Yes.. they look exciting but you are only allowed
two at a time. Why Treasure why?.
 
  
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The
sequel to the famous Mega-CD shooter Silpheed,
and the first stab at a shootemup for the PS2 by
legendary game producers Treasure, is frankly a
little bit on the dull side...
Well, Treasure's
first effort on the much hyped PS2
has finally arrived. Many expected Treasure to
push the limit of the PS2 and deliver the most
awesome shooter since Radiant Silvergun.
Many will be disappointed. Silpheed is not a bad
shooter by any measurement, but with a class A
developer behind it, a super-console powering it,
the original Silpheed team
writing the plot and rendering the FMV and a
company like Game Arts in
association with Capcom
publishing it, one would expect a dream shooter.
One would not expect an ultra graphical remake of
Raycrisis with slightly better
gameplay and stages.
 
 
No
doubt about it, the graphics are the PS2 at its
best. Silpheed delivers
everything you expect from a PS2 game and
sometimes more. The game has excellent lighting,
crisp 3D backgrounds and excellent enemy models,
all rendered in realtime. Several stages totally
dazzle you with impressive cloud effects or
falling buildings. Unfortunately, even in this
department the game faces technical problems.
Firstly the water briefly seen in stage two and
the vortex effect used throughout stage five look
awful. I mean they look like zero effort was put
into modelling them. But that is not the main
problem I have with the graphics engine. The
second and greatest problem with the graphics
engine in Silpheed is the awful slowdown
at key points of the game that makes the game
sluggishly annoying. The vortex effect mentioned
above is a main culprit as most of stage five was
slowdown.
In
the gameplay department, Silpheed doesn't fare
much better. The weapon system allows you to
mount a weapon on each side, left and right. You
start with two available weapons (but you can
mount the same weapon on both sides) and gain
additional weapons as you clear each stage.
Mid-stage you will enter a refueling craft and
will be allowed to switch weapons if you wish. In
theory I'm sure it sounded fun, but all the
weapons are neither really interesting or even
fun to use. Most are pretty generic and standard
shooter fare. Another missing element is that
there is no bomb option in Silpheed, so you're
stuck using the normal weapons and all without
the option to create large explosions just to
spice things up as you're falling asleep. Which
reminds me of another fatal flaw in Silpheed, you
could play it half-asleep. The game offers little
challenge and extremely low intensity. You are
given way too many shield points which kills the
"one hit death" intensity in shooters,
and to make things worse there is seldom ever a
threat to your ship at all. Silpheed's pace feels
like R-Type
Delta without the stage hazards. There is
never too many bullets to make you excited and
the stage hazards are far and few inbetween. Most
seasoned shooter fans can clear this game in an
hour or two and the lack of challenge really
hurts the replay value.
In
conclusion I will give GameArts
credit for wonderful FMVs in-between stages with
decent voice acting, all in English.
Unfortunately good FMVs do not a good shooter
make. In fact in my opinion GameArts' decision to
write the plot and work on the FMVs actually hurt
the design process. Treasure is well known for
their wackiness and excellent character design in
their games. With this element removed, Silpheed
loses almost every possible redeeming factor that
Treasure could have put in. The boss encounters
and stage design in Silpheed are excellent for
such a standard shooter, and the game itself is
never as sad as Raycrisis or as sub-par as Giga Wing, but for a Treasure
"next-generation" shooter, I expected
much more. Silpheed is by no means a bad shooter.
It's more of a generic, standard shooter that's
worth at least a rent, but it never rises to the
level of greatness it could have been.
Score
out of Five:
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