Galaga Legions

Review

 by Dave Horvath

Rewind back to 1981 and ask any gamer which game sticks out in their top 10 favorite arcade titles and you’ll be hard pressed to find someone that doesn’t say Galaga. Namco Bandai has taken it upon themselves to bring fans of the original bug shooter a new and improved game on the Xbox Live Arcade. Gone are the days where horizontal motion and rapid twitch shooting is your only recourse and born are vivid graphics, interesting strategy and wickedly addictive gameplay.

Gameplay

While nothing in the game is all that difficult to pick up, new players may want to take a stroll through the tutorials to introduce themselves to the finer aspects of this game. Turret positioning, entry point prediction and ship maneuvering all enter into your basic strategy elements to guarantee a funfilled game. As you make your way yhrough the galaxy, you’ll be assaulted by many different types of space bugs and this time, they dont just plummet to you from the top of the screen. They’ll come at you from many different angles. This is where some of those skills learned in the tutorial will come into play. You are given turrets at the beginning of the stage in which you can make a choice. Either mount them on your ship and unleash a devistating barrage of firepower, or strategically place them on multiple points of the screen to act as your assistance in the bug assault that will surely find its way to you.

As you begin each level, glowing lines will appear shortly showing the planned course of the Galaga and allows you a breath of space in which to setup your lines. While playing the first few levels, you’ll be given a false sense of security into thinking this game is going to be an easy romp through space. By the fifth level or so, you’ll be wondering what that lightning fast blur was that erradicated your retinas was and how you possibly are expected to shoot it out of the air and survive.

Gone is the ability to launch bombs to wipe out multiple enemies on the screen, but in place of bombs are wonderful little black holes. Black holes can show up and save your hide just in the nick of time when you feel that you cant possibly fight your way out of a situation. Then, when all is almost lost, every enemy gets sucked in and in turn, gets turned into a guided insect that obliterates everything on the screen.

Graphics

Graphically Galaga Legions has to be one of the better looking XBLA titles to date. With polished visuals, vivid
explosions and colorful lighting effects, gamers will be in for a optical treat when loading up this title. From the first streak across the screen to the last explosion, it’ll be hard not to like what is in store. The amount of sheer mayhem going on across the screen is enough to give even the most stable of nervous systems an epileptic episode. This title easily ranks up there with Geometry Wars with the sheer psychedelic pleasure derived from the graphics.

Sound

Sound comes through nicely but leaves a bit to be desired. Tired and forgetful techno tracks permeate through the game, but luckily are left in the background and not obtrusive. Explosions and firing effects could have been done better, but fit the game and nostalgic feel of the universe.

Controls

While the classic game had you moving horizontally, now you can move up or down as well as side to side. This seems like a welcomed advance in the series, until you realize that now the Galaga can come from underneath you as well. This makes positioning the aforementioned turrets all the more important. Thankfully doing so is as easy as flicking the right thumb stick in the direction you’d like it to fire. You can re-attach the turrets to your ship by a simple press of the shoulder bumper, but the pace will become so fevered so quickly, that you’ll hardly have time to think about that.

Conclusion

Taking a trip down memory lane isn’t always what its cracked up to be. Thankfully Namco Bandai has done the predecessor justice in Galaga Legions. This is a feverish and addictive arcade title that pleases on just about every level. The only drawback would have to be the repetition that quickly becomes apparent as you advance in the levels. After you’ve mastered the frenzied pace, it begins to feel like the same old thing.