by Sarge Fri Dec 07, 2018 12:13 am
I had to give Rohga: Armor Force a shot, since shmups are going over here, and Data East December on Hardcore Retro Gaming. Two birds with one stone! It's a mech game, but it ends up being a sort of platformer/shmup hybrid. The graphics are top-notch the entire way, and despite feeding a crapton of quarters in (pretty sure it was around 40), the game doesn't feel blatantly unfair. I could actually see someone that has practiced potentially 1CC'ing this game.
You can choose different mechs that give you varying power and mobility. I tended to like the "aerial" mech loadout, with the short-range sword that will often block projectiles. There are four weapons to choose from, the default Vulcan gun, a Cluster shot that's pretty powerful, a Grenade launcher that actually seems not terribly powerful, but whose blast absorbs projectiles, and the Laser. Oh, the Laser. I love that thing. It tends to rip enemies to shreds, and was easily my favorite weapon.
There are also little jetpack dudes you can grab to augment your firepower, and if your mech is blown up, you become one of those jetpack dudes, at which point one hit will kill you. You can get a mech back, but I think it requires grabbing three powerups. Survival for that long rarely happens.
Anyway, the game might be a touch too long for my tastes. It took me 1:12 of realtime to finish. Still, I'd say give it a shot. I think the game plays swimmingly, and it might be one of Data East's most polished titles I've played yet. I'll give it a... hmm, I was going to say 8, but I'm going to go with 7.5. Either are valid. I might not be a massive shmup fan, but this is easily one of the better ones I've played, and I figure genre fans will enjoy it even more.
