Time for another quick round-up of recently-released arcade-style games. This month we have a PC shmup from Capcom, which makes great use of lots of borrowed ideas, a remake of a classic top-down racer for PC and an utterly insane platformer from Sega.
Ether Vapor Remastered
| Developer: | Edelweiss |
| Publisher: | Nyu Media/Capcom |
| Platforms: | PC |
| Price: | £5.45 |
| Demo available: | Yes |
What is it?
Continuing Capcom's initiative to publish small independent games, this doujin shmup borrows ideas left, right and centre, yet never fails to make good use of those ideas. The weapon system is similar to
Radiant Silvergun, in that there are no power-ups, just 6 weapons assigned to 3 buttons, some of which have to be charged up to activate. The camera switches between several angles during the game, so sometimes it plays like a typical horizontal or vertical scrolling shmup and other times it plays like Sega classics
Space Harrier and even
Rez. It's a tight and tidy looking game, although admittedly there's not much variety in the enemy types. Nonetheless, there's a demo on Steam and any shmup fan would do worse than to download it.
Death Rally
| Developer: | Remedy Entertainment |
| Publisher: | Remedy Entertainment |
| Platforms: | PC/iOS/Android |
| Price: | £7.99 |
| Demo available: | No |
What is it?
Max Payne and
Alan Wake developer, Remedy Entertainment's original
Death Rally was a top-down combat racing game, released 16 years ago for MS-DOS PCs. This remake plays much like the 1996 original, which in turn played much like Bally Midway's
Spy Hunter. As the name implies, Death Rally features guns, bombs and various other weapons to help you dispose of the opposition. There's even an arena-style death match mode, which is all about destruction and not at all about racing. The remake manages to retain the feel of the original, but look a whole lot more modern at the same time. If you have a bunch of like-minded friends on-line, this is a blast.
Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit
| Developer: | Arkedo |
| Publisher: | Sega |
| Platforms: | Xbox Live Arcade, PC, PS3 (via PlayStation Network) |
| Price: | 1200MSP/£12.99 |
| Demo available: | Yes |
What is it?
Games don't get much more colourful and crazy than this rainbow-gore platformer from Arkedo and Sega. You play as the Prince of Hell, who has had the misfortune of being photographed playing in the bath with his rubber ducky — which is a very un-Prince of Hell-like thing to be caught doing. A quick look at the website where the pictures were published reveals 100 monsters have seen the picture. What can an undead lagomorph lord of the underworld do but kill every last one of them!? And so you set about exploring the incredibly detailed hell world of Hell Yeah! with the help of a jet pack-come-circular saw — yeah, you read that right. When you catch up to one of the 100 monsters, instead of a traditional boss fight, you get a 20 or 30 second-long mini-game, which invariably takes the form of quick time event. They are very fast and you have to understand the aim of these mini-games in an instant if you are to stand a chance of beating them. It keeps you on your toes in this amazingly detailed game. And much like last year's
Rayman Origins, Hell Yeah! shows what 2D arcade games could have been had polygons and home consoles not taken over. Check out the demo and prepare for a visual feast.
That does it for this month. Check the
Worth a Look tag in the coming months for more tasty, arcade-inspired treats.
MTW
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