Also, who is trashing Ranger-X!? One of the Genesis' finest titles
Oh noes!1 Okay, after spending an hour or so with the game on normal difficulty and playing type-d control on a six-button pad, I got as far as the fifth area, first section, with the aerial support platform/weapon exchange depot trailing behind and above.
I'll get the positives out of the way. Handsome visuals, lots of software scaling/rotation and linescroll effects with neat bits of parallax, both vertical and horizontal...even nice use of the highlight mode for the dramatic transition from full sunlight to a darkened forest canopy. Little details, like the little floating worm/spores dying in shafts of direct sunlight, and the integration of light sources recharging your special weapons power meter, even accounting for distance, and the deeper than usual crossthreading of generally simpler console shooter mechanics, with the aforementioned special weapons meter feeding into health regeneration at the scant few recharge stations in the early stages. Neat use of multiple states that the ship can be in, like riding the Ex-Up/motorcycle thing or being inside of it to swap specials, or having full D-pad jet-thrust control in the air or being on the ground while simultaneously controlling rolling platform's movement. The overheat meter needing you to manage how much thrust and how long you're in the air mixed with carefully-placed resting spots that might also be situated next to intense light sources, like the skyscraper's broken out window panes revealing a lit room inside. Lots of particle sprites in use everywhere for breaking the windows in glass shards, having more fiery explosions to affirm enemy death, and even dust plumes from the force of your rear tires or jet-thrusters coming from nearby walls and floors. Like the spring-loaded jump while on the wheeled-platform, too. Neat-o wireframe
intros to each new stage and a lot of variety in the locales in general. Weapon variety changed by adding a new option, once gathered, to your floating or rolling base, and generally seems pretty distinct and not too pointlessly redundant with effective overlap, but the lack of explanation upfront that you'd not have access to some came across as highly artificial in sculpting the challenge...like that extremely powerful eagle that seems to be limited to its arboreal surroundings in the forested stage in which you found it and only teases you with its useless presence when you're scrolling through the options in later areas.
The game's structure seems very limited to short scrolling bits that only go vertical, only go horizontal, or involve a little 360 movement in-between. The game feels very compartmentalized to accommodate its penchant for showcasing effects and the boss sequences, while these all come layered in that traditional set of patterns of progression that change up the weak spots to aim for or introduce new movement behaviors and attacks to be wary of, and most feel limp and often involve some kind of semi-cheap hits when you're claustrophobically trapped inside of small arenas to fight them.
The limited six or so continues might encourage better play to reach the end, but the game doles out damage somewhat viciously and without clear advertisement beforehand, like the water/acid pools in the cave stage, where attempting to fly over and out of a small chokepoint can kill a fully-charged health bar inside of a two or so second burst simply because your rolling platform squeezed you onto it as you both tried to pass through too closely to each other. The old-school ritual of having to go back and forth between the health-recharge points and whatever given or player-exposed sources of light became a bit tiring and dragged whatever pacing there could be down into something more laid-back , having you leave your Ranger charging while you went for a piss, hoping to not take any serious damage as you moved forward before you needed to consider backtracking for another fill-up.
Music is nice, but a sort of relatively understated set of good tracks that seems to depart from Iwadare's more driving, rocking shooter tunes I prefer in Gynoug/Wings of War or Gleylancer. I think I remember reading that Gau Entertainment was made up of former Wolfteam folks, and if so, it definitely makes sense in that they followed on from those MD/Genny games with a common decision to halve the framerate update to 30fps scrolling and movement that comes rife with flicker and inconsistent performance when things get more dense and hectic.
I'll press on sometime this week to finish it legit, but I'm gonna say the game isn't crap and is one of the most impressive collections of tech-showiness for the system, but the game feels a bit hollow and, IMO, is indeed a bit overrated for its flashy presentation. If it didn't possess the same level of tech-wizardry, I think most would relegate it to a lower tier of the Sega 16-bit library for its lack of consistency and better-designed challenge. Another game that goes a step too far, sometimes, in concocting areas that come off as only existing purely in service of a visual gimmick.
It's good, just not great. Certainly, Ranger-X is not one of the finest titles on the system. I guess I'll have a more solid opinion on it after completing it later.
