Reviewed: April 23, 2007
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
Konami
Developer
Digital Eclipse
Released: April 18, 2007
Genre: Shooter
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Everyone
6
6
6
6
6.0
Supported Features:
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
It’s scary when you reach that point in life where you can’t remember which games you have played. I know I have played Gyruss before. I don’t remember the actual gameplay as much as traveling to each of the planets in our solar system on my quest to reach and defend Earth.
For those who have never played Gyruss, or for those who have and forgot, just imagine what would happen if they took Galaga and wrapped the playing field around the inside of a cylinder, so you end up rotating around the play area almost like Tempest. Well, you don’t have to imagine; just grab a copy of Gyruss and defend the solar system once again in this enhanced version for the Xbox 360 Live Arcade.
The actual gameplay isn’t much more involved than Galaga or any other shooter from the 80’s. The circular twist is a cool concept although it doesn’t lend itself to the actual gameplay…just the confusion. You spin around the star field shooting incoming waves of ships while dodging their occasional fire. Any ships that get through the initial assault all line up in formation at the bottom of the cylinder then slowly fly toward you, either trying to ram you or shoot you. The occasional asteroid or meteor needs to be dodged and satellites joined by electrical energy will try to surround you.
Much like Galaga, you have the ability to earn a double-fire weapon, but no longer must you sacrifice a ship to do so. Simply wait for the energy orb flanked by twin satellites and shoot the middle orb to double your firepower, making the game much easier.
Every few levels you will reach a planet as you near Earth and will be presented with a challenge stage, again, like Galaga, where ships fly in and circle once or twice giving you precious seconds to shoot them down. These stages are all about memorization, where the ships will enter, and where you need to be waiting. Having double-fire helps significantly in these challenges, and perfect scores reward you with 10,000 bonus points.
There are also some nice new multiplayer additions including online co-op and head-to-head modes. Gyruss even makes use of the widescreen format to put two play screens side-by-side in the online modes, but oddly enough, if you want to play two-player locally, you can’t play at the same time like you can online. You have to pass the controller.
Graphically, the game has been enhanced with new ship designs and colorful special effects and backgrounds. The game screen is still 4:3 in a rotated view so widescreen TV’s get the familiar blue borders.
Interestingly enough, I found I could get further into the game and score much higher points playing in the classic visual style, which is available in the options. There is something less “cluttered” about those old-style sprites that makes it easier to dodge incoming fire and target the simpler enemy ships.
It was just last month that I was playing the new DDR on the 360 which has this awesome dance remix of the Gyruss theme song. At the time I couldn’t place the music or the game behind the name, but now it all comes back to me. The original Gyruss was the first coin-op to feature stereo sound and this new enhanced version clearly delivers a solid sound package with an all new remixed version (not quite as good as the DDR version), or if you want you can turn on the 80’s audio track and see just how far we have come in 25 years.
The rest of the audio package is the standard sound effects of weapons and lasers and explosions. It’s only slightly improved over the ancient sounds of the original, but the stereo and bass is quite nice on both sound and music.
For $5 (400 points) this isn’t a terrible game, but unless you are a fan of retro arcade games in general or just want to own every last title in the Xbox Live Arcade library, you might want to pass on this one. I probably would have scored this game higher a few months ago, but now we have games like RoboBlitz, Boom Boom Rocket, and Alien Hominid that are showing us just where the Live Arcade can take us. Lackluster retro ports just aren’t going to cut it much longer.
It’s hard to recommend Gyruss, even for the 200 Achievement points since many of them are nearly impossible to earn without spending way too much time with this game. And if you already own Galaga, you certainly don’t want to double-dip, even with the funky circular gameplay. It was original in 1983 - today...not so much.
Gyruss is a rather uninspired XBLA release. Sure, Digital Eclipse put all the bells and whistles on the enhanced version, but when the classic plays better than the enhanced you have to wonder what went wrong. It’s definitely a fun shooter and given the choice between this and Galaga I’d probably go with Gyruss, but if you are frugal when it comes to parting with your precious MS points you’ll probably want to save up for something better down the road.