


STORY:
In the year 2119, humans began
setting up colonies throughout the galaxy, and
established a
"Star Federation" to
govern over all these colonies.
One hundred years later, humans had expanded so
far that this Federation found it difficult to
provide security; so they began putting the
colonies under martial law. This didn't quite go
over well with the folks at the Secilian
colony, who began to put together a
rebellion. Which of course includes the mandatory
experimental fighter that is supposed to
single-handedly retake Earth. :)
Intro sequence and Story
PLAYERS:
2P simultaneous.






DEATH
PENALTY: Dying simply reduces your
main cannon one level and removes one from your
maximum lock-ons. Continuing puts you back to
square one, but the game will throw out a number
of power-ups (which alternates between several
varied power-ups and a single Full
Power-Up) to get you
back on your feet.
CHALLENGE: RayForce was
difficult without being cheap; I wish I could say
the same about RayStorm.
It seems to have fallen victim to the
"Smart-Bomb Trap", i.e. since the
designers gave us a smart-bomb
+ invincibility attack, they feel free to make
the game as impossible as they want. While the
flurry of bullets in and of itself usually isn't
too bad during the levels themselves, the bosses
are severe pains. Many of them love to fire these
fast-moving lasers that you usually don't even
know fired until you're dead, along with their
own flurries of bullets. So, boss battles,
especially later in the game, usually degenerate
into Smart Bomb-Die-Continue-Smart Bomb-Die
contests. Success in this game is usually not
based on how good you are at the later bosses,
but how good you
are at the early ones, so you have that many more
Smart Bombs to use against the later ones. Ugh.
CONTROL:
You've got two control options. If you choose Auto,
the Lock-On Laser will automatically
fire when you lock on to something. If you choose
Manual, you've got to do it
yourself. Personally, I
find Auto annoying, but your mileage may vary.
EXTRAS: Sadly, there is no
Vertical mode to be
found. However, WD added in several neato things.
Firstly, is the "Training mode".
You have the ability
to set the difficulty of each level individually,
as well
as set the number of ships you have. But, if you
set any level below a difficulty rating of 4, or
set your ships above the default number, you go
into "Training mode". That means you
can only play the first four levels, and
disqualified you from the $10000 contest. (Which
is a moot point now, since that contest has long
since concluded. Well us Europeans never even
got one. Miserly Sony bunch..! Mike.) You
also had the Extra Mode. In this
mode, you could select between the Original
soundtrack and the Neu Tanz remixes.
The game itself had slight graphic differences,
slight differences in enemy placements, bosses
would have different attacks, and so on. While it
was a bit more difficult than the Arcade
Mode, power-ups are more common, so it
balances out. (If you can beat the Arcade Mode,
you can beat this one. In fact, I've only played
the Extra Mode about three times, and beat it the
third.) Finally, if you beat both the Arcade and
Extra mode (while not in Training mode), you can
access the secret 13 Ships Mode,
where you are
given a fleet of 13 ships consisting of 3 Manual RG1's,
3 Auto RG1's, 3 Manual RG2's,
3 Auto RG2's, and
1 R-Gray 0 with which to
complete the game (no continues.) The R-Gray
0 is similar to the R-Gray 1,
except the cannon powers up at half the speed,
and you have no HLA or Special Attack. I've read
you can unlock some sort of accuracy counter
option if you beat the game in this mode, but
I've never had the patience to do so for myself.
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Raystorm
was one of the first of the new breed of 3D
'old-school' shooters to appear in the West,
courtesy of Sony and Working Designs.. A quick note:
This review concerns itself with then Working Designs release of RayStorm in
North America. A Japanese Saturn release also
exists under the title "Layer Section
2", but I do not know how that compares to
the PSX version. (A review of the Saturn version
is floating about somewhere on Shmups.) IMO, Victor Ireland
really got shafted when it came to the RaySeries.
According to the RayStorm manual, Working Designs
tried to get the rights to whip out RayForce
in
the West, but found out the rights had just been
sold to Acclaim. So, they resolved to be first in
line when RayStorm came out in the arcades. And
they were. So, Acclaim got RayForce, and WD got
RayStorm. So who came out ahead? As much as it
pains me to say it, definitely Acclaim...

 



GAMEPLAY: Similar to RayForce,
really. You can select between two ships. (A
third type becomes available after certain
conditions are met.) The
R-Gray 1 is very similar to the RVA-818
X-LAY you pilot in RayForce. To
reiterate, you have a vulcan cannon thingy that
powers up for every three red or every one yellow
power-up you acquire. You also have the Lock-On
Laser (now known as the Laser-Guided
Missiles) which works like this: a
crosshairs is always in front of your ship, like
in Xevious. Anytime this crosshairs passes over
an enemy, it will "lock-on" to it. By
pressing the Laser button, your ship will fire
lasers that will track down every enemy you've
targeted. The amount of points this gets you
increases exponentially depending on how many
enemies you destroyed at once. Laser power-up
increase the number of lock-ons you
can make at once up to a maximum of eight.
The R-Gray 2 is a little
different. It's main weapon is a dual laser,
which is more powerful than the RG1's
cannons, but covers much less space. It's Lock-On
Laser is a lightning beam that can
continue to acquire new targets even after it has
been fired. However, if there are many targetable
objects on screen at once, the R-Gray 2's
lightning beam can become "lost", and
may not be available when you need it. For
example, stage
4
is a large space fleet, where you can lock-on to
the zillions of battleships floating harmlessly
in the background. So, after you fire your
Lock-On Laser at a more immediate threat, it can
be difficult to avoid targeting the background
ships. The RG2's can also
lock-on to as many as 16 targets at once, which
allows you to rack up higher scores than with the
RG1.
New to the RaySeries are the Hyper Laser
Assault and the Special Attack.
If you can use all of your available lock-ons on
a single target, pressing the Laser button will
activate the Hyper Laser Assault, which is much
more powerful than the a normal lock-on attack
(64x, according to the manual.) The RG1's
is in the form of a large energy explosion, and
the RG2 creates a black hole.
Note that you can use the RG1's
HLA much more quickly, since it doesn't have as
many Lock-Ons. The Special Attack meter
is filled up by using the Lock-On Laser, and when
it is full, you can press the Special Attack
button to activate it. It is basically a smart
bomb type attack; it damages all on-screen
enemies while granting you temporary
invincibility.


GRAPHICS: A 2D game with 3D
polygonized graphics. Actually, from a pure
observational standpoint, I prefer RayStorm's
graphics over RayForce's. However, when it comes
time to play, I think RayForce's work better. It
can be a little hard to tell sometimes what's
going on. The fact that the Lock-On Laser has
been revamped to target enemies at any altitude
helps somewhat, however.
AUDIO: A few songs from the
original have been remixed for this game, but
still I find RayStorm to be one of Zuntata's
weaker soundtracks. The Neu Tanz remixes for the
Extra Mode (see below) are a mixed bag; some of
the songs have been improved, some just suck even
worse. (I dunno where it's used in the game,
since I rarely fool with the Extra Mode, but by
hacking the Neu Tanz soundfiles on the CD I found
an odd track that was Ace of Base-ish with a
female Japanese vocal that wasn't too bad at all.
:) Sound effects are decent, complete with the
control tower narrations from the original.
Although they don't sound as cheesy as they did
in RayForce, they are a little difficult to
understand sometimes. Then again, I've never
tried to fiddle with the volume controls either.
OVERALL: 6/10. Not bad, but this
game falls pretty far into the Smart-Bomb Trap,
and has neither Darius Gaiden's (another SBT
victim) cool soundtrack or cool bosses to make up
for it. On the other hand, some of WD's extras
can be pretty interesting. Bottom line: go ahead
and pick this up if you can find it cheap, but
you can probably find something better.. RayForce comes to mind. :)
Score
out of Five:
  
Zach Keene
Zach is the
author of many FAQs including G-Darius,
Gradius 3, Einhänder,CSOTN, and the AGVS FAQ
ftp://members.aol.com/fnlfanatic/arcanelore/


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