Ceph wrote:Why is there so much praise for Z-Out? X-Out had better graphics/music and was much more inventive (weapon system), while Z-Out is an R-Type clone with Darius-like enemy formations.
First of all, the two games are totally unrelated. Z-Out is NOT the sequel of X-Out, but it was developed under the (much better, imo) name "Wargate" by a totally different team and the Z-Out label was just slapped on it by the publisher. Comparing the two of them doesn't make a lot of sense. Apples and Oranges, you know.
Whether better graphics/music make a game automatically superior is highly debatable. X-Out does have pretty good graphics and those of Z-Out can't compare. Except for the last two levels which were made by a different artist than the first four. Those blow away pretty much everything else on the Amiga, including the whole of X-Out.
Personally, I like the music of Z-Out better than that of X-Out. Except for Hülsbecks lacklustre title tune, the music in the game (done by Rudolf Stember) is fresh and memorable and the church organ theme in stage 5 is downright creepy. And Hülsbeck's music for X-Out doesn't really rank among his best efforts. He even re-uses a theme from the first Turrican game. Lazy.
Now on to the gameplay.
X-Out had some very innovative ideas, like using your score for buying ships and weapons and forcing you to make a direct decision between scoring and survival. But like in many euroshmups there are too many useless weapons, which kinda dumbs down the beautiful idea. When you're in the game, you'll notice quickly that X-Out is a (bug-ridden) rush job and severely lacking in level design. The formations are uninspired, the bosses are dull and the playfield is too big. TFIV used a big playfield that scrolls up and down and still managed to create exciting and challenging stages. X-Out tries this, but fails. X-Out is (like, say, Xenon II) another typical example of a shmup created by people who normally don't play shmups. They create something that looks alright, but despite their efforts it just doesn't feel like it should, because they don't have a real understanding of what works and what doesn't, which can only come from actually playing a lot of the best games in the genre, not by just looking at them. Instead of concentrating on a few ideas and building a good game around them, the creators of said euroshmups (including X-Out) tend to get carried away with ideas like "wouldn't it be cool to have a hundred selectable weapons?" or "what if one of the bosses was an octopus with a laser cannon? That would look totally awesome". Good game designers think first about how a stage/boss should
work, then find the appropriate visual design. Not-quite-as-good game designers think about looks/story/number of weapons first and then about mechanics.
And that's exactly what sets games like Apidya, Z-Out and Battle Squadron apart from the vast majority of western shmups. By playing them you can easily tell that their creators played a lot of the best games in the genre
and learned something from that. They didn't just mimick stuff, they understood why their favourite games worked and put that knowledge to good use. Of course Z-Out is an R-Type clone, but it's one of the best. Once you play it beyond the initial "oh, it's just another R-Type clone"-impression, you'll notice that the level and boss design is outstanding, especially in later levels. (I'm talking about gameplay here, not graphics, just to be perfectly clear.)
So, why is there so much praise for Z-Out and not for X-Out? Actually, there's plenty of praise for X-Out (far too much if you ask me), but it mostly comes from casual players who like looking at pretty graphics, not from fans of the genre who like playing good games. There's not really all that much praise for Z-Out.
Anyway, IMO, apart from Pulstar, Z-Out is the best R-Type-like game that's not part of the original series and it deserves all the praise it gets. Every little bit fits, the game just works. It's the playability that sets it apart.
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Well, if you feel you've played enough of a game to be able to make a concrete judgment, it's certainly OK then.
