Wow, this is very cool and totally overwhelming. Anyone else given it a shot?
I'm still figuring it out, but I think I have the basics. The gameplay follows on from Galaga 88, it feels like a direct sequel, with visuals more closely resembling Ikaruga.
Instead of formations swooping down from the top only, they can appear from all edges of the screen. Orange warning boxes appear at the edge of the screen to indicate where they will enter, and beautiful blue swirling lines are drawn telling you how the formation will move.
You'd think that makes the game too easy, but the speed and frequency with which formations appear make this signposting essential.
There are two main new tricks, first each formation has a critical enemy, an orange ball, which when hit destroys that group. The game throws more enemies than you can handle at you often, so you have to go for these formation leaders. There is also a combo system around destroying these orange balls in quick succession.
The next trick is two placeable drones, which weaken your firepower but can sit strategically placed in the middle of each enemy swarm waiting for key enemies.
Occasionally a black hole will appear, which if shot enough sucks up all enemies allowing you to capture them. Captured enemies then fire rapid circling bullets which allows you to fill the screen with your attack, although this is short lived as they are vulnerable to enemy fire.
I think the basic strategy is to keep the combo going as much as you can, while picking off as many ships as possible in a formation before going for the orange ball which takes out the lot. Drone placement is critical in this, in order to survive some waves and to keep the combo going by placing drones in anticipation of otherwise unreachable enemies.
The whole thing is relentless and visually perfect. It fires off all those memories of playing Galaxian and Galaga in the arcade years ago, while at the same time being something new.
Need to spend more time with this!
Oh man this sounds MINT! I've been looking forward to this aswell but I completely forgot about it, definetly will download it when I get back to my manor.
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Sounds exciting.
This downloadable game thing appears to be actually working eh?
FYI here is a propaganda page:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/g/galagalegionsxboxlivearcade/
This is Image Fight meets Psyvariar!
The enemy patterns have been very carefully figured out as well. The usage of the enemy scripted lines as a cue to the player is a very cheap (as in development cost) thing to do but makes the game so much better.
Galaga Legions DX is coming
There's a bit of footage in the last few seconds of this video, diagonal positioning of drones and sped up:
Looks even more like Image Fight now too. Awesome!
Oooh I think Galaga was the first arcade game I played when I was 6/7 years old, the local chinese takeaway had one...
Galaga Legions is superb, wish I'd spent more time with it. It's totally direct no nonsense gaming. DX looks totally mental O_o
I loved Galaga Legions, I just didn't give it the time it deserved. It had quite a noticeable dosage of the awesome 90s Namco vibe to it too, it was great the way Namco couldn't compete with Sega in terms of hardware - so they used to make their arcade games REALLY bright, crazy, loud and brash to catch people's attention.
Some screens here;
Yeah, I'll be all over this. Loved the first one, but was utterly shit at it.
I just clocked adventure mode for the first time and I totally exhausted every extra life I had! This is game is tough, especially if you are trying to position yourself for good scores and I dedicated many evenings this week just to clear it. Area 5 is riddled with patterns that are relative to your position so improv was absolutely necessary for me.
It feels like they have a solid foundation to build DX on
Some more screens have popped up - looks absolutely mental!
TRAILER!1!
Face PALM,
So went back to play GL on the 360 and realised I've been playing wrong. I'd totally missed the detachable drone mechanic. What a dinkus. TT_TT
Face PALM,
So went back to play GL on the 360 and realised I've been playing wrong. I'd totally missed the detachable drone mechanic. What a dinkus. TT_TT
Oh man the FOCUS FIRE system looks intense. I hope you can still detach the drones in DX. I'm guessing it's right stick to focus fire and then a button to drop a drone at the current location? Moving it to a more analogue style for the shooting directions will open up the gameplay and scoring a lot. Looks great.
I just clocked adventure mode for the first time and I totally exhausted every extra life I had! This is game is tough, especially if you are trying to position yourself for good scores and I dedicated many evenings this week just to clear it. Area 5 is riddled with patterns that are relative to your position so improv was absolutely necessary for me.
It feels like they have a solid foundation to build DX on
Impressive, best I've done so far is getting to Area 3. Will have to try harder...
. Like the fact that you can score attack any area without having cleared it first in adventure mode.
I'm thinking that you will see a massive improvement now that you are aware of the detachable drones!
Yes, it feels fresh not having to unlock something for once. The complete score attack mode is right there from the beginning.
There isn't much in way of scoring info on this which is unfortunate, I haven't figured out how to score well so I'm anticipating DX and hoping it will garner more interest and result in a few more youtube videos.
Out tomorrow for 800 points!
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/309063/news/galaga-legions-dx-hits-xbla-june-29/
Played this for a bit and it's really fun.
Basically, they've gone nuts with how most people played the previous game, ie destroying everything as quickly as possible by shooting the explosive carriers at the opportune time.
The detachable drones are gone and the controls are set up like twin stick shooter of the good variety. The control properties are inverted for some areas so focus fire will feel different and this adds a bit of variety beyond new formations. DX has been sped up quite a bit to accomodate the added precision from the controls. The enemy formations have also been adjusted with greater density and tuned weak points, it "flows" really well without being easy.
There's quite a bit of punch to the visual and audio effects, the screen is constantly lit up so it conveys a more explosive theme than the last. There's also a mad bonus round at the end of each area which is timed but additional time can be awarded depending on how fast you clear every wave. It's absolutely mental.
Cool, good impressions!
Sounds like a strong re-working, I'll give this a proper go as soon as I can