Star Soldier R for the Wii
Although it’s one of the older WiiWare releases, debuting with the system way back in 2008, Star Soldier R is continuation of the Hudson Soft series of shoot ‘em ups and I’m therefore contractually obliged to have a look at it and my personal interest in shoot ‘em ups has absolutely no bearing on this situation in the slightest. The Star Soldier series already have something of a reputation amongst shoot ‘em up fans, in particular because of the “caravan mode” time attack based playing modes they have.
And Star Soldier R takes that a step further because it eschews regular play and offers only two modes from the menu, two minute and five minute game; two minutes get you a first level and its boss battle, whilst the extra three will add on a second stage and another guardian and although its stating the obvious, the objective is to score as many points as possible within the time allotted. Perversely, there’s no lives counter, instead dying penalises the player because the re-spawning of the ship takes a precious couple of seconds of shooting time away from them and breaks any combo chain; so the basics of scoring big are to avoid getting blown up, shoot everything and anything and try to be quick, because the faster a wave is dealt with, the faster another will be released.
Come and get it, aliens!
(Actually, when I said there are two play modes there’s actually a third called “Quick Shot”, although this isn’t so much a variation on the game as a test of the player’s trigger finger, since the only objective is to pound the fire button like a lunatic for ten seconds to get a ranking! It’s more like a party game than a shoot ‘em up, although there are things to be shot whilst playing.)
I’ve never been a fan of time attack shoot ‘em ups personally (although it doesn’t stop me actually playing them as such…) and that’s probably because they’ve always felt like overkill; as though someone was trying to get the adrenalin pumping in a genre where most players will already have their entire system flooded. Even worse are the ones where regardless of how well a novice player may perform, they’ll still get the “time up” message that right in the middle of a stage. But Hudson have been very sneaky, designing the game so that the player will always reach the boss on the two minute game and, once practised at the first level, should be able to get to the end of the second with a bit of time to spare.
Hello mother, hello father
So yes, Star Soldier R has managed to get me hooked and the main reason is because that time-based nature has rather ironically made it almost casual; it’s very tempting to just pick up the classic controller for “a quick game or two” only to emerge a few hours later after getting caught up trying to find new ways to get past the level faster, destroy more attackers and finish with more time remaining.
As to if it’s worth the eight hundred shiny Wii points that Hudson are asking for it, that probably depends on you, dear reader; if you’re the kind of person who only plays a game once to completion and then moves onto the next title you’re not really going to get the most out of Star Soldier R or those Wii points since knocking over the boss in the two minute game is pretty easy once you see how it moves and where to be in order to avoid the huge laser beams. This really is a game for the “score whores” out there, players who put significant time and effort into improving their best scores and don’t mind going over the same ground repeatedly in order to learn it thoroughly; if you’re one of that breed of gamers (and I’m a “casual score whore” myself, if that makes even the slightest bit of sense) then Star Soldier R is something you should be investigating more closely. Although it can be an almost painfully humbling experience initially when after a hard fought battle you submit what appears to be a decent score to the online tables, only to be told that there are over ten thousand players who have scored better!
Oh bugger, which one is me?!
Star Soldier R is available for 800 of your Wii points from the shopping channel, filed neatly in the WiiWare aisle next to the frozen peas and a bottle of washing up liquid that someone has bizarrely changed their mind about and left behind.
Tags: Star Soldier, WiiWare
I really like this one. the score attack on a single level was one of the inspirations for Irukandji
Cheers
Charlie