Gleylancer | Playstation, Switch, Xbox | Out Now!

[heli]

Apparently their last port, the Turrican Flashback Collection, had 8 frames of lag and the devs stated there was nothing they could do about it.

I dont understand the technical aspect of this.
Why can M2 get 2 frames and they not ?

[Digitalironmanx]

Is there any way to disable right trigger as reset while paused without playing in original mode? Multiple times now I've paused, put the console down & the game's reset itself.

I did this several times as well. The workaround I found is to rewind the game back before the reset. Weird, but it works.

[SPM]

There's something messed up with the controls, at least on Switch. One time the game "remapped" the start button [+] to so I had to press that to start the run... and another time my shot button didn't work as intended and instead moved my ship to the right hahahaha. It happened between runs, and restarting the game fixed it, so no big deal. But weird! XD

Actually, Morsalty couldn't skip the initial cutscene in the last run he tried and I think that's the reason why.

What did you do for the final boss with the spinning lasers? I couldn't find a speed setting that worked for me and died a billion times.

That boss speeds up the longer you keep it alive, so focus on dealing damage ("burner" will do a better job than "twin" in case you have to recover at the last CP). Start at speed 3 and change to 4 when you need it. If it takes too long, speed 4 won't be enough and it'll get you.

[evil_ash_xero]

Apparently their last port, the Turrican Flashback Collection, had 8 frames of lag and the devs stated there was nothing they could do about it.

I dont understand the technical aspect of this.
Why can M2 get 2 frames and they not ?

About where does Hamster land? There's seem pretty tight, as well.

And seriously, is no one else feeling this lag?

[Jonpachi]

It's definitely not at M2 quality, but it feels playable to me so far. I'd guess it's around 5 to 6 frames. Right on the edge of "I can get used to this" territory.

[Sima Tuna]

I'm extremely bad at telling lag by feel. I rely on lag testers to give me that information. When I die in an arcade game, I assume I fucked up. I'm not skilled enough to know when a death is due to lag.

[SPM]

It feels a bit slippery at speeds 3 and 4. But perfectly fine at speeds 1 and 2. So I guess there's either some lag (more noticeable the faster things move) or rough controls (speeds 3 and 4 are too fast for some sections, so that could be it)

[evil_ash_xero]

It's definitely not at M2 quality, but it feels playable to me so far. I'd guess it's around 5 to 6 frames. Right on the edge of "I can get used to this" territory.

Sounds about right. I can't really settle into it, when I have other ways to play the game. I was hoping to have it on one of my main consoles, though.

[heli]

Hold the button between your head and screen.
Look with 1 eye to button, 1 eye to screen.
Press button, examine how long it takes.

Basicly you need a 1ms monitor.

[Chrome Head]

I loved this game on Megadrive, so I was pretty excited to grab it for Switch. Very fun I think.

[DMC]

I got about 5 hours of gaming out of the 5 bucks this game costed during sale. Pretty good value for a decent shooter fix. I would not want it to be any shorter or longer.

Mini review if anyone haven't played it and is on the fence:

It is a pretty solid game with most flaws being tolerable. Nice presentation, great soundtrack, charming cut scenes and voice effects, and some glorious backgrounds. Pretty mediocre gameplay, I have to say, but never bad enough to make you quit the game. Sometimes pacing is quite slow with some sedating scrolling through environments without enemies, but it does build some anticipation and the music is good enough to carry you through these parts.

Stage 5 (with the huge battleship) in particular stands out with this cozy and catchy music piece. Stage 1 and 2 has some strong tracks too. Unfortunately, stage 1 has a pretty nauseating space background with some fast parallax scrolling rocks moving in different directions (I am quite sensitive to this kind of noisy, layered, fast-moving graphics). However, stage 2 looks better and a bit more calming with the purple mountains far away in the background also suggesting vastness of space. Along with the solo guitar sound it is pretty epic. The developers could have dropped the generic first stage entirely, and made stage 2 the opening stage instead.

As for weapons, you can carry up to two options by picking up weapon items. The different weapons were pretty fun to play around with (the lightsaber worked very well on some bosses), but I tended to use either the Twin shot or the Laser. When in doubt, always use Lasers in STGs. Regardless of the weapon, you can choose among several different aims, and the search aim (homing) was unfortunately too good. As others have pointed out already, this is the game's biggest flaw as you don't need to do much aiming/shooting yourself, mostly dodging. The presence of overpowered homing weapons really plagued some early 90s STGs. Nevertheless, during these 5 hours I made enough mistakes to force me to checkpoint recover and do some aiming as well. I had some slightly frustrating check point recovery moments, but that struggle is part of the concept and it always felt fair.

Stage design. In comparison, I feel TF 3 is packed with more creative content and surprising moments. This is a bit generic and predictable at times, but it definitely has interesting moments too. There are some fast-scrolling mazes, some puzzle-ish problems with enemies cleverly shielded, and some unusual objects or enemies you don't know exactly what they will do (like blocking your shots in weird ways).

Bosses could have been more memorable. In an easy console shooter I am fine with a few very easy bosses, as it can be a relief after a long stage to have a easy boss to destroy, but I felt like half of the bosses required no memorization or dodging at all and that was a little bit too much. I think Thunder force games have had a little bit better balance and definitely more impact there. Last boss was pretty cool though!

One more thing about the search weapon. It was not just that it was overpowered, but it also was pretty stupid, sometimes aiming for enemies far away than those in your proximity. It was a convenient weapon but I think the game could have been better without it. Fixing that issue, polishing a few of the bosses, and I would put it in my top-10 console-exclusive shooters. Still great, casual console shooting experience if you like a relatively easy game.

Not TF3 greatness, but top quality mega drive shooting.

[SPM]

^Some of those shortcomings are fixed by playing on Hard (bosses and some dull sections become interesting) with manually-aiming gunners (my fav is the reverse, although the Gradius-like options are fun as well and change the gameplay a lot).

100% agreed with the rest, especially the pacing problems and some uninteresting sections regardless of difficulty/gunners (Stage 5 in particular, gameplay-wise)

[Sengoku Strider]

If you consider the bosses to have been designed around the non-homing options, they become much less pushovery. When you can have lasers on them 100% of the time no matter where you dodge, the game's mechanics basically vanish. I agree the homing option should have either not been present, or tougher to access somehow, like beating the game first. On the other hand, like you say with the homing this game is in the 'good chill shooter' category which I like, and nobody's putting a gun to anybody's head making them avoid all the other options.

[velo]

Only bad thing about Gleylancer is that it invites comparisons to Thunder Force 3. It's not quite as good but it's pretty close.

[DMC]

Hard mode may indeed have additional value here, will try it out some time. As for skipping search options, I don't like that kind of self-handicapping. If there is an optimal weapon I have to use even if it is boring

[SPM]

Well... there's invincibility and autoshot options as well. You could use them and let the game play itself! Don't self-handicap yourself

JK, choose the option you have the most fun with (regardless of its performance), but don't play with the optimal if it's boring to you!!

[velo]

Hard mode may indeed have additional value here, will try it out some time. As for skipping search options, I don't like that kind of self-handicapping. If there is an optimal weapon I have to use even if it is boring

Do you always pick the best ship/character in games? It's kind of the same thing as picking a gunner type in Classic Mode. In Modern Mode yeah I'm not going to intentionally switch to a sucky gun type.

[DMC]

Yeah, I see your point. If it's just casual entertainment, so why not making a bit more challenging/exciting by skipping an overpowered weapon. It makes sense and no big deal. So I am probably just stubborn here, used to approach shooting games the same way.

Do you always pick the best ship/character in games?

The difference is avoiding a certain weapon is an in-game decision, whereas selecting your ship is an out-of-game decision, and therefore, a decision about which game you want to play. At least I think this is true if the ships have separate leaderboards. As soon as the game has started, it has given you a set of rules and tools to follow those rules and the goal of the game is to maximize the score or 1cc the game from those rules. Part of the fun, is beating the game, but if the game has broken rules there's a surplus of other games to explore rather than self-handicapping this one.

[velo]

The difference is avoiding a certain weapon is an in-game decision, whereas selecting your ship is an out-of-game decision, and therefore, a decision about which game you want to play. At least I think this is true if the ships have separate leaderboards. As soon as the game has started, it has given you a set of rules and tools to follow those rules and the goal of the game is to maximize the score or 1cc the game from those rules. Part of the fun, is beating the game, but if the game has broken rules there's a surplus of other games to explore rather than self-handicapping this one.

Well, you pick your gunner before you start the first level, you can't change it without continuing (in Classic mode), and your choice gets recorded along with your high score. So it seems about the same to me.

It does leave me with a dilemma: whether to crank up the difficulty, or just pick a worse gunner

[Sengoku Strider]

The search mover breaks the game in a couple of ways. Aside from the fact that it removes most all of the element of targeting, all the other movers involve tradeoffs. They either can only fire forward, or can't fire in 2 directions at once, or can't have both firing in the same non-horizontal direction. Search gets around all of that; it's not so much an optimal choice as it is training wheels.

[DMC]

The difference is avoiding a certain weapon is an in-game decision, whereas selecting your ship is an out-of-game decision, and therefore, a decision about which game you want to play. At least I think this is true if the ships have separate leaderboards. As soon as the game has started, it has given you a set of rules and tools to follow those rules and the goal of the game is to maximize the score or 1cc the game from those rules. Part of the fun, is beating the game, but if the game has broken rules there's a surplus of other games to explore rather than self-handicapping this one.

Well, you pick your gunner before you start the first level, you can't change it without continuing (in Classic mode), and your choice gets recorded along with your high score. So it seems about the same to me.

It does leave me with a dilemma: whether to crank up the difficulty, or just pick a worse gunner

Okay, I played the default mode on the Switch. Did not know you could not shift the aim in-game in the classic mode. So in the original mega drive release it was always impossible to change the aim mid-game unless using continues? That's a pretty drastic change for this release. Then I agree with you, it's pretty much the same thing as selecting different ships.

agree the homing option should have either not been present, or tougher to access somehow, like beating the game first.

Yes, either an unlockable by beating the game first or as a secret item within the game that as soon as you find it you could toggle between this and the other aims throughout the remaining of the game or until you lose a life.

[velo]

The search mover breaks the game in a couple of ways. Aside from the fact that it removes most all of the element of targeting, all the other movers involve tradeoffs. They either can only fire forward, or can't fire in 2 directions at once, or can't have both firing in the same non-horizontal direction. Search gets around all of that; it's not so much an optimal choice as it is training wheels.

Yeah you know it's busted when it's better than the new twin stick controls. Makes the "modernized" control scheme pointless, there's really no reason to change. Those level 9(?) monorail turrets on Hard are giving me hell without Search though, it really is a drastic difference.

Okay, I played the default mode on the Switch. Did not know you could not shift the aim in-game in the classic mode. So in the original mega drive release it was always impossible to change the aim mid-game unless using continues? That's a pretty drastic change for this release. Then I agree with you, it's pretty much the same thing as selecting different ships.

You can unmap the gun-change button and rewind to get the mostly-classic experience in the new version, but I don't think you can turn off the right stick shot aim.

[Sengoku Strider]

Those level 9(?) monorail turrets on Hard are giving me hell without Search though, it really is a drastic difference.

They give me hell on normal with search, lol. It feels like if you don't have laser there you're sunk.

[SPM]

Those level 9(?) monorail turrets on Hard are giving me hell without Search though, it really is a drastic difference.

They give me hell on normal with search, lol. It feels like if you don't have laser there you're sunk.

Stage 9/hard/reverse twin
(Don't have the full section recorded though)

That was one of the most interesting parts of the game for me. Tough and puzzle-like, yes, but for that reason interesting to figure out.

Took me too many tries though

[velo]

Those level 9(?) monorail turrets on Hard are giving me hell without Search though, it really is a drastic difference.

They give me hell on normal with search, lol. It feels like if you don't have laser there you're sunk.

Stage 9/hard/reverse twin
(Don't have the full section recorded though)

That was one of the most interesting parts of the game for me. Tough and puzzle-like, yes, but for that reason interesting to figure out.

Took me too many tries though

Very cool... don't think I'll be doing this game on Mania, Search or no Search

[SPM]

Me neither. Mania is quite unbalanced and probably not thoroughly tested. Hard is a great challenge, mania is just crazy (now that I think about it, it's like Thunder Force IV maniac... You can do it, I guess, but shouldn't)

[Sengoku Strider]

Those level 9(?) monorail turrets on Hard are giving me hell without Search though, it really is a drastic difference.

They give me hell on normal with search, lol. It feels like if you don't have laser there you're sunk.

Stage 9/hard/reverse twin
(Don't have the full section recorded though)

That was one of the most interesting parts of the game for me. Tough and puzzle-like, yes, but for that reason interesting to figure out.

Took me too many tries though

Nicely done, some quick moves in there. 0:12 is where I usually get sniped from four directions at the same time.