"Hardcore Gaming" sucks at Rayxanber

[SuperDeadite]

LOL this is an entertaining read.     Just laughable in every way.  Using Turbo Switches to control the boost in Ray II?  WTF? Someone needs to learn how to use a d-pad.  Another amusing case where someone decides to bash good games because they suck at them.  His review of Ray 1 is even worse, Ray 1 is the most balanced, best designed game in the trilogy.  I know few people have played the original, and even fewer have done so on the real hardware, but man this article is terrible. 

Oh and I love how he goes on about the canceled Playstation game, but isn't even aware of the two Vajras on LA.  The first of which was even in released in the USA.  This whole article just reinforces why emulators should never be used to judge a game's quality.  Just cheating your way through makes you miss all the special things that make games fun.

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/rayxanber/rayxanber.htm

[soop]

Also, the PC Engine CD-ROM was an underdog console.  Just so you know.

[PunkicCyborg]

HardcoreN00b101 is more like it. He doesn't like RayII because he can't control his ship well enough to dodge enemies and doesn't want to take the time to learn the levels. Also the weapons being underpowered is just a part of the equation making it so you have to play a perfect game. That's the point of playing them, no slops allowed. It really is like playing pool. You have to position yourself perfectly to take out certain enemies and avoid obstacles and as soon as clear them out you have to be positioned perfectly for the next.
I don't know why this person decided to spend so much time writing this article if he didn't like the games or want to find out what makes them good.

[ProfessorProfessorson]

What little I played of Rayxanber II when I owned it, it did seem to have a high difficulty curve, but also I think it could have been overcome with repeated play/memorization, and I don't always expect to beat every game I play, enjoy or like for that matter anyway. There are plenty of hard as hell classics out there that you know you probably wont beat except on the off chance, but you play them regardless due to the challenge, making you want to push harder on your next attempt, and the fun they bring to the table by proxy of that and also because they are just solid games. Some people feel a classic shooter, action, fighter, etc game is only good if they can beat it after putting in just average effort, and drop playing titles they cant snuff in one or two evenings (usually the same types who cant beat something like Vigilante after a few tries, or who bust AES sticks in anger over sessions of Samurai Spirits 2).

Regardless of it all, the problem for me with Rayxanber II was that there were so many other shooters on PCE card and cd wise that really were just better in general, that when I went to reach for a game to play, I just skipped over it most of the time, regardless of its difficulty. I mean, I never beat L-Dis, but I played the hell out of that one off and on for years because it was so well made over all. Given the chance, if I had the time and all and nothing else to do and a copy was close by, I'd probably go back and play Rayxanber II again though on a rainy day. But still, its nothing I am dying to do or anything....

[Arkhan]

I don't like Rayxanber much in general since I am picky about horizontal shooters and would rather play a different one.

It's still more fun than Gradius, IMO

if i never beat Rxnanadnfanyber , I don't give two shits.  I beat Paranoia. It was better.

[PunkicCyborg]

Games like Ldis and Gradius have a lot of just random enemies on the screen that you can just totally avoid no problem and almost seem to be just randomly placed. Every single enemy in RayII is carefully positioned though and you can't just avoid them. You are forced to skillfully dodge or destroy every single one of them. That's what bugs me when people say it wasn't developed well or w/e because a lot of time was put in timing them all and making it challenging every step of the game.
 That bugged me to hell when I read the article about how he had to use all these fancy emulator tricks to get past level 3 with the mechanical crab boss. using save states and slow down to get through it to me is more complicated then just playing the level till you learn the pattern. I'm no master at the game, in fact I can't clear level 4, but I felt pretty accomplished when I mastered 3 and it is so easy now. This dude shouldn't have even included in the article that he used those methods to get through the stage. Could you imagine if someone did a professionalish review of say SMB and the author was like "Good luck getting through this one without save states". People would go nuts over the article over at HG101.

[Arkhan]

Oh.  I don't think Rayxanber II is a bad game at all.  I just don't like it.

I love LDis though.

Horizontal shooters usually bore me.  I only like a few.  Aldynes, Ldis, Paranoia, and Terraforming for example.


Its generally the really odd ones that I like.   I've always been a vertical favorer.

But yeah this article is retarded

[Joe Redifer]

I would have never have thought to put the dash button on turbo.  To me that seems like it'd be instant death because you'd be out of control.  The game can indeed be mastered but the game play just doesn't beg me to keep coming back and try harder like R-Type 3 does. 

[apachacha]

I liked the first Rayxanber, and thusly disagree with the bad rating it got, but I think someone should be allowed to voice their general opinion on something.

[SuperDeadite]

I liked the first Rayxanber, and thusly disagree with the bad rating it got, but I think someone should be allowed to voice their general opinion on something.

Voicing your opinion is fine.  But if you are really gonna write an article and try to be professional, you should at the very least understand how the game works.  The green charge shot is useless?  What? It's the most powerful shot in the game. 
Also when running in an emulator, the graphics look a bit like they are lacking detail.  But remember the first game runs in VGA 640x480.  Meaning it has double the pixels that the PC-Engine games do.  Meaning you have a lot more space to fill to make a game looked detailed.  A lot of early high-res games had this issue, but back then anything 2D in that resolution was quite impressive.  Also Ray 1 is 8 stages, while 2 and 3 were only 6.  And all 8 stages look totally different, a lot more variety then the sequels, especially 3.

He even goes on about "why wasn't this on X68000?"  Easy answer, the FM Towns had a CD-ROM, the music was all written by a real guitar player.  That wouldn't translate too well to FM or MIDI...

He's welcome to hate the game.  But he clearly didn't take the time to learn how to play it, that's my issue really.

[Arkhan]

It's not that he didn't learn how to play it, its that he just came off as very full-of-shit in his review because he fumbled around and hated the game but still wanted to sound cool.

[apachacha]

I know the guy and he asked me to forward this following response, if at all possible. These are his sentiments, not mine, and I am posting them exactly as he wrote them, without editing or changing anything.

"I'm a veteran of dozens and dozens and dozens of shmups, both vertical and hori, dating all the way back to arcade Galaxian. It is my preferred gaming genre, the perfect test of reactionary skill to easily digested visual information. While people drifted away from them, I continued to import shmups from Japan. Where possible I prefer to play on actual hardware, and I still believe in the worthiness of the 1CC (score attacking doesn't appeal to me so much, but I can respect it). Try to understand the difference between playing for personal satisfaction and playing to collect screens for an article.

I also love difficult games, whether it's modern games such as Demon's Souls (which is actually pretty easy) or, as someone here mentioned, Paranoia/Psychosis on the PCE. I've never completed it but it's one of my favourites on the system. If I were to write an article on it I would emulate, but only so I could take plenty of screenshots in order to showcase its excellence. I'm not an enemy here - I support the PCE and shmup community, otherwise I would not spend countless hours screengrabbing, writing and then HTML designing to make these articles. Rayxanber III was an incredible, excellent hori shmup, hence the effort for the entire article.

Having said all that, I still think Rayxanber II is absolute crap. And a quick Google brought up a few other sites echoing the same sentiment. In fact on the Shmups forum, one poster even commented that he had never bothered to open his factory sealed Rayxanber III, because the second game was so awful.

I stand by what I've written."

[SuperDeadite]

The Rayxanber series is basically R-Type perfected.  The check-points are tough, but you only need one powerup to be at max, and the game always gives you the correct one.  If you don't like this style of game, so be it.  But design wise, 1>2>3, that is all there is to say.

and LOL@shmups forum.

[KingDrool]

and LOL@shmups forum.

Why? (Just curious)

[SuperDeadite]

and LOL@shmups forum.

Why? (Just curious)

Actually it's nothing against the forum itself really.  But I find it hilarious when people post stuff like "i saw this on the shmups forum therefore it is true."  There are some cool people there, but it's certainly not the "true last word on shooters" like a lot of people tend to assume.  So one shooter hoarder keeps a sealed copy cause he doesn't like the game and this guy uses it as defense of his article?  ROLF to the 10th degree.

Oh and out of curiosity, I scanned the forums over at hardcore gaming.  It seems he's gotten a lot of negative comments about articles where he basically just makes stuff up and writes it as fact.  So yeah, his opinion on Rayxanber is now totally void imo.