(maker's HP)
screen shotsGuardian Force is an arcade shooting game made by Success. It was released May 98 in the arcades, and August 98 on the Saturn. This review is based on the Saturn version.
Guardian Force is a reasonably innovative game. The game inherits the concept of the rotatable turret from some very old games, such as Ikari [arcade] and Barunba [PCE], incorporates it with the weapons, enemy patterns, and multi-part bosses of modern shooting games, and finishes it with a well-designed scoring system. The result is a game with fresh, solid game play, with good excitement and high replay value.
The player controls a tank. The screen is top-view, and scrolls compulsively in various directions. The +-key moves the tank around the screen; the control feels just like any typical shooting game. The player uses the two turret rotation buttons to rotate the turret in increments of 45 degrees. (The turret can actually fire in other directions during mid-rotation.) The fire button shoots, and the special weapon button fires a powerful "special weapon", the equivalence of the emergency "bomb". (The chassis also fires a force beam to the front, but the tank can fight all right without it.) I feel that the controls are very smooth and intuitive (the buttons can be configured freely), and I got used to the rotating turret in no time. 2-player simultaneous play is available.
In orthodox shooting games, the player ship tends to cling to the rear edge of the screen, so as to avoid loss of firepower. Because there is the rotatable turret in this game, the player can roam the entire screen without crippling loss of firepower, and the stages are designed so that the player has to be flexible with his positioning in order to stay alive. (For example, some immobile gun placements fire very powerful shots - but only to their front.) This extra dimension of freedom adds much to the playability (depth) of the game.
There are 5 weapons which can be chosen with the turret change item. The weapons are different yet quite balanced; it is more advantageous (towards survival) to choose the weapon according to the situation than to use only one weapon throughout the game (but grabbing the item when it changes to the desired color may not always be easy). There are 10 levels of power-up that the player slowly accumulates throughout the game by picking up force crystals. When the player loses a tank (by taking a single hit), the turret goes down a level, but the destroyed tank releases several force crystals, with which most of the lost level can be recovered. It seems to me that the current weapon type affects the rotation speed of the turret. The weapons behave somewhat differently on 2P side: the fire patterns tend to be more spread out, with less concentrated firepower.
Though there is auto-fire, the player may not want to just permanently hold down the fire button for some of the weapons (if he is skilled enough to take care of it). For instance, the Horn (an exploding shot) has a very low fire rate, and the Fang (a large energy ball on a chain) sometimes has to be retrieved earlier so as to hit something close to the tank. Also, the scoring system is such that sometimes the high-score-seeking player should cease fire temporary.
The graphics and sounds are average: not very flashy, but pleasant, and convey the atmosphere well. The stage design is excellent, with a good variety of enemies and terrain, and interesting boss designs. There are 8 stages, with several mid-bosses every stage. The game is well-balanced: though enemy attacks may sometimes be fierce, there are usually warnings before such attacks, in terms of a gun taking aim and pointing right at the player, and sometimes said gun charging up in preparation to fire, for example. Game story is minimal, yet existent in the game play.
Guardian Force is a solid game with some innovation. This game is recommended to all players who play games for playability. However, there are few super-dense enemy shot patterns or barrages of super-fast enemy shots (most of these are at low frequency with advance warning); very dedicated shooting game maniacs may find this game too 'soft' for their taste.
Copyright 3 Sep 1998 Alan Shiu Ho Kwan
Alan Kwan / tarot@netvigator.com / created 3 Sep 98