GUNVALKYRIE

[Nana]

A little while ago, I purchased an Xbox pretty much exclusively for this game. There were a couple of other titles on it, but this one stood out. My only exposure was seeing this video on youtube, and after being initially absolutely dumbfounded by what was happening on screen, I fell in love.

After actually having played it, it's pretty much everything I could want in an action game. It's like Panzer Dragoon where you have to learn to fly before you can learn to shoot, or maybe Shinobi with a jetpack. Like most people say, the controls are a hassle to learn, and while it IS annoying that they provide no lenience for changing them whatsoever, I believe it worked out better in the end. After all, if they let the users change the controls, they would. The resulting experience is beautiful and unlike any other action game I've played.


So what do you guys think of this game? Does anybody have any information about the cancelled dreamcast version, or if it would somehow be possible to rig a lightgun to the Xbox one anyway?

Please excuse the capitalization, it's just too cool of a name.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Try out Excite Truck for the Wii. Just saying. Never mind YouTube vids; check out the real thing.

[SuperPang]

Loved it. Xbox saw the final days of classic SEGA IMO.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Also, F-Zero GX.

[SuperPang]

Oh and Gamecube

[Obiwanshinobi]

Shinobi (2002) and Kunoichi/Nightshade (2003) are PS2 games.

[chempop]

While everyone else was playing the original Halo, I was playing Gunvalkyrie. It was the game that made me buy the xbox.
I had been following the game since it's early development for Dreamcast. While I liked the idea of it supporting a light-gun and controller simultaneously, I was happy with how the controls transitioned to the xbox pad. A brilliant use of thumbsticks and unique mechanics that once learned, felt natural and intuitive. Certainly a learning curve on this one, but once I "got it", few games I've ever played have reached that level of satisfaction and pure immersion. It would easily get a spot on my top 5 SEGA games of all time.

However, it is not a perfect game. There were some very questionable design choices made that I want to mention.

First is the radar. When pictures of the dreamcast version surfaced, the enemy radar was on screen in the HUD when the meteor number now is. For some reason they changed it to a larger map which could only be seen by effectively pausing the game - a horrible idea. Here's what they should have done: Keep the small radar in the corner of the HUD, and allow a semi-transparent map to be enlarged in real time. This way there wouldn't be all those breaks in the action just to check if you cleared a room.

Second are the dead ends. Certain stages have these rooms and doorways that look special, yet strangely enough, the doors do not open and they are simply dead ends. It's too bad, probably an issue with time constraints with the devs simply being unable to finish all the stages on time. The way that some stages were designed would have been perfect for hidden secrets, but there is only that one napalm sphere thingy in each stage.

Finally, the grabbling hook. In a game that focuses on flying, why exactly would a character need a grappling hook? How could they have made it worthwhile? By having the player shoot/place the beacons where ever you want to be able to grapple from would have been awesome.

Regardless of these flaws, it still manages to be one of my favorite games of all time. Very few games reach this level of creativity and imagination. Gunvlkyrie will always be a cult classic.

[Remembrance]

I was deeply disappointed that this never got added to the backward compatibility list for the 360.

[Dave_K.]

A brilliant use of thumbsticks and unique mechanics that once learned, felt natural and intuitive.

I have to disagree on this point. This is the only game I've ever played where I developed a repetitive stress injury because of the controls. Maybe it was due to the original (large) xbox controllers, but continually pressing the left thumbstick to boost had to have been the single worst idea ever...next to that, is the fact they didn't allow customizing the controls (arggg!). I really loved the game, but couldn't play it more than 20-30 minutes at a time.

[Nana]

Obiwanshinobi, I'll definitely have to check out Excite Truck. I ignored your advice and looked it up on youtube, but this looks absolutely nuts.`F-Zero GX looks pretty ace too. I guess these will make for good reasons to turn my Wii on again (there's only so much Radirgy one can play.) Shinobi and Nightshade are the absolute tits, though. Especially Nightshade, which feels a lot like this game in terms of the combo-based flying. Does anything else do this apart from these two?

I do agree with pretty much all of the complaints in this thread, however. The game is undeniably flawed and feels like the dev team ran out of resources during development; if the repeated use of the same landscapes wasn't enough of a giveaway, then the text interludes in place of cutscenes are. Quite frankly though, I'm glad that Smilebit seems to have spent pretty much the whole budget on tuning character movement rather than cutscenes -- kind of the opposite of how people make games today, sadly enough.

In response to the useless grappling hook, I think the only purpose for it is to make Sabrouto slightly more maneuverable in the indoor sections. Kelly obviously doesn't need them, but poor Sabrouto just needs all the help he can get.

@Dave_K, I'm pretty much the same way, except I do think the control scheme is a good one when you really get it down. Gunvalkyrie was my first exposure to the original Xbox controller, and it's definitely not a kind one. Fortunately, I hardly ever spend more than an hour at a time playing videogames anyway, so it didn't affect me too adversely or anything. I just play till it hurts

[Obiwanshinobi]

Not having played Gunvalkyrie, I'm under impression that they tried to make something akin to the most rocket-jumpy PC first person shooters (such as Quake) for a console. Tribes (PC) comes to mind too, and I recall some UT2004 modes/maps being quite aerial.
Not much on consoles I'm afraid (though no Wii collection should be without Super Monkey Ball 1&2 that can also get pretty crazy).
ChainDive is of note, but its gameplay is 2-dimensional.