Well, shooters are all about gameplay, and while
Silpheed is no
Radiant Silvergun, it's still a solid title. The weapons system has a few too many duds for my taste, and the few bullet-dodging screens are nowhere near as intense as in
Silvergun, but the game is still thrilling while it lasts, and it's easy enough to pick up and play again that you'll find yourself wasting your spare time blasting away in it.
The plot is pretty typical shooter fare: alien menace takes over planet, special fighters sent to save the world, yadda yadda yadda. The plot itself unwinds both inside the levels and in between the shooting with some absolutely gorgeous FMV that really pushes the envelope of realism--I dare say it's almost Square quality. The core gameplay, of course, is what you'd expect: if it moves, shoot it.
Since all shooters use the same basic formula, any game in the series has to be at least somewhat innovative to keep people's interest. And Silpheed is no exception. It's not as impressive as I would have liked, but the system certainly works.
The first thing you'll note is a weapons loadout screen. The Silpheed can carry two weapons, one on each side, and at the beginning of the game you have only a straight-firing vulcan cannon and one that fires in a V-pattern. As you beat each level, you unlock more weapons that you can load the Silpheed out with. They range from the typical laser--Optic Beam, here--to the inventive but almost impossible to use--the sword-type thingie. (I could look up the name, but it's not like anyone uses them anyways!) For the most part, the loadouts are fairly standard, and I found quite a few of them pretty useless for my playing style--napalm and the aforementioned sword. Indeed, I found that some variation of 'forward shooter' plus the 'V' vulcan got me the best results throughout the game.
The main scoring 'trick' in Silpheed is the distance multiplier. Depending on how close you were to the enemy when you destroyed it, you get your score multiplied by some factor. Almost touching is 16 times normal score, whereas far away is your basic 1x. If you destroy an entire squadron of enemy ships, you get bonus points, which also depend on how far away you were from each ship when you destroyed it. So the more dangerously you play the game, zooming up to the ships and wailing on them nose-to-nose, the more points you get. Indeed, the only way to beat some of the bosses in a reasonable amount of time is this nose-to-nose battling, which makes for some pretty hairy battles.
The levels range from your inside-the-ship standards to a spinning hyperspace to the inevitable planet surfaces. There are usually one or more minibosses in any given level, and a big ugly boss at the end that will keep you on your toes until you learn its pattern.
Sure, it may sound like almost every other shooter ever made, but it's fun.
