RayStorm is not one of Taito’s better known shooters. It first appeared on the Playstation in 1997 as far as home conversions were concerned. It was an arcade game the year before back in Japan, but it never had anywhere near the huge appeal that some of the big coin-op’s company back catalogue demanded, like Space Invaders and so on. But like another of their classics, Qix, RayStorm has been given a high definition makeover and is ready to demand your money. Does it do enough though?
Graphically I would say it is more a case of tiding things up, rather than giving it a full on HD revamp. This could be less noticeable than in other games because the Playstation was already a vector based console, so would never really benefit from a huge overhaul. When moving between the arcade version and the “Extra” mode, which covers what the PSX got, the only real naked eye change is in some of the colouring and some slight texture change.
Besides this, the main game stays the same, consisting of 8 stages of ship blasting action. At your disposal you have a choice of 2 ships, which will fire either a generic bullet range or have a constant stream of lasers attempting to take down anything in front of you. Each ship is capable of two main types of armament. There is your primary weapon that we’ve already looked over and a bomb based “SHOT” system that locks onto enemies as you fly over them, allowing an attack when your secondary button is pressed. A special attack is also to hand, but once used it takes quite a while to charge, so don’t rely on this too often.
The audio is pretty uneventful, if truth be told. It’s not that the music or the sound effects are bad; they just don’t seem to carry as much of a punch as you think they should. Classic shooters like Ikaruga and the Gradius series are examples of how the sound can add to the tension when done right. In RayStorm though you sometimes feel that you’re playing this game on a handheld, whilst sitting in a lift with the easy listening pumping out the speakers. In a game of this genre you really want to be “feeling” it, rather than just going through the motions, so it’s a shame that this area hasn’t aged as well as the rest.
As far as the gameplay goes, there is still a solidly playable game here. Eight credits on anything above medium, to most of us anyway, will never be enough. If you need to continue more than 50 times though you are then given unlimited continues, which can’t be a bad thing, but when you look at a shoot ‘em up, you have the thought that once you complete it, you might never go back, unless it is a classic that sticks in the memory, such as R-Type and company. There is a solid difficulty level and the enemies do have some nice random attack patterns, but you never properly feel fulfilled with it all.
The biggest problem RayStorm HD has is that there is some extremely stiff competition on both the PSN and Xbox LIVE Arcade in terms of shmups to take people’s money. The 360 has Ikaruga and R-Type Dimensions as well as some decent Indie titles, which cost a fraction of the price. Looking over to the Playstation we have the original Soldner-X, with the second one very VERY imminent, so is it worth spending the cash when you know that this one is just around the corner?
I think the best thing I can say about this game is that it does what it does in a decent way, but that mortal enemy of us all, age, hasn’t really helped it in the same way that some other titles have overcome that barrier and become timeless. The thing that I find a bit strange is that at the same time as RayStorm coming out on the PSX, we were also given G-Darius, which I personally think was the better of the two and would have more than likely held its own very well on the current consoles with a nice little graphical makeover.
Taito might well have made the first of the shooters in producing Space Invaders all those moons ago, but when you look outside of that particular universe, the company itself has never really made another major brand in this genre, at least not in R-Type and Gradius standards anyway. It’s not to say they haven’t made any decent games in this department, but the arcade giant has usually moved to other areas to make its name, such as the puzzlers and single screen platform genres and in a way it shows here. RayStorm plays well enough and will nicely pass away an afternoon, but if you were asked if you’d go back to it, I don’t think it would be a game that would be getting repeat plays as readily as some other titles in their portfolio (Puzzle Bobble, anyone?).
To sum it all up, I’d say that RayStorm HD is okay and will perhaps be one to look out for when the two online sections of the current gen machines do their offers on their downloadable releases. That will be the right time to get this, as at the current price that is being asked of it, I couldn’t really recommend this highly when there are some already impressive alternatives out there, as well as some just looming over the horizon. As I’ve mentioned, it doesn’t do things badly, it is just that Old Father Time has caught up with it and other than the still reasonably solid gameplay elements contained within, the main result is that of slight disappointment. If G-Darius, with its level branching and enemy grabbing qualities gets the same treatment then we could see a totally different story, but until then we have something that is only essential if you are a die hard shmup fan and average for everyone else.
VideogameUK verdict: 6.5/10
