Gradius V Hands-On

We played the newest version of Gradius V, Konami's revival of the classic shooter series, at the company's E3 booth and came away very impressed with the game. Thankfully, Gradius V eschews fancy 3D play mechanics in favor of frantic, old-school 2D shooter gameplay. Anybody who played older Konami shooters like Life Force and the previous Gradius games will feel right at home here, since Gradius V is effectively the same game with beautiful 3D graphics.

Like in the old games, in Gradius V you start off with a basic rapid-fire gun and mow down hordes of enemies. You'll kill orange enemies to get a generic power-up, and this lets you start to upgrade your ship. One power-up gives you a speed boost, or you can choose to hold your first power-up until you get two, three, or more before you use them. Each additional item enables a new ability, like lasers, missiles, or the classic "option," which is an orb that hovers around your ship and fires along with you. When you start the game, you choose one of four upgrade paths. For instance, the first path gives you speed and then missiles, while the second path gives you speed and then a two-way shot. You'll be able to further tailor your upgrades to your preferences in this way. In addition, each of the four has a style of option control that's new to the series. When you have one or more options, you can hold down R1 to have the option go into its secondary mode. One control mode makes the options circle around your ship like a shield. This will obviously open up even more variation in the gameplay.

The graphics in Gradius V are superb, with a lot of overbright, saturated colors and incredibly fast action. The enemy and boss design we saw was imaginative and consistent with the style of the series. Of course, two-player support is also included, since it was a staple of previous games. With the recent release of Ikaruga and upcoming games like Gradius V and R-Type Final, could we be witnessing a 2D shooter renaissance? Gradius V is certainly a step in the right direction.