Is It Me Or What?

Wow. Raystorm, the sequel to Rayforce (Layer Section, Gunlock, etc.) is really fuckin’ hard.

This is notable because a) It was my first purchase in the series and I finished it years ago… so what? I’m getting old and slow now? And b) The first game, Rayforce, I just finished several days ago and that one is purported to be the most difficult one. Usually articles go out of their way to state how hard number one, Rayforce, is, but number two has no reputation for that apart from one review I’ve read that actually said it was easy.

I don’t know what that guy did that made it so easy. I’m assuming he didn’t just max out his ships and continues and turn the difficulty all the way down, which you CAN do in the options screen…I just really don’t want to do any of that crap. I want to play it as it was intended. Default. A few key differences that were implemented into this sequel could’ve made it a lot easier than Rayforce, but those advantages are offset by other issues…so to me it balances out…and in fact, I’m having more trouble, by far, with Raystorm.

Both games have a forward-firing ‘shot’ and a lock-on ‘laser’. As described in an earlier post, the game has a targeting reticle that floats ahead of your ship. Pass the reticle over an object and small red indicators attach to that object, signaling its ready to be hit with the laser. Since the enemy only has the ability to hurt you when firing at the same level/layer at which you fly (or angling a shot which has to rise up to you), the lock-on’s ability to target enemy BELOW your flight path—before they ever get to where they can shoot you—is a distinctly cool, and very necessary advantage. The powerups are basically the same for both games. Red and yellow power up your shot, green powers up (increases number of lockons for) your laser. Neither game has a speed control for your ship.

What’s different: in Rayforce you can only lock onto targets below you. In Raystorm you can now lock onto targets in your same layer. This gives you the ability to hit enemies traveling at the same level with the power of both the shot and the lockon lasers at the same time. For strong enemies this means hitting them with double the firepower. Also in Raystorm you have a bomb, the screen-clearing panic weapon that is standard issue in STGs. There is also one powerup that is different. Sometimes when you die and lose your last ship a special blue powerup appears that if you continue you get everything, shots and lasers, powered to the max. This was probably a carrot to encourage additional quarters in the arcade. This is quite common in STGs now, but apparently not in Rayforce’s day. Finally, there are multiple ship choices in the sequel, so you can pick the one that suits your style of play; shots emphasized, lasers emphasized, or balanced.

All of those things taken together would be advantages… and if the basic difficulty of the game remained the same, then a sequel encompassing those alterations would definitely be easier than the original. However Raystorm has 'complications' too. For one, the viewpoint has now been shifted to slightly rearward of the ship, instead of looking straight down. This has the effect of extending your view a bit, but muddying it at the same time. You can see further ahead of you, and so see enemies sooner than you could in Rayforce, but the new 3d polygonal graphics are not as sharp. So whatever advantage the viewing angle might give you is canceled by the lack of clarity in what you are actually seeing. Even the bright red bullets are not so obvious against the backdrop of enemy ships rising and falling between layers, and the swirling camera work. Couple this with the fact that many of your deaths will result from enemies that speed in from the top of the screen always at your layer, so your visibility window is no better than that in Rayforce.

And speaking of speeding: your ship is abysmally slow. It was no thoroughbred in Rayforce. In that game it was big, slow, and had a huge hitbox (the area of your onscreen ship that registers to the game as ‘hit-able’). But in Raystorm you are a positive slug. There are many times Raystorm chugs from slowdown, which might be an advantage in many games, but here it isn’t. The expanded ‘bullet time’ you get from slowdown doesn’t mean shit if you can’t actually move your ship. This game's default ship speed is every other game's slowdown speed.

Another thing that is driving me nuts is the ship’s centering. In Rayforce your ship centers a little bit. When you stop moving one direction and let the joystick center, your onscreen ship wobbles slightly in the opposite direction to simulate leveling off. A lot of games have a ship center or level after it veers, but the sprite's total outline stays in the exact same spot. Its' just a little artistic flourish to make the ship look cooler and act like it has some mass and weight to it. In Rayforce the entire sprite's area actually moves BACK the other direction a few pixels. This can be really frustrating if you are in a precision situation where every pixel counts. When you want the ship to stop and let some enemy fire graze past you, you have to really give yourself a bit of extra room (not always available!) because the ship rocks back into position if you stop moving. In Raystorm, this wobble is even larger, practically exaggerated even. Because of the shift to polygons, and a rearward tilt view, the designers appear to have decided this particular movement quirk was too subtle if done just like Rayforce. 'Graphics a bit unclear, more complicated 3D-simulation view, better really make that wobble apparent, eh?' Ugh. And much to the detriment of my ability to play it!

I mentioned how, with the updated lock-on, you can now target enemies at your layer, allowing twice the hurting to be placed on larger or stronger enemies. This doesn't really mean anything in Raystorm since they've simply upped the number of hits required to take down an enemy. Most enemy ships larger than the basic 'popcorn' size, take far more damage than their analogues in the first game. Especially the bosses. Rayforce had a great balance for its bosses actually. They were tough, and intense, but the intensity dragged on for the right amount of time. Just when you thought your skills wouldn't hold out any longer, the boss blew up. In Raystorm, the bosses just go on and on. They don't have life bars to tell you how you are doing-- so you have no idea how you are doing. Their ability to take damage (at least at default difficulty) far outlasts my stamina. Typically, the first ship you have when you face them (assuming you've fought them before and so aren't surprised by their attacks) will go the longest. After that one dies you're going to be so tired that whatever other ships you are going to lose will follow in short order. It almost doesn't matter if you get into 'the zone', because your hands and/or rhythm just won't hold out. The last level of the game is just one big boss fight. Actually, that's fine for me. The last level should be a bitch. That's the nature of these games. He's tough, huge, and complicated. But the funny thing is that despite all that HE isn't the toughest fight. The bosses of the two levels prior are. They have difficult, nigh-undodge-able attacks (it can be done, but it is a lot of work). As I said the issue is how long it takes for them to be destroyed. The balance, in my opinion, is off. Expecting you to deal with say, four minutes of intense boss fight with four instances of his nigh undodge-able super attack might be what you could expect. This game basically doubles that. And it is frustrating and kind of tedious actually. If those two penultimate bosses at least changed form to keep the battle interesting that'd be one thing. The very last boss does do that. But he's the entire eighth level. These two guys just do their same thing over and over and are just seemingly impervious to damage. I wind up using my bombs whenever possible just to get it over with, not because I'm down to my last ship.

If this makes it all sound like the game totally sucks, it doesn't. It is a good game. It is just kind of a letdown after the greatness of Rayforce. My attitude towards it is a bit like that expressed in my post about Shutokou Battle 2. I 'remember' it as a really good game, but my experience in the genre since playing it has perhaps refined my expectations, so the weaknesses are now more apparent to me. I don't want EXACTLY the same play experience as Rayforce. But it doesn't appear to me the gameplay (or graphic) additions are improvements. The whole thing would actually be a lot better if the bosses (all of them) had about half the 'hit points'. This would make everything a lot less frustrating--the viewpoint, the slowness, everything. Because the bosses are where you are going to lose the majority of your ships. If you spent half the time there, then you'd be bitchin a lot less about how slow the ship is, or how difficult it is to see what killed you.

There is no option to reduce 'boss difficulty', unfortunately. However, there is a mode in the game that lets you play each level for practice. That's what I'm gonna have to do. I don't mind the last boss being a total bitch. In fact, I've kind of learned to deal with most everything he throws at me. But I just don't quite get there with enough ships to beat him...owing to the two bastard bosses right before him.

What's In A Name?

Rayforce

Two days ago, while having a go at an old video game, I unexpectedly found myself 'in the zone' and finished it. I had a little time between various kid events and really hadn't expected to do anything with it but get in some practice. The game is the Saturn version of Galactic Attack from Taito, which is also known as Layer Section... or Gunlock... or Rayforce. The game must be on the FBI's Most Wanted List with that many aliases.

In martial arts, and most sports, there is a state of mind the practitioner strives toward. In Japanese it is the two-fold state owning both 'zanshin' (readiness/awareness) and 'mushin' (no mind). In this place, 'the zone' as many westerners know it is where everything clicks. You've shut out the distractions, nothing can touch you, and your performance is 'on' like you know just where to go and what to do. The better atheletes can enter this state much more easily than poorer players... it is one of the reasons they are better. When I am practicing various kata for swordwork there is a huge difference when I am in the zone and when I am not.

I kind of just fell into the zone playing Rayforce. This is a game I've owned for a long time, and I like it a lot, but I'd never put that much time into playing it... certainly had never finished it. Originally, I bought Raystorm (Layer Section 2), played it, finished it and reading reviews that said the first one was even better, I eventually tracked it down and bought it. I think all the Layer Section games are underappreciated, but the first one has a pretty good rep. The other two not so much, but in my opinion that's undeserved. Much of the play mechanics, looks, and music style eventually made their way into G. Rev's game Border Down. Not surprising considering the ex-Taito folks working at G. Rev.

This first one is a 2D graphic spectacle, has awesome sound effects, and pretty good music if you like 'the spacy jazz stylings' of Zuntata, the old in-house band for Taito. The name 'Layer Section' actually comes from the level design... you move down through 'layers' from space through a planet's atmosphere to a mechanised tower at its core... and the gameplay which has you destroying enemies at two separate heights, an upper and lower 'layer'. As each level ends, your ship smoothly moves to the next with no interruption of the graphics, so the whole thing looks like one continuous journey. It is quite cool and really helps make the game world feel more real. You are given a 'bullets' to shoot down enemies on your layer (at your level) and homing 'lasers' to blast the enemies on the layer below you. There is a crosshairs a short distance ahead of your ship that you use to lock on with the homing lasers. There's a lot of scaling and parallax scrolling effects to reinforce the 3D play concepts but all using 2D objects and art.

Raystorm

Those gameplay basics don't change for the sequels. The changes in the later episodes come with the designers giving you multiple ships to choose from, so the specifics of the weaponry vary slightly though they operate under the same two-layer, lock-on homing idea. They also shift the viewpoint slightly to the rear of the ship (a la Silpheed) so that the switch to polygon graphics (from the sprites of the original) becomes more dramatic. The game is still a 2D shooter, but it is played over a three-dimensional background. I played and finished the second one years ago, but will be giving that another go in preparation for playing the third one, Raycrisis. I didn't really want to do that until I'd finished the first one, which I've been trying to do off and on for a month. Doing things in the correct order, now that I have all the games, was just important to me. I'm retarded like that.

My kids think I'm retarded anyway. They understand liking video games a lot. They do themselves, especially during the long, gonad-cracking winters. What they don't see is the 2D shooter love. My son does a little. He thinks Thunderforce 6 is the cat's ass. But that's a really modern game (despite the oldskool gameplay) complete with super-flash polygonal graphics and multiple unlockable ships. Thunderforce's designers also included a difficulty level a kid can actually handle, so he can make reasonable progress and not feel stymied. But in general, the don't get it. Currently their game of choice is the online MMO for kids Wizard101. Its a 3D collector game, RPG, and social center all in one. Everything the current craze in 'massive multiplayer online' caters to. Having to repetitively practice the same levels with no save points, no customisable characters, and a game length measured in minutes, just has no appeal to them, and no appeal to mainstream gaming itself anymore.

In terms of 'finishing' Rayforce, I'm calling it that for getting all the way through the game on the initial allotment of credits. I don't really use the term 'beating' it. There's a school of thought that beating a game literally would mean getting the 1CC or one-credit-clear... that is, finishing the game on just the inital batch of ships you are given and any extras (extends) you are awarded during the game. Successfully playing for survival. I subscribe to that belief, even though by that standard I will rarely ever 'beat' a game because I just can't put that much time into learning all the ins and outs to be good enough. I look online at how much time some players put into dominating their chosen shooters and it is just more than a responsible parent can probably do. So most of the time, I'm just going to have to be happy with getting all the way through on the basic number of credits/continues. If a shooter has unlimited continues and no way to turn that off, then only four credits count towards the finish. I might use the unlimited continues to practice later levels, but I won't chalk it up as a victory. Again, retarded. At least by some people's standards. But this is how you get value out of what is essentially a very short, but intense play experience. You're simulating approaching the game in an arcade... you wouldn't drop unlimited amounts of money in a cabinet, so I don't use unlimited continues. The last game I 1CC'd for the first time was probably Lords of Thunder.

Rank is a feature of Rayforce. I don't recall if the other Layer Section games enforce rank. I'll find out when I play them again (though I've never put much time into Raycrisis anyway). The more ships you have in reserve, and the stronger your firepower, the more enemies and bullets the game throws at you. Some games (like Ibara or the infamous Battle Garegga) the rank is so furious that suiciding your ships and avoiding powerups is actually a strategy in playing, especially playing for survival. I like those two games, but like a lot of people I think the whole concept of doing 'less than great' in a sense is really a counterintuitive way to play. I get the whole rank thing. These machines were spawned out of an environment where the games were trying to suck quarters out of you. Apart from the natural increase in difficulty that comes with progress (the seventh level would always be harder than the first) the games became 'artificially' more difficult to end your game and get you to feed more money in to see what comes next. I am not a fan of rank, and certainly don't like the idea of rank-control becoming the focus of playing, but fierce as the rank is in Rayforce it didn't totally destroy the fun. A lot of Rayforce skill is based in being in the right place to destroy enemies before they can really do anything to you. And if you get good at that, the extra bullets don't mean much.

Raycrisis

On to the other Layer Sections. I know the second one was fun, and as I recall easier than the Rayforce. Hopefully I'll enjoy the last one just as much.