Game: R-Type Delta
Platform: PSN (PSP/PS3)
Developer: Irem Software Engineering
"Delta" means "Change" in Mathematics
Irem can't let go of R-Type, can they?
After supposedly completing the series with Final, they redacted that statement when they created the two Tactics/Command games after a run of several titles. Debate will probably rage about whether or not R-Type should give up the ghost, but if R-Type shooters are really done and dusted, all we have left are the memories, in the form of all the titles up to and including Final.
The penultimate game in the production run (and storyline, if one can weave through the looping, convoluted timeline resembling an overwrought Doctor Who fanfiction), Delta, was only the first of two non-remake R-Type shmups created in full, polygonal 3D. Set in the year 2163, the Bydo-who else now, really-are attacking Earth-as if they don't do anything else-and you are sent out in one of three fighters to blast off and strike the evil Bydo Empire-yeah, like you're going to use it for anything else.
However, don't mind the story, because playing this game reveals that R-Type Delta is a milestone for the series, full of new innovations for the R-Type series: pity R-Type fans would only ever see these innovations refined once more for Final.
At least the PSN was kind enough to rerelease Delta for the PSP and PS3 so that those without an actual PSX, such as myself, can relive the memories I learned about from...YouTube really, footage from back when slightly more people than now knew of R-Type.
"But Reverie," you shout and point accusingly, "The last time an R-Type game was revived, we got The Third Lightning for the Game Boy Advance!" You're very true to be worried, but this isn't the same as a disastrous port of that caliber. You probably still don't believe me because it comes from the PSN.
Oh, ye of little faith.
Story
R-Type's narrative is told as it is in all other R-Type games: minimally. I always figured taking this approach worked in R-Type's favor. Given the dark themes that creep into all R-Type games, it works perfectly: you really do feel alone against a huge enemy force that only gets more grotesque, more devious and more vicious the further towards its core you go. You have only the faintest idea of what you're in for next, and once you get to the middle of it all, the Bydo menace shows its true face...or more frighteningly, perhaps, its lack thereof.
The backgrounds and settings become enough to tell the story. Things become more moody and more somber the closer to the end you get, and once you get to the ending, well...I'm not spoiling anything, but if you play a certain way you'll be quite surprised as to what happens at the end, and if you've played R-Type Final, you'll see the true horror behind one of the levels in the PS2 game.
This does come back to bite R-Type, though, especially if you're a modern gamer like myself who's become somewhat used to having a game exposit itself in the first few moments or so. We're not introduced to a lot of the game, and this could be potentially irritating to someone who's never played an R-Type game before. Nobody likes not being up to speed when playing a video game, especially one with a lot of modern features like R-Type Delta, where plot could potentially strike at any moment. Good, then, that Delta has very little plot to throw at the player, just enough backstory to justify it, and lets the player's imagination fill the gaps.
Summary: 8/10. I would have liked to have an introduction telling me the gist of what's going on, but the rest of the game can tell a pretty good story regardless.
Graphics
The first R-Type on the PSX was, predictably, a blocky, polygonal one. The trick, of course, was to make these polygons not look like something rendered by an SNES FX chip, and R-Type Delta did that well back in the day. The ships, the enemies, and the background were almost all rendered in polygons, with most projectiles, explosions and smoke depicted using both sprites and graphics. Small details and some enemies, such as the swarms of flies in Level 2, were created using sprites.
What Irem and Agetec were able to pull off was alchemy with PSX graphical capabilities. Enemies, especially larger ones and bosses, are animated with lots of moving parts and in some cases, destructible segments that you can blow up for extra score, and are believable as the biomechanical horrors that the Bydo have always been. Your ship, one of three, also has some animation. Don't stare at your ship and you'll miss it: Charging and firing the Wave Cannon has segments of your ship springing back for a moment to compensate for recoil, and the Delta, the "normal" R-Type ship of the game, sticks a gun barrel out under the canopy while you charge its Wave Cannon. I suppose it must be really happy to see something to kill. Sounds like an episode of Criminal Minds I saw once.
As you'd expect, the PSP and PS3 are capable of recreating these effects gorgeously. Everything is spectacular: the explosions, the various Wave Cannon attacks, enemy attacks, background elements, animations, all are well-rendered and in shmup tradition, the more powerful the attack, the more spectacular it looks. There is hardly any slowdown, if it's there at all, even when large explosions rage after destroying a large boss or when enemies start swarming the screen.
I personally maintain that R-Type became the Neon Genesis Evangelion of shmups as it got older, experimenting with moodier, darker, more somber themes, and the color palette and environments in R-Type Delta lend credence to that idea. There are hardly any pristine areas in each level: a lot of background elements are dark, you fly amongst ruins, through areas where mankind has probably been wiped out (at least locally), and cosmic biohorror weapons ooze out of every crevice. However, like NGE, it's not a brown Gears of War-esque affair. The player ships are white and blue, silver and violet, and red and black respectively, the attacks and Forces are all bright, shiny and colorful, and even most of the enemies are slathered in bright colors. More than making things pretty, this juxtaposition of bright and dark helps bring out important elements like enemy positions and attacks. Telling what's a background element and what's an attack, however, is left up to the player. The last level in particular has a lot of weird elements, some of which don't even look like hazards until you blow up against them. Overall though, the graphics not only do a good job of dressing up the game, but also serve to make gameplay a little easier.
I do have one gripe, though, and it's the R-13 Cerberus' Dose Attack, a maneuver which I will get into in more detail later on. Dose Attacks are your Bombs and by that logic they should be really good-looking effects that fill the entire screen. The Cerberus'? It looks like two Windows screen savers collided. Two laser lines rotate around the screen as some bright thing shines in the middle of the screen. Yippee. In all other respects, the R-13's attacks look excellent: it shoots lightning, it drops single, high-explosive missiles with a flak effect, and it has a Force on a laser chain that chews up the enemy. Its Dose graphics are pretty weak compared to all that.
Summary: 9/10. If you can overlook the funkier design decisions, you have what is for its day a very impressive presentation for a shmup, and one that is recreated well both on the PSP and PS3. Be prepared for everything to look way too polygonal on a large, high-definition TV, though.
Sound
R-Type games are known for good music: the first level theme in the original game and the faux heavy-distortion electric guitar noises in the SNES Third Lightning game come to mind for me. R-Type Delta has numerous catchy songs in its soundtrack, with lots of electronic sounds, a few guitar bits and some choral tones. Go ahead and call me backwards for saying this, but I daresay that these songs are better than the melodyless, ambient majority of R-Type Final's music. I can describe most of that as *WOOOO WHOOSH KLUNK* to some sort of optional beat.
The sound effects are perfect for the game. Monsters make screams, roars, and other assorted noises and they all sound right, as do the firing noises, explosions, and heavier mechanical sounds. Everything makes satisfying noises that simply sound right: the explosions, the splatter noises, and the ambient noise of being underwater in Level 2.
The sound integrity from the PSX version sticks in the PSN download version. No sound quality is lost and the port sounds much the same as the original, with all tracks and sound effects in their proper places.
Again, it's the R-13 I want to rag on for its sound. When it comes to its Lightning Wave Cannon, it makes a pop sound, then a short "bzzzt" tone. No lightning in the history of ever has sounded like that. It should sound like a really loud gunshot, especially considering how powerful it is when fully-charged. I can live with that but why is it always the R-13 that gets the short end of the stick...
Summary: 8/10. For a PSX game the music and sound can't be much better. Everything definitely sounds like a PSX sound effect, though, and there are certainly some weak noises.
Gameplay
R-Type Delta shines brightest in the gameplay department. The controls are fast and responsive, and the ability to change your movement speed as opposed to eventually becoming uncontrollably fast is undeniably a plus. Modifying your setup for your PS3 or PSP control preferences will have you displaying a level of control you only ever had in this R-Type game and in Final. Again, thanks for making these vital changes really late in the game, Irem. Appreciate it. Jerks.
Cheap environment collision deaths also seem to not be an occurrence anymore, or at least don't happen unless you hit moving bits of environment which are clearly hazards, like the falling wall capsule things in Level 2 or the giant walking robot that makes up the entirety of Level 3. I wouldn't expect it to save you, but you can now comfortably skirt the boundaries of the screen and obstacles without having to constantly thread needles and get yourself rapidly killed by things that shouldn't even be taking you out. I'm looking at you, Gradius Galaxies.
Although you have three ships to choose from (there's a secret ship but I can't comment on it since I haven't used it), they are very much the same. Each ship is capable of moving at the same speed, and each one has your standard Vulcan rapid peashooter, its own indestructible Force with three possible attacks, a Wave Cannon with two levels of charge-an innovation introduced in R-Type II-its own missile type, and a Dose Attack.
I mentioned this earlier, but didn't explain it in detail, so here goes. A Dose Attack is your screen-clearing bomb/super attack. You don't have a set amount of them; rather, you charge up a Dose Attack by damaging things with your Force or absorbing bullets using it. Once you've charged up enough energy, you can release it in a single room-clearing Dose Attack. All ships deal identical Dose damage, and strategically using these or using these as a weapon of last resort can make or break a playthrough. This gameplay element rewards risk-taking and strategy: how do you play with your Force? Stop snickering. What I mean is how do you use it to play? Do you shoot it at enemies and damage them that way? Do you use it as a shield from small enemies and bullets? Do you use it as an option that shoots at targets from angles you can't reach? How important is it for you to have this invincibility period and screen-clearer? There are many possibilities with each ship, and I can think of only one ship that has only one obvious strategy: the R-13 Cerberus (again). What an oddball this ship is, huh? Its Anchor Force is meant to be flung at large targets, which it latches onto and deals prolonged, constant damage to as long as it sticks. It has no projectile attacks of its own unless you're attached to it, so your options are more limited.
Its repertoire, and indeed, all three ships' arsenals, are well-balanced, however. The R-9 Delta is your standard R-Type ship, with an updated version of the Diffusion Wave Cannon from R-Type II, a Standard Force with the three classic Force weapons (bouncing laser, bubble laser, and ground-following laser), twin homing missiles and a Force which fires spread shots when detached. The second ship, the R-X Albatross, has an explosion-creating Wave Cannon with a spectacular visual effect and a spherical damage shockwave upon successful impact, but can't shred through things in a straight line like the Delta. Its Tentacle Force looks very cool and is armed with penetrating laser weaponry in order to compensate and drops napalm bombs as its missile weapon. When not attached, the Tentacle Force moves around and fires at targets by itself, allowing you to use it almost like playing with a friend when detached. Finally, the R-13 Cerberus is good for players who don't want to line up all their shots, coming with homing lightning bursts for its Wave Cannon, the aforementioned Anchor Force, its own three lasers with their own off-axis attack types for hitting what's not directly in front of you just as well as what is, a single, high-explosive missile, and while the Anchor Force cannot shoot when detached, its chain can damage targets. It's not reliable, but it is an attack solution.
There is a catch, though. Compared with its older Irem stablemates, Delta ratchets up the difficulty and the speed to new levels for R-Type games. Enemies will crowd the screen in large, complicated patterns, and while R-Type Delta has never been up there with Cave and Zun games in terms of bullet density, whatever bullets are on-screen tend to be well-aimed or particularly poorly-timed for you: what enemy attacks are on-screen will force you to move or kill whatever's shooting at you fast, and the only way to do that is with R-Type's patented stage memorization. Trial and error, for better or for worse, is a major gameplay element, and it works both for and against Delta and R-Type games in general. You'll feel really good when you finally clear a level, but until then, expect to feel like a grade-A idiot, slower than molasses or like you want to eat your controller after throwing away lives and continues on one or two particularly nasty segments of certain levels. It's not just one or two levels, either: every level has at least one. Combining trial and error with segments that require rapid reflexes will catch even the best of shmup gamers once or twice during their virgin run. Coupled with accurate hit detection, any deaths you have and any mistakes you make? Yeah, if you've experienced them more than a couple of times, they're your own fault.
Saying the gameplay is exactly what you'd expect of an R-Type game is a bit of a double-edged sword when regarding this game, then: it's everything you would think of when "R-Type" pops into your mind, but nothing's really been added, and what tweaks have been made to gameplay are things one would eventually wish were there from the beginning, like speed control, a more forgiving environment collision system, and upgraded arsenals. To call this game one of the epitomes of the R-Type experience is closer to the truth. From a pure gameplay standpoint, look to R-Type Delta to show you what the franchise was at its absolute best.
Summary: 10/10. Forget the fact that it took Irem the jump to 3D to catch up to shmup trends, like bombs and speed selection. The engine at the heart of R-Type Delta is the apex of the experience: fluid, fast-paced and cerebral in equal parts, and about most efficiently using your firepower. A distinct lack of modern danmaku stylings does not make R-Type games any less dangerous, and R-Type Delta shows what happens when you cut all the fat out of the R-Type engine and give everyone an overhaul: enemies, environments, and most importantly, the player, are all powerful and efficient.
Conclusion
Change was good for the R-Type series while it lasted. The innovations introduced to the franchise by R-Type Delta showed the world what an R-Type game comparable to other shmups of the time would be like: cinematic, challenging (if frustrating at times) and ultimately very rewarding to get through. The player ship is spectacular, the enemies and levels challenging, and the graphics and soundtrack all tie it together. It's not perfect, but once this game was introduced, the R-Type formula would never be the same.
Until it promptly ended in the next game six years later: Final.
Again, thanks a lot, Irem, thanks a lot.
I'll bet that corporation's kicking itself now that they realize how popular contemporary shmups are. Cave and Zun must be laughing themselves all the way to the bank while Irem and Konami drown their sorrows somewhere seedy.
Final Verdict: 9/10 (not an average of individual scores)