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New Gradius TOmorrow!!!

MrSingh

Member
saw the new gradius demo and it looks HAWT (it got decent scores in Famitsu.. but who gives a crap about Famitsu scores?!), I'll be getting it tomorrow.

anyone else looking forward to this game?



oh wait I just realized this is coming out on PS2 and not GC.

it sux.
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Mr Singh, what happened to my precious Dodonpachi? :p

While you are there can you look up the prices for several other PS2 shooters?

it got decent scores in Famitsu.. but who gives a crap about Famitsu scores?!
Heh, truer words have never been spoken. Gradius 5 will rock. Can't wait.
 

bob_arctor

Tough_Smooth
Yup, this baby is mine. September 14th is my 32nd b-day, so that's a bonus. Also, just to remind everyone: buy Astro Boy for the GBA--Treasure lovin', old school style.
 

MrSingh

Member
Marconelly said:
Mr Singh, what happened to my precious Dodonpachi? :p

While you are there can you look up the prices for several other PS2 shooters?


Heh, truer words have never been spoken. Gradius 5 will rock. Can't wait.

believe it or not I haven't been to akihabara since I last PM'ed you. :) well, I was in akihabara tonight, but I was there to visit a friend who tore her ACL.


Gradius 5 looked so clean, so smooth and polished.. classic treasure goodness!
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Gradius 5 looked so clean, so smooth and polished.. classic treasure goodness!
Ahhh, I'll have to play some Ikaruga when I get back home today.

I was actually going to ask you to hold off buying PS1 version of dodonpachi as I've figured it cannot be played on the current version of Pocket PC PS1 emulator, and I can't play it on my PS2 either. On the other hand, I've become very interested in the prices of Espgaluda, Dodonpachi Daijoy (a PS2 game) and Flipnic. If they don't differ too much from what import stores offer here, there's probably no need to bother you at all.
 

EGM92

Member
My friend in Hong Kong just got the game... he says it's CD based but it plays very very good. He's a very big fan of the series. Told me for some reason on older versions of PS2's it shows lag in some areas but on his newer PS2 it doesn't so as much lag when there "intense" action on screen.

Oh well still going to import it :D

EGM92
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
i planned to get that and paper mario last night.
but work pwninated me

Jonnyram was teasing me over MSN as he'd got both Gradius and Paper Mario.

He was raving about Gradius - at 11 o'clock he still hadn't been tempted to play Paper Mario.
 

john2kx

Member
i'm well into the game.. it's incredible....INCREDIBLE!!1

as with ikaruga, you gain an extra credit to use for each hour you play (for those who aren't godly at shmups).

the graphics are the best i've seen in a shooter since ikaruga.. spinning backdrops, huge bosses, insane explosions..... it's all in there.

the music is excellent and some of the tracks are extremely memorable, either because they may have been used in previous gradius games, or because they're just really damn good.

gameplay is near-flawless.
your ships hit detection box is small and therefore forgivable, but since it's a horizontal shooter, the box is in sort of a weird place, like towards the back of your ship.. you get used to it.
power-ups are really fun to collect, although it takes a few too many speed powerups to get your ship up to what some may consider an acceptable speed..

burning through a stage with a fully powered ship with 4 options, laser shot, missles, and a force field is a feeling like no other.

this game is SO going to be worth the asking price when it comes out in the US, it isn't even funny.
 

aku:jiki

Member
I will agree that the game rocks. I'm surprised, since I didn't like Ikaruga's over-memorization. And, well, Gradius isn't known for being lenient in that respect either. This, however, isn't very memory-heavy at all. You can easily make your way through the first levels on skill alone. I love it.

Also love how fast and smooth it is. And whipping around with your (Type 2) options kicks ass.

The only two things that really, really don't kick any ass whatsoever, and is in fact closer to being ballerinas, is the unskippable cutscenes (so very dumb for this type of game) and the option controls.

You hold L1 and then tap the direction you want the options to shoot in, alternatively just whipping around with them by holding L1 and messing with the d-pad. This becomes a problem since you can't manouver your ship and your options at the same time, so the ship just stops. Most of the time, it's ok, but if you're in a tight spot, it'll be a plain bitch to stay alive and get your shots lined up.

I feel rotating left with L1 and right with R1 would've been a much better system. Harder to learn, maybe, but easier to handle once you've mastered it.
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
I love it.
Absolutely love it.

The game looks lucious, kind of like a stylish R-type Final with gradius/salamander nods to enemy design , with a metalic Ikaruga-esque graphical finish.

Music was pretty funky as well, as are the sound fx, although the speech in the cut scenes sounded muffled (could be my set up).

Level 2 certainly has square written all over it! BOSS-U-LIKE!

Can't wait to get back to it.

Oh on a different side note/bitch , the PSX has a nasty habit of dropping the sound with this game for some reason (and won't bring it back until the unit is reset). YAY for well constructed convergence machines!
 

aku:jiki

Member
DCharlie said:
although the speech in the cut scenes sounded muffled (could be my set up).
No, here too. You can't hear a single word in the level 2 cutscene. And they speak english too. :(

I do like the little "Vic Viper, speed up!" voice samples and stuff, though.

Seriously, am I the only one who hates the music? Definitely not enough classic Gradius going on, and it's just so...bland. Predictable. Boring. The OST might've been my favorite part of Ikaruga (no, I didn't like the game), so I'm pretty disappointed in the music so far.

Didn't get past that crazy boss on level 2, though. The huge classic Gradius boss that spins and shoots his patterns (classic Gradius 1 level 1 boss pattern) wildly kicked my ass.
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
"What? those two bosses kicked your ass? Man, I whomped the floor with them at E3."

FOUR bosses.

and , yeah, the first two are fairly staight forward.
 

neo2046

Member
Fatghost28 said:
I heard Gradius V is a DVD game.
My friend bought the game, and it is a CD game
you heard DVD because someone ripped the disk, add a dummy file to make a DVD-R rip
 

kevm3

Member
The game looks amazing, but I remember how hard Gradius III kicked my ass. I never could get past the greased lightning stage... Or maybe I did once.
 

kaching

"GAF's biggest wanker"
Been watching some of video media for this at Gamespot. It looks silky smooth but I noticed a couple of things that look a little bothersome: when you ship returns to screen after being killed, I noticed that the ship sometimes seems to disappear and all you see are the weapons firing. Is this a glitch or intentional? Also, when reappearing after a death, all enemies on screen get smart bombed?
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
kaching, the ship probably flickers on/off on the screen with each frame update, and when you convert a 60FPS game footage into a 30FPS video, it's happens that you drop the frames when the ship is visible, and encode only the frames when it's invisible. At least I'd imagine that's what's going on - simillar problem happens in the emulators that resort to frame skipping when something flickers on the screen.
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
"Been watching some of video media for this at Gamespot. It looks silky smooth but I noticed a couple of things that look a little bothersome: when you ship returns to screen after being killed, I noticed that the ship sometimes seems to disappear and all you see are the weapons firing. Is this a glitch or intentional?"

You are flickering/grey'ed out and invunerable for a couple of seconds. You don't disappear. As Marconelly mentioned, probably to do with the movie capture.

"Also, when reappearing after a death, all enemies on screen get smart bombed?"

Yup - SOME enemies and bullets get destroyed.
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
My GF hasn't bought a shooter of her own in years, she picked this up today for herself after our two player gaming on it last night. It really is fantastic. I've managed about 10 minutes on Paper Mario RPG as a result (which is very lush also - just Gradius has me wow'ed at the moment).
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
NO unlimited credits ! YIPPEE!!!

well, at least at the start.

you start with 3 credits in main mode , but gain continues a la Ikaruga.

You can select any level you have made it to and play in free play mode, but you don't advance once you hit the end of the level.

Please note that in 2 player mode, you get 3 credits BETWEEN YOU (so that means there is only one spare credit once you start).
 

aku:jiki

Member
Shouta said:
What? those two bosses kicked your ass? Man, I whomped the floor with them at E3.
Yeah, what DCharlie said. The first two are easy, I'm talking about the second two. I did all four without dying today, though. It was easier than I thought.

Level 3 is where the real insanity starts. It's like night and day, almost. :(

Still loving it, still wishing I could skip cutscenes at least. (Is it possible?)
 

Troidal

Member
Man this game is amazing, it's been taking my entire gaming session these past few days!!!
I guess the only thing I don't like so much is the music. And sometimes those small gray bullets are so hard to see when it blends in with the background and so much is going on :/

Spent over 6 hours now, I'm in stage 6. It's amazing how you get better and better as you play more...ah teh old school.

For those who wanted to know, the Vic Viper history book comes with the initial run of the game, it's inside along with the instruction manual.
 

sasimirobot

Junior Member
Troidal said:
Man this game is amazing, it's been taking my entire gaming session these past few days!!!
I guess the only thing I don't like so much is the music. And sometimes those small gray bullets are so hard to see when it blends in with the background and so much is going on :/


IAWTP. The small gray bullets sneak up on me all the time. I have to ask though, why does Treasure love the spinning donut bosses so much? They are playing them out. I cant get past the spider (mini-boss?) that crawls down the shaft and drops crates yet, so its back to MBK for me.

I also didnt know you could spin the options around the ship, gonna go try that today!
 
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