To be honest, the 2-d shooter genre is a good series of games, but the genre isn’t my favorite. The last one I played, Gradius 5 was a good game, but I wouldn’t play it again. That game kind of pushed me away from the genre, and made me not want to play games in that genre for a while. That time is over now, and I decided to pick a different shooter in the same genre. The shooter I’m going to talk about is Silpheed: The Lost Planet. How do I feel about this one? Let’s find out.
The game is actually an enhanced remake of Silpheed, which was on the Sega CD and PC. The main story is nothing to write home about, but it’s a little bit deeper than most shooters. It’s been about more than 5 centuries since humans have ventured into space and they have taken over a planet known as Solont, which is the 11th planet the humans have colonized. This peace has been disturbed by an unknown alien force that comes from the darkest corner of the universe, and has threatened the humans on Solont. It is up to the Silpheed Squadron to stop this alien force and save the people and the planet. Yeah, it’s nothing special if you’re a fan of stuff like R-Type or Robotech, but it’s better and more clear then a lot of games in this genre of game.
Silpheed: The Lost Planet was actually developed by two companies, the first is Treasure, which you all already know about from my past reviews, and the other is Game Arts. Now Game Arts is known for the Silpheed, GunGriffon, and Grandia franchise. And in the future, I’m going to review a GunGriffon game, so we will be exploring this company a little bit in the future.
The game play style is in a top view 2.5D shooter where you control the elite fighter, Silpheed. The cool thing about this ship is that you can equip one weapon on each side of the ship, giving you two weapons you can carry at once. This ship also has a good ten-hit health meter, which is a relief since I’m kind of tired of seeing shooters where one hit can kill you. You basically go through each long level, fending off against unique looking alien ships, and basically fighting a huge boss at the end of the level. A unique thing is that if you’re damaged, or want to change weapons, about halfway through each level, you can refuel your ship and change weapons just in case the ones that you have won’t do for the next boss encounter, which is pretty smart since if you couldn’t refuel and change your weapons, this game would almost be unplayable. One thing is though, if you get hit 10 times or 5, if you choose the harder difficulty, you die and have to start all over again at the beginning of the level. Now,some people could complain saying that’s unfair, but it kind of cancels itself out since you do have a health meter and you can change weapons halfway through the level.
Graphically, it’s about as good as Raiden 3 and 4. It won’t blow your mind, but it holds up. The cut scenes however are just amazing to look at. They definitely took their time with the cut scenes, which are plentiful and well done for a game that’s almost a decade old. The music is also fun to listen to if you’re a fan of Robotech or just a fan of shooters. The difficulty is partly in the middle since you do have a health bar and two weapons, but it can get difficult at the third level, which is where I was when I was typing this review.
Let’s get down to the bad parts now. Even though I said it was a fair challenge since you get a health bar and two guns, starting at the level again if you die is a little tedious since you have to go through the whole level again, and it’s always a little different, like sometimes, I have the right weapon or sometimes I have little health. If this game would let you start in the middle, then I think it would have been more successful. I’m not saying I don’t like a challenge, but it gets boring since you can’t save your progress, much like in Starfox and you have to start at the very first level. It gets kind of boring.
Overall, I think this is one of the better shooters of today, well, I think it’s better than Gradius 5, in my opinion. I would say, check this game out before buying, but if you are a shooter fan then I say pick it up.
This game gets a 7.7 out of 10
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