A Playable and Approachable Horizontal Shooter

Most games have a plot of some sort, to the point that for a huge number of them the first paragraph on its store page isn’t about what you do, but rather who’s doing it and why. For a visual novel this makes sense, seeing as that type of game is basically an interactive book, but in something like, for example, an RPG, it would be nice to know up front if it’s turn-based strategy, hybrid real-time with pausing for action commands, single-player or party-based combat, and a million other variation besides.

This isn’t a problem arcade shooters tend to have, though, seeing as “plot” is frequently an afterthought at best. The wiki for Mushihimesama probably explains why you’re shooting all those bugs, and there’s bound to be some kind of explanation for what’s going on in Ikaruga, Truxton, Darius, Mars Matrix, etc, but generally there are so many bullets flying around it’s hard to pay attention.

One Overpowered Ship, Thousands of Enemies, and a Clear Blue Sky To Destroy Them In

Continuing in the tradition of arcade games where the story is dumped in an obscure sub-menu, Revolgear Zero is a horizontal shooter where two young women with different piloting styles take on a robo-army while unleashing epic firepower from the very first button-press. Blue-haired Shizuku is a balanced pilot whose laser-based weaponry gives good screen coverage, while red-haired Akane packs a more physical, focused punch.

Some levels suit the weapon style of one over the other, but both can be used to rack up seriously impressive scores once you’ve got the feel for a favorite loadout, plus get a handle on the various kinds of attack each of them have at any given moment.

Graze Counter Looking for a Little Steam Love on Greenlight

The player ship comes with an R-Type-style option on the front, called the megabit, completely indestructible and the source of most of the shooting strategy in the game. The megabit can be split into two smaller options with a button press, and this changes the type of gun the ship fires plus gives a nice boost to movement speed.

Before a new game begins you can choose your pilot, the weapon used when the megabit is attached at the front, and the weapon and movement pattern when it’s split. While not every weapon will fit any single player’s style, all of them are effective at pumping out the firepower with generous screen coverage.

The megabit also provides two other attacks. Hold down a quick charge and the bits start rotating around the ship, shooting out when you let up on the button. This leaves the ship defenseless for the time it takes for the swirling megabit vortex to fly out and back again, but the heavy damage is worth it, plus acts as a quick-charge to the energy meter and brings back any coins it runs into. The other attack is an extra-strong laser, called the burst, that not only tears through anything it hits but also grants a brief period of invulnerability for the duration of fire.

The burst is charged by ramming the megabit into enemies and absorbing incoming bullets, and the bar fills fast when used correctly. A full charge grants a shield good for a single hit, emptying the gauge on use, so it may be worth holding onto in trickier situations, but in general the beam and its invulnerability are meant to be used rather than hoarded for a special occasion that may never come, and its use ties directly into score chasing as well.

Review: Little Rocket Lab

Little Rocket Lab is about as cozy an introduction to automation as could be imagined, with a cast of likable characters in a run-down, charming town.

Every destroyed enemy drops a coin, starting at copper and rising to silver and gold as more are collected. It can take a bit to get to gold normally, but the burst laser instantly rewards the gold coins and helps rack up the score from the level’s start. A meter at the top of the screen shows how much time is left before the coin drops down to the next tier, and each collected coin fills it back up. The ship doesn’t have much of a magnet on it, so there will be a few coins left behind for normal players, but the high-score charts should fill up quickly with near-superhuman runs.

Revolgear Zero is a horizontal shooter where two young women with different piloting styles take on a robo-army while unleashing epic firepower from the very first button-press.

That’s because Revolgear Zero is, despite the number of weapons and abilities, a fantastically playable and approachable shooter. The movement feels just right, enemy patterns don’t tend to be overwhelming, and the variety of weaponry means there’s bound to be a build that clicks for you. The Mission Mode acts as a good tutorial as well, giving bite-sized challenges for the gameplay elements that let you practice as much as needed with minimal time-sink.

There’s even a practice mode with low-threat enemies streaming in on a single-screen environment, letting you swap out weapons on the fly to find the perfect loadout. Finally, the main game is generous with the extra lives, making decent-length rounds accessible with a little practice. You can’t easily quarter-feed to the end, though, seeing as continuing starts you at the beginning of the level you died in and the later levels will happily chew through the stock of lives until you figure out how to use all of the ship’s offensive and defensive features.

Closing Comments:

While Revolgear Zero takes a minute to learn, it’s a big fun shooter that’s more interested in being played than punishing the player. Beating it on the normal difficulty isn’t that hard, which I discovered when the gameplay systems clicked and I blew through it with double-digit lives left over, but harder difficulty levels and unlocking Boost Mode (same levels, faster energy regeneration) give the game plenty of replay. Arcade shooters tend to be known for their difficulty, like the excellent Sektori, but approachable games like Revolgear Zero are perfect for introducing new players to the genre while having enough depth to its systems to make the harder difficulties worth exploring and repeatedly dying in for more experienced fans.