WHEN "DO THE GRADIUS" FAILS
TRASHSTORM IS NOT A REAL STORY.
IS NOT EVEN GOOD FICTION.
IS TRASH GAME REVIEWS.
ALL OF THE GAMES FEATURED WOULD CAUSE A PERSON DISAPPOINTMENT,
ANGER, FRUSTRATION, DEPRESSION, MONEY LOSS INCLUDED.
TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.
Continuing with the tour through videogame hell.
This time we will check Akinakes for the XBOX One and Series X|S
The (Big Bad) Eye in the Sky.
The first thing we can do before starting the game is to toggle the "Screen Shake" effect on or off along with the controller vibration and adjust the volume of music and sound. Right after making our appropiate adjustments we can start the game where we can select if we want to play on Easy or Normal. That's right, there's no "Hard" or "Expert" levels in the game.
Got some Gradius aspects right.
Now let's go with the game. Developed by UselessDinosaur and AlexMakovsky and published by Phoenix Reborn Games, Akinakes is an horizontal scrolling shooter where we will notice an obvious resemblance to Gradius, and this is NOTORIOUS on Stage 1, where we have the jungle-volcano floating asteroid level and even a hidden score bonus by passing below a waterfall. Seems like UselessDinosaur and AlexMakovsky know something about Gradius, but what they didn't seem to know was the core mechanic of the game. Anyone who played Gradius will surely know that killing an enemy formation or a red one drops a power capsule which you can use to enhance your ship. Akinakes instead goes for a more "Standard shmup" formula of giving you unique items like "Triangle" to upgrade your shots and an "S" for Shield. That's right, there's no liberty of deciding to use Laser or Double in this game since the developers went on the cheap. Your basic weapon is better than the Vic Viper's standard "two bullets" on screen pea shooter and it implements a score multiplier mechanic which increases after taking down a number of enemies before the time-bar depletes. Judging by its depleting speed it empties more in a Blazing Star-pace rather than a more lower and Gradius-fitting speed. The power up mechanisms of the game first increase your bullets firing rate (Power here is measured by the number of bullets hitting the target rather than increasing the shot's strength), then adds a missile which is more like the basic frontal air-to-air projectile rather than the ground skimming Gradius missile. While in must shmups having an Air-to-Air missile is useful, in Gradius is the opposite since you need an Air-to-Ground defense to back you up. After that you'll switch the bullets for a slow firing rate Ripple Laser with wave-like properties, but with the added disadvantage of removing the missile. Also, there's no Options to back you up, leaving you with the ship alone. The shield or "Force Field" is almost useless since it goes down with one hit just like in Super Hydorah which was a great Gradius clone. Everything about Akinakes gameplay is an uncomplete mess.
Playing a Gradius clone without options is suicide.
Dying in this game is quite unorthodox and dysfunctional. The unorthodox part is that when you die, you just not lose your power ups, YOU LOSE YOUR SCORE. I mean, I can understand that when I get Game Over and decide to continue the game, but not after losing a single life. Also, the dysfunctional part kicks in after losing more than 3 lives as you'll notice THERE'S NO GAME OVER. How can call that a game if you can't even lose? It's like you can get killed as much as you want, you'll still reach the end and win.
For a cheap low budget game, it does that effort.
To be fair, the game manages to pull multi-screened areas in the style of Gradius and Gradius II/Vulcan Venture, this is notorious in Stages 2, 4 and 5 which require constant up-and-down navigation.
PARTY OVER
The ending is quite short and at the same time is very Gradius-like: The main alien is destroyed, along with its planet and you're the hero of the galaxy. Right after that, you're back to the title screen with all the achievements you've got: Clearing stages, reaching a "x3" multiplier, kill your first 50 enemies in a playthrough, pick a power ups, crash with something and clear all the levels.
Ancient Core
Graphically, It kinda resembles the early average Gameboy Advance style with the somewhat bright palette mimicking the screen of the console, while nodding Gradius Galaxies. Speaking of Konami's shooter, we can notice that the developers knew the themes used on the stages of the series and implemented them here like the forest-volcano zone, ancient ruins, mutant plants, the crystal themed zone and the bio-weapon/alien organism. The sprite art it is quite great, especially with the bosses which are overdetailed like the Stage 4 boss and the warp effect of Stage 3's boss is admirable. A testimony of "It is possible to do more with less". Yeah, you can do a lot with few, it only needs imagination and intelligence to make the whole thing work.
Gameboy Advance fans will like the graphics
The music of this game is a mix of everything. The main menu screen features a theme that sounds like a mix between Konami SNES era and David Lanz and Paul Speer's Desert Vision era as we have Gradius spacey-styled melodies blended with New Age-like instruments and keyboards that bring a nice atmosphere to the game. Once you're in the game, it sounds more like the generic 90's shooter with the strings and beats and that's Stage 1 and 2 songs which feels like those cheap action shows of the decade gone by. Being Stage 2 the slow paced in the style of a night scene of an action thriller flick. The "Garden" scene (Stage 3) goes to a more sinister, jungle drum pace to reflect the wilderness out of control that took over the floating asteroids where the vegetation is confined. Stage 4 features a more mid-paced energetic beat of keyboards that verge into a more Turrican-esque music score but still nice to hear in the game despite the fact that we're playing a Gradius clone. Stage 5 returns to the drumming with a little industrial keyboards for the bio-weapon/alien organism scene. It is worth to mention that Darkman007 who worked on Super Cyborg and CrushBorgs composed in this game and as usual, he made a nice job here.
TRIVIANAKES
The Trash Game Awakens
- The name comes from the Greek word "ἀκινάκης" ("Acinaces", sometimes translated as "Akinakes") which is a type of dagger or "Xiphos" (short sword) used mainly in the first millennium BCE in the eastern Mediterranean Basin, especially by the Medes, Scythians, Persians, Caspians, and later by the Greeks.
- The opening line "In a Galaxy far, far away..." clearly refers the intro text of Star Wars.
- The use of an egyptian-like theme for Stage 2 nods the Egypt-themed stage of the NES port of Salamander/Life Force.
That sounds about right...
Overall, Akinakes is another trash shmup that hooks on Gradius' fame and legend status in a short game that leaves the players with a lot to desire from it due to its incompleteness in gameplay. Well, its more, much more Gradius-like than Alpha Warrior but is still a disaster of gaming anyway.
It's kinda funny to see the game uttering the words "far, far away" at the introduction, and how appropiate because that's where the game should go: Far, far away.
But "Far, far ~the fuck~ away" from our consoles and our lives.
Thus, Akinakes scores a score of 3 R-9's in the R-Scale:
You can almost feel Eda's pain after playing this game.