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You Should Probably Play Darius Gaiden
Game's Ratings
Overall
Graphics
Sound
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Story
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9
08-17-12 03:06 AM
uberkoopa is Offline
| ID: 635790 | 1637 Words
uberkoopa is Offline
| ID: 635790 | 1637 Words
uberkoopa
Level: 31
POSTS: 76/176
POST EXP: 22893
LVL EXP: 172821
CP: 8045.4
VIZ: 133029
POSTS: 76/176
POST EXP: 22893
LVL EXP: 172821
CP: 8045.4
VIZ: 133029
Likes: 0 Dislikes: 0
I'm going do a short review of a game I've been waiting for on Vizzed. Introducing, Darius Gaiden.  Fun Fact: This game is a favorite of doujin game creator ZUN, who is responsible for creating the Touhou Project games. Darius Gaiden is a Horizontally Scrolling Spaceship Shooter by Taito released in 1994. It is the third in the Darius series. I'll be Honest with you, before this game, the Darius series wasn't anything to write home about. Sure, the first two games in the series had a neat three screen "wide screen" effect that allowed for a bigger playing field and larger, more detailed sprites, but the first Darius was mediocre at best and Darius II (also known as (Sagaia) was just good and nothing else, plus, when these games were released on the consoles, the wide screen effect had to be omitted and the sprites shrunken down, thus making the games lose the very gimmick that allowed them to steal quarters in the arcades. Taito was going to make a third game, and it was going to take place on the main heroes' home planet, which had been destroyed while they were too busy defending the rest of the solar system, but they considered this plot to be too bleak for a Darius game and that concept for a game eventually turned into the great giant laser dueling shooter, Metal Black, which I might review later. After what could have been Darius III got turned into a completely different game, Taito decided that they were going to go all out on this new Darius project, a game that removes the pseudo-widescreen gimmick, and in its place, solid gameplay, great graphics, excellent presentation, and one of the best soundtracks in a shooter.  And thus this game was born. GRAPHICS: 9/10 When you think 1994 graphics, you would think something on SNES and Genesis, while they were impressive, they couldn't hold a candle to some of the powerhouse games released in the arcades. Darius Gaiden was one of those games that there was no way the SNES or Genesis would be able to port without completely watering it down first; gorgeous games like Darius Gaiden had to wait for the 32/64-Bit era to have their chance to shine on the consoles.  The game's first boss, Golden Ogre. When actually playing the game, notice how the boss moves so smoothly and almost 3d-ish. Okay, if I show you a screen shot of this game, you would say that it looks like a 16-bit title, and that's somewhat true, but screen shots don't really do this game justice; You need to play this game in order to experience how 32-bit it was. You need to see it in motion to check out the nice scaling effects that SNES's Mode 7 could only wish it could do. I'll just let the game speak for itself  Witness the amazing, satisfying explosions after every boss fight...  ...and behold the awesome graphical power of the Black Hole Fish Vacuum. You heard me right, you can create a black hole.  It's always nice to fly over an ocean in Darius Gaiden. SOUND: 8/10 I like the sound effects in this game. I can't really describe them, they are really odd sounding, but in a good way. I like the sound that plays when you launch a black hole bomb, it really gives you the feeling that you just unleashed a powerful weapon upon the enemy. The music, on the other hand, is more or less an acquired taste. The soundtrack was done by Taito's in-house band, Zuntata. (now you know were ZUN got his name from) Their work in this game is very suspenseful and always makes every scene in the game sound epic, but the sound track might not appeal to everyone, I mean it's CD quality audio and all, but the problem is some people might find the first and second level theme to e quite bizarre and somewhat creepy. A woman can be heard singing "Close your eyes...Close your head...." to some sick synths, eventually followed by some operatic singing. This odd combination of operatic singing with synthesizers as well as real instruments freaked me out at first and kind of made me not want to play this game at first, but eventually I found the music of the first two stages to be almost hauntingly beautiful in a sense. Once the music grows on to you, you'll love how fitting it is to the rest of the game. The song played when a later boss, Laser Light Illusion, comes out from another dimension to fight you, as you at first se its tail and eventually the rest of its body come out of the portal, you get pumped up and get ready to have an epic battle with the boss. Darius Gaiden is one of those games that has music that makes every boss battle not just feel like a boss battle, but a boss duel to the death, like each battle feels intense. Addictiveness: 8/10 Darius Gaiden is a very addictive game. The game will have you coming back for more every time you get your butt kicked, and there's one thing that sets the Darius series apart from most games...  The zone select system. In every Darius game, after you beat a level, you get to choose which stage you want to go next. Once you beat the city stage in Zone A, you can choose if you will go to Zone B, The Grassland, or Zone C, The Ocean, each with their own unique level design and end boss. The result is a game that goes through seven stages that branch out into unique paths in 26 stages in all and seven different endings. You will be replaying this game endlessly to play all of the stages, get all of the endings, and get higher scores. Add in a second player, and the fun gets even better from there. STORY: N/A There is a story to Darius Gaiden, but really, who cares? Besides the intro and ending, the story isn't really touched upon in the game, but if you really want to know, then fine, I'll tell you.  Basically, this game takes place after the first Darius, but before Darius II. After Proco and Tiat (Players 1 and 2) had thought they saved their home planet Darius from the Space fish army of Belser, the two decide to help the citizens of Darius migrate from their war torn planet to a temporary home: the planet Vadis.  Everything was going fine until...  Um, excuse me, but didn't we kill all of the giant metal space fish just a while ago? The Belser makes a sudden reappearance and attacks the spaceport to Vadis on Darius  The Spaceport before it got attacked and blown up with really cool explosion graphics. Now the Belser Army is going to head for the planet Valis to destroy the refugee Darians.    Looks like this is a job for the Darian Army! The Darian army tries to fend off the Aquatic Terrorists, but to no success. Darius' last hope lies with two powerful Silver Hawk star fighters and two exceptional veteran pilots willing to take on an army of space fish.  There were a couple more Silver Hawks, but they kind of got blown up by lasers, eaten by Golden Ogre battleships, or both. Basically, it's your typical man vs. alien fish army plot, nothing too special, but this is a shooter, we didn't come here for story, we came here for ACTION. DEPTH: 9/10 Let's see.... Shooters aren't exactly known for depth, but this game lets you upgrade your gun, bomb launchers, and shields, you can temporarily make mini bosses fight for you if you it the orb on their heads enough times and grab hold of it (Boss grabbing would go on to be a very important mechanic in the equally great sequel, G Darius), and all of this combined with the game's branching path level structure really leads to the game's depth being bumped up really high. DIFFICULTY: 7/10 As with a lot of spaceship shooters, Darius Gaiden is quite challenging. It is not Danmaku/Bullet Hell type hard, but it is still a very challenging game that will require plenty of skill to beat. The game manages to have a well balanced difficulty that welcomes beginner and veteran shooter fans alike, easing them in to increasingly more challenging levels each stage. The game will kick your butt, but it is not a frustrating game, you keep wanting to continue and keep trying until you defeat one of the final bosses at last.  That's me. I just got blown up by one of King Fossil's missiles. Speaking of continuing, Due to the fact this game emulates the arcade cabinet, you can put in as many quarters as you want, thus allowing you to have unlimited continues. This might make the game too easy, so I recommend that you discipline yourself on how many 'quarters' you put into the virtual machine; I suggest 3-5 Credits maximum for this game, that should be enough to give the game back its difficulty since you can just keep pressing 5 to get a ton of quarters, but real men don't cheat, real men use reasonable amounts of credits. Overall, Darius Gaiden is one heck of a game and will put you on one wild ride, I suggest you all play it at once. I think this might be the first review for a MAME game on Vizzed, and MAME's still in beta here, but the game runs flawlessly and is well worth the beta ticket purchase (or you can just wait for it to come out officially) FINAL VERDICT: 9.9/10  "I always wanted a thing called Tuna Sashimi!" Fun Fact: This game is a favorite of doujin game creator ZUN, who is responsible for creating the Touhou Project games. Darius Gaiden is a Horizontally Scrolling Spaceship Shooter by Taito released in 1994. It is the third in the Darius series. I'll be Honest with you, before this game, the Darius series wasn't anything to write home about. Sure, the first two games in the series had a neat three screen "wide screen" effect that allowed for a bigger playing field and larger, more detailed sprites, but the first Darius was mediocre at best and Darius II (also known as (Sagaia) was just good and nothing else, plus, when these games were released on the consoles, the wide screen effect had to be omitted and the sprites shrunken down, thus making the games lose the very gimmick that allowed them to steal quarters in the arcades. Taito was going to make a third game, and it was going to take place on the main heroes' home planet, which had been destroyed while they were too busy defending the rest of the solar system, but they considered this plot to be too bleak for a Darius game and that concept for a game eventually turned into the great giant laser dueling shooter, Metal Black, which I might review later. After what could have been Darius III got turned into a completely different game, Taito decided that they were going to go all out on this new Darius project, a game that removes the pseudo-widescreen gimmick, and in its place, solid gameplay, great graphics, excellent presentation, and one of the best soundtracks in a shooter. And thus this game was born. GRAPHICS: 9/10 When you think 1994 graphics, you would think something on SNES and Genesis, while they were impressive, they couldn't hold a candle to some of the powerhouse games released in the arcades. Darius Gaiden was one of those games that there was no way the SNES or Genesis would be able to port without completely watering it down first; gorgeous games like Darius Gaiden had to wait for the 32/64-Bit era to have their chance to shine on the consoles. The game's first boss, Golden Ogre. When actually playing the game, notice how the boss moves so smoothly and almost 3d-ish. Okay, if I show you a screen shot of this game, you would say that it looks like a 16-bit title, and that's somewhat true, but screen shots don't really do this game justice; You need to play this game in order to experience how 32-bit it was. You need to see it in motion to check out the nice scaling effects that SNES's Mode 7 could only wish it could do. I'll just let the game speak for itself Witness the amazing, satisfying explosions after every boss fight... ...and behold the awesome graphical power of the Black Hole Fish Vacuum. You heard me right, you can create a black hole. It's always nice to fly over an ocean in Darius Gaiden. SOUND: 8/10 I like the sound effects in this game. I can't really describe them, they are really odd sounding, but in a good way. I like the sound that plays when you launch a black hole bomb, it really gives you the feeling that you just unleashed a powerful weapon upon the enemy. The music, on the other hand, is more or less an acquired taste. The soundtrack was done by Taito's in-house band, Zuntata. (now you know were ZUN got his name from) Their work in this game is very suspenseful and always makes every scene in the game sound epic, but the sound track might not appeal to everyone, I mean it's CD quality audio and all, but the problem is some people might find the first and second level theme to e quite bizarre and somewhat creepy. A woman can be heard singing "Close your eyes...Close your head...." to some sick synths, eventually followed by some operatic singing. This odd combination of operatic singing with synthesizers as well as real instruments freaked me out at first and kind of made me not want to play this game at first, but eventually I found the music of the first two stages to be almost hauntingly beautiful in a sense. Once the music grows on to you, you'll love how fitting it is to the rest of the game. The song played when a later boss, Laser Light Illusion, comes out from another dimension to fight you, as you at first se its tail and eventually the rest of its body come out of the portal, you get pumped up and get ready to have an epic battle with the boss. Darius Gaiden is one of those games that has music that makes every boss battle not just feel like a boss battle, but a boss duel to the death, like each battle feels intense. Addictiveness: 8/10 Darius Gaiden is a very addictive game. The game will have you coming back for more every time you get your butt kicked, and there's one thing that sets the Darius series apart from most games... The zone select system. In every Darius game, after you beat a level, you get to choose which stage you want to go next. Once you beat the city stage in Zone A, you can choose if you will go to Zone B, The Grassland, or Zone C, The Ocean, each with their own unique level design and end boss. The result is a game that goes through seven stages that branch out into unique paths in 26 stages in all and seven different endings. You will be replaying this game endlessly to play all of the stages, get all of the endings, and get higher scores. Add in a second player, and the fun gets even better from there. STORY: N/A There is a story to Darius Gaiden, but really, who cares? Besides the intro and ending, the story isn't really touched upon in the game, but if you really want to know, then fine, I'll tell you. Basically, this game takes place after the first Darius, but before Darius II. After Proco and Tiat (Players 1 and 2) had thought they saved their home planet Darius from the Space fish army of Belser, the two decide to help the citizens of Darius migrate from their war torn planet to a temporary home: the planet Vadis. Everything was going fine until... Um, excuse me, but didn't we kill all of the giant metal space fish just a while ago? The Belser makes a sudden reappearance and attacks the spaceport to Vadis on Darius The Spaceport before it got attacked and blown up with really cool explosion graphics. Now the Belser Army is going to head for the planet Valis to destroy the refugee Darians. Looks like this is a job for the Darian Army! The Darian army tries to fend off the Aquatic Terrorists, but to no success. Darius' last hope lies with two powerful Silver Hawk star fighters and two exceptional veteran pilots willing to take on an army of space fish. There were a couple more Silver Hawks, but they kind of got blown up by lasers, eaten by Golden Ogre battleships, or both. Basically, it's your typical man vs. alien fish army plot, nothing too special, but this is a shooter, we didn't come here for story, we came here for ACTION. DEPTH: 9/10 Let's see.... Shooters aren't exactly known for depth, but this game lets you upgrade your gun, bomb launchers, and shields, you can temporarily make mini bosses fight for you if you it the orb on their heads enough times and grab hold of it (Boss grabbing would go on to be a very important mechanic in the equally great sequel, G Darius), and all of this combined with the game's branching path level structure really leads to the game's depth being bumped up really high. DIFFICULTY: 7/10 As with a lot of spaceship shooters, Darius Gaiden is quite challenging. It is not Danmaku/Bullet Hell type hard, but it is still a very challenging game that will require plenty of skill to beat. The game manages to have a well balanced difficulty that welcomes beginner and veteran shooter fans alike, easing them in to increasingly more challenging levels each stage. The game will kick your butt, but it is not a frustrating game, you keep wanting to continue and keep trying until you defeat one of the final bosses at last. That's me. I just got blown up by one of King Fossil's missiles. Speaking of continuing, Due to the fact this game emulates the arcade cabinet, you can put in as many quarters as you want, thus allowing you to have unlimited continues. This might make the game too easy, so I recommend that you discipline yourself on how many 'quarters' you put into the virtual machine; I suggest 3-5 Credits maximum for this game, that should be enough to give the game back its difficulty since you can just keep pressing 5 to get a ton of quarters, but real men don't cheat, real men use reasonable amounts of credits. Overall, Darius Gaiden is one heck of a game and will put you on one wild ride, I suggest you all play it at once. I think this might be the first review for a MAME game on Vizzed, and MAME's still in beta here, but the game runs flawlessly and is well worth the beta ticket purchase (or you can just wait for it to come out officially) FINAL VERDICT: 9.9/10 "I always wanted a thing called Tuna Sashimi!" |
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(edited by uberkoopa on 08-17-12 03:12 AM)
08-17-12 11:36 AM
pacman1755 is Offline
| ID: 636010 | 36 Words
pacman1755 is Offline
| ID: 636010 | 36 Words
pacman1755
Level: 195
POSTS: 7881/13170
POST EXP: 454212
LVL EXP: 104051895
CP: 30600.2
VIZ: 341152
POSTS: 7881/13170
POST EXP: 454212
LVL EXP: 104051895
CP: 30600.2
VIZ: 341152
Likes: 0 Dislikes: 0
I haven't played this since I haven't had the opportunity to, but I have to say, you did a really good job with your review. Great job! I might play the game sometime after reading that. |
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| Winner of The August VCS 2011, December VCS 2013, and Summer 2014 TDV |
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08-17-12 11:37 AM
victor_w is Offline
| ID: 636011 | 8 Words
| ID: 636011 | 8 Words
hello is this a game or a movie |
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08-17-12 11:43 AM
uberkoopa is Offline
| ID: 636017 | 15 Words
uberkoopa is Offline
| ID: 636017 | 15 Words
uberkoopa
Level: 31
POSTS: 77/176
POST EXP: 22893
LVL EXP: 172821
CP: 8045.4
VIZ: 133029
POSTS: 77/176
POST EXP: 22893
LVL EXP: 172821
CP: 8045.4
VIZ: 133029
Likes: 0 Dislikes: 0
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08-17-12 11:48 AM
heart_failure is Offline
| ID: 636023 | 10 Words
| ID: 636023 | 10 Words
heart_failure
Level: 20
POSTS: 47/68
POST EXP: 3518
LVL EXP: 36880
CP: 0.0
VIZ: 555
POSTS: 47/68
POST EXP: 3518
LVL EXP: 36880
CP: 0.0
VIZ: 555
Likes: 0 Dislikes: 0
Yeah its pretty awe sum game bro I like it |
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08-17-12 04:00 PM
TheAlphaPro is Offline
| ID: 636242 | 22 Words
TheAlphaPro is Offline
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TheAlphaPro
Level: 13
POSTS: 7/25
POST EXP: 1234
LVL EXP: 8206
CP: 1637.8
VIZ: 10423
POSTS: 7/25
POST EXP: 1234
LVL EXP: 8206
CP: 1637.8
VIZ: 10423
Likes: 0 Dislikes: 0
Amazing review!! I love the way you added everything. The pictures, the story, yeah I think I'll go play Darius Gaiden now. The pictures, the story, yeah I think I'll go play Darius Gaiden now. |
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(edited by TheAlphaPro on 08-17-12 04:01 PM)
08-18-12 12:48 AM
uberkoopa is Offline
| ID: 636636 | 41 Words
uberkoopa is Offline
| ID: 636636 | 41 Words
uberkoopa
Level: 31
POSTS: 78/176
POST EXP: 22893
LVL EXP: 172821
CP: 8045.4
VIZ: 133029
POSTS: 78/176
POST EXP: 22893
LVL EXP: 172821
CP: 8045.4
VIZ: 133029
Likes: 0 Dislikes: 0
TheAlphaPro : Thank you! This is probably the second time I've done a review on Vizzed, and I think I'll probably do more reviews of games in the future, especially Arcade games to kind of hype people up for their official release here. |
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