Night Raid (PSX)

[Frogacuda]

Night Raid
Developer: Takumi
Genre: 2D Shoot em up
Platform: PSX
Released: Jan 2003

The latest 2D shooter from genre devotee Takumi certainly has some big shoes to fill. Takumi, one of several offshoots of Toaplan to devote much of its career to the 2D shmup, rose to notoriety during their partnership with Capcom, which saw arcade and Dreamcast releases of the two GigaWing games and the much lauded Mars Matrix. The latter has become one of the most esteemed shooters to be released in recent years, garnering much accolade for its deep free-form combo system and over-the-top manic gameplay.

But alas, Capcom has exited the arcade market, and lost their intrest in supporting the shooter genre (an intrest which had also seen parterships with Cave, Psikyo, and Raizing). So Takumi is left to fend for themselves without their established franchises to fall back on. Night Raid marks their first shooter after the end of the Capcom partnership. The game seems squarely set on recreating the strong points of their previous efforts, and as such it has alot to live up to.

Night Raid debuted last year on Taito's aging G-Net arcade hardware. Long beleived to be coming to PS2, Night Raid surprised many when it surfaced for the 32-bit PSX earlier this year, a major step back from the Naomi hardware used for Gigawing 2. Suffice it to say what ability the PSX had to wow players with its polygon pushing powers has long been exhauseted. Night Raid will not impress visually. Graphics are primarily polygonal, with the player's ship, bonuses, and powerups remaining sprite based. Even as such, Night Raid is average for the hardware, with relatively simple design. However, it does manage to keep a rock solid framerate, and stay silky smooth, which is more important in the end.



Simplistic geometry seems to do Night Raid's unique visual design justice at least though. Whatever story the game might have is lost on me, but it appears to lake place in some sort of swirling limbo void. The game is largely abstract. I'd be lying if I said the game was visually appealing, though. While I don't take offesnse to any of the designs in particular, the backgrounds tend to be both plain and repetitive, often forgetable. There's not alot of wow factor to the game, which might make it a harder sell.

The game does have things working for it in the audio department, however. While I found the soundtracks to the GigaWing and Mars Matrix games to be grating, Night Raid pumps out a kickass soundtrack that's both memorable and enjoyable. Night Raid shoots for a hard rock sound that makes a perfect compliment to the adreneline fueled action. Guilty Gear fans will surely delight in the heavy guitar tunage.

Music Sample 1|Music Sample 2

In addition to sharing the horizontalmonitor/vertical scrolling format the gameplay focus in Night Raid very much reflects the focus and intrests explored by Takumi in GigaWing and Mars Matrix. Cheif among these is manic bullet dodging, a deep multiplier based scoring system, and an offensive/defensive gameplay "hook" to tie it together.

The powerup system is barely worth mentioning. Suffice it to say it's completely traditional. You can nab powerups and spare bombs that come from destroyed enemies. Joystick acrobats will be happy to know this game is as over the top as previus Takumi outings. Like their other recent efforts, you can move over top of enemies without colliding, and there's no walls or scenery to crash into, leaving only the waves of bullets to contend with. Your hit box in the game is very small, like it was in Mars Matrix, which makes it easer yo navigate some of the firing patters. The firing patterns themselves are less of the "slow bullet hell" variety this time, opting for a much faster, but less screen filling approach. The difficulty curve is pretty steady, but by level 3 or 4 the game becomes downright brutal.



To offer a bit of releif from the madness, Takumi introduces a new gimmick to take the place of the reflect gimmicks they pioneered. As best my japanese reading will allow me to interpret this is called the "Hog Launcher". At the tap of a button you will become invincible and project a ghost of your ship forward. If it makes contact with an enemy ship it's up to you to dash about the screen furiously dash about as fast as possible to rack up as many hits as you can. This works best when there's severalships that can withstand multiple hits on screen as you can go back and forth. This mechanic really is best experienced on an arcade stick. While it's no less functional on a d-pad, it just feels right on a joystick. After using the Hog Launcher a meter will recharge over time, and not until it's full can you use it again (like the reflect in GigaWing). The Hog Launcher isn't as strategic as Mars Matrix's mosquito, but it's somehow very satisfying anyway.

But as any devoted genre fan will tell you playing for score is the heart and soul of any good shooter. While some prefer linear scoring based solely on destruction others like Cave and Takumi opt for multiplier based scoring systems which allow savy players to increase their scores exponentially. Night Raid offfers up one of the most unique attempts at such a system yet. On the left hand side of the screen, you have a multiplier. All enemies killed will be worth their base point value times the multiplier value. When you destroy an enemy, small triangular bonuses will pop out, often many of them in a streamer-like fasion. When you collect one, your meter will go up, but when you let one fall off the bottom of the screen, your meter will go down. In fact, it can go down into negative numbers making it possible to actually lose points and even get negative scores. The meter returns itself to zero over time, so either way chaining fast is important. Takumi have taken this into account in their score keeping. The game not only keeps high positive scores (hot) but high negative scores as well (cold), and even the best near-zero scores, giving you three ways to play. It's a novel twist, and probably the best thing the game has going for it.



As a package, Night Raid is pretty minimal. No unlockables, no replays no nothing. In fact, to keep the frame rate smooth, 2 player co-op was taken out (a shame because I could see team work being a big part of hot scoring strategy). Also mysteriously absent is any kind of pause feature. The game does have score attack stages, however, and selectable difficulties, as well as a nice rendered intro, but all in all I'd categorize the home port trimmings as "minimal." This is unfortunate as the wealth of extras in Mars Matrix was one of the things that really kept you coming back during the learning phase, and really rewarded you for scoreplay.

At the end of the day, Night Raid probably isn't going to fulfill anyone's wishes for another Mars Matrix. However for fans of this school of shooter design Night Raid offers up a fun and intense ride different enough to make it worth playing. I'd like to see Takumi explore what they've done in this game more on more capable hardware. While I could take or leave the visual style, the scoring mechanics intrigue me, and keep me playing. With no real extras and a $40 price tag this game probably isn't going to win over the skeptics and the casuals, but Night Raid still offers the depth and intensity we've come to expect from a Takumi shooter, easily worthy of bearing the name.

[NeoZeedeater]

Excellent review. It's well-written and gives all the necessary info.

I would like to play the game but since I'm not that big of a Takumi fan, I might hold out for a potential budget domestic release.

[Frogacuda]

Originally posted by NeoZeedeater
Excellent review. It's well-written and gives all the necessary info.

Thanks. I've got a few more on the way, too. Not enough reviews lately. Let's have another contest, Nick!

I would like to play the game but since I'm not that big of a Takumi fan, I might hold out for a potential budget domestic release.

Probably wise. It's very much a Takumi game and all that entails. If you don't like GW and MM, you won't like NR, but if you do dig the school, NR is sufficiently different to be worth owning.

[NeoZeedeater]

I do like Mars Matrix but I only play it on occasion. I can see why people praise the hell out of it. I just like Cave's shooters a lot more.

[Click_Stick]

Good write-up there, but I am far from convinced. I'm not big on Takumi to begin with, but the game seems hardly intriguing anyway.

And it looks like ass.

[Frogacuda]

Originally posted by Click_Stick
And it looks like ass.

Does that really matter? On the superficial side of things it sounds great at least. But I just like the scoring system, and dashing around for combos is fun too.

I don't really get the flak that Takumi takes. They're a bit more streamlined and gimmicky than Cave, but they're still super-manic and very deep.

[Jeremy]

I really dig how the visuals look. They're nice and complex, but not TOO complex.

[Punky Skunk]

Nice review. You should try to get this on shmups.com, if you haven't considered it.

$40? Where?

[Frogacuda]

Originally posted by Rob
$40? Where?

I think it retailed for 4800Yen. That's where I got that from. I could be wrong though.

Originally posted by Rob
Nice review. You should try to get this on shmups.com, if you haven't considered it.

Thanks I may do that later. Are they taking reviews on stuff reviewed on the mk2 site also? Because I always hated their Fantasy Zone review (lumped SMS and arcade into one review, which more or less ignored the arcade version).I just don't want to give this game a numerical score. I hate doing that.

[Punky Skunk]

Here's the topic over at shmups that brought on the suggestion: http://dynamic5.gamespy.com/%7Eshmup...pic.php?t=1682

Questions would best be directed at Malc, but I'm sure you could at least suggest a split.

About the scores, it looks like they dropped the individual categories and are going for an overall number, so it shouldn't be that bad.