A solid shmup... definently a great bargain bin find for a fan of the genre.
"Eh, why not?" I said. Heck, that's what bargain bins are for. After shoveling through a mountain of old sports titles half drunk, its good to come home with a mediocre game on the cheap and give it a whirl.
Turns out, Silpheed isn't that bad! Apparently this game is part of a series that's been around a while... I had no idea.
So, what's good? Well, the gameplay is solid. It isn't terribly deep, even when compared to other games of it's type, but that's not too important. The graphics are decent, too... especially the scrolling 3D backgrounds. I thought the actual aliens looked a little generic and drab, but all the more reason for me to explode them. The animations are neat though, and some of the boss fights are pretty cool, as you weave through collapsing buildings or carom through a tumbling canyon. There's a suprising amount of voice clips too... random sci-fi ramblings with poor voice acting... sprinkled in. I always love that, and I think it adds a lot to the game's presentation.
As you might have guessed, this game does not earn it's "bargain bin" status without having some faults. As I mentioned earlier, the drab color scheme sometimes bugs me, but it's by no means a deal-breaker. The music is really hit-or-miss too. There are a few tracks in this game that are downright awful. One neat feature is that you unlock a variety of weapons during play, and you can equip any two of them to the ship at the beginning of each stage, or during the mid-mission refueling. Though I admit most aren't as satisfying as they could be, the customization is neat.
The Verdict:
If you're a shootemup fan and you've played all the good ones, this might be something worth looking into. I wouldn't waste away my days hunting down or spend a lot of money on it, though. It has a lot of redeeming qualities, and is a good game... but it's not the best of it's type in my opinion. It's the kind of game, that if a friend asked me what Silpheed was, I'd say "Eh... it's a shootemup." If that sounds like the kind of game you're in the mood for, I see no reason not to fish it.
+Solid gameplay
+Awesome choreography
+Lots of voice samples
+Some neat cutscenes
-Comes off as a little too generic sometimes
-Some music tracks are painfully bad