever been, and it was a brilliant move on Irem's part, because it sucks you in and lets the rest of the game do the work, wowing with eye wateringly gorgeous visuals and some of the best old-school shooter gameplay found on a next-generation shooter. Since PS2 owners missed out on Ikaruga, and the genre as a whole is in steady decline, R-Type Final easily takes the crown as the PlayStation 2's best shooter.
Part of the reason why the game feels so good is that it does what all shooters should right now, and indeed most adaptations of a 2D game updated with 3D graphics. Aside from more cinematic moments, the camera never leaves the side-scrolling perspective, leaving the 3D engine to concentrate on replicating in glorious 3D all of the little details that would've previously been relegated to sprites. The result is a shooter that ranks among some of the most beautiful and wonderfully envisioned in the genre.
For those wondering, I'll just settle the matter for you as cleanly as possible. Yes, there is still slowdown in the game, but if you go into a shooter not expecting (and, in my opinion, hoping for) slowdown, then you're going to be disappointed time and time again. As was said in our interview with developer Irem, the whole slowdown issue comes from a desire to heap every last possible thing on screen, and R-Type Final does so with reckless abandon in some situations, literally filling the screen with succulent morsels of visual splendor, from the reality warping supershots that bend and flex the fabric of space to the nifty light shows that erupt at the destruction of an end level boss, there's nearly always something to focus on rather than your ship.
The ships themselves are fantastically realized in 3D, and boast a wealth of variety in their overall designs. While most of the ships you unlock near the beginning of the game tend to be slight variations on the basic starting ship designs, some of the latter models can skew quite a bit towards the downright bizarre. The plus is that the 3D treatment of the ships and especially the environments (Final loves to pull Silpheed-style loops and spins around the levels to the effect of disorienting you) not only keeps in line with the style and perspective of the original games, but really does thrust them more into the 3D era then the PlayStation efforts ever did. From effects work to boss designs to overall artistic style, everything about Final feels both old and new at the same time.
I wish I had more to say about the effects work and music other than the fact that they're simply good. Most of the music sticks to a formula of atmospheric loops and light, simplistic sustained notes throughout, and the sound effects feel lifted straight from the old audio libraries of the original games, albeit updated and a bit cleaner and with a bit more pop, but not especially so. The audio is, again, good, but it's nothing mind-blowing and certainly doesn't reach the level of improvement that the jump to 3D offered.
Let me say this again: there is no reason not to play R-Type Final. The traditional feel of the game might turn off some of the younger crowd, but these were probably the same people that rejected Prince of Persia, and likely don't know a good game if it bit them on the butt. For $30, you're getting one of the best send-offs a series has ever received, and will hopefully stand as the defining example of how to bring a game into 3D without ruining the classic gameplay that made it so good in the first place. Irem and Fresh Games in particular should be commended for bringing a fantastic swan song to the States in remarkable form. Play this game, folks, because there's a good chance you won't find one this solid in shooter form ever again.
