Raystorm HD - Xbox Live Arcade & PSN

[monkeyman]

The more I play it the more I think this zoomed in nonsense is causing some trouble.

In Stage 4, I'm having problems with those straight lasers being shot out by the light blue things from the big ships, It seems like if the game was zoomed out a bit, I could see the lasers arc at the top of the screen for a split second, and therefore react. As is, seems like I'm missing some information. Although I perform better as I memorize, it's the only thing in the level that will cause a death when I'm having a good run.

Those blue lasers absolutely destroy me every time. Now I know about this zoom issue i feel less bad about getting caught out by them so often, though the auto centre thing doesn't help either as I find it hard to judge where my ship will stop in the split second I have to react.

In fact is it just me or does your movement speed slow down when moving closer to the edges of the screen. I maybe imagining this and it could be a trick of perspective if I'm moving up or down at the same time but I've been caught out a few times (the stage 5 boss laser sweep springs to mind) because I seemed to slow down.

[Klatrymadon]

Got to stage five, today, and can definitely now see why people are having so much trouble with the zooming, but I imagine it'll only take a few more attempts to get used to those blue lasers. They're not that bad, really, and they're only fired a handful of times...

@Zaarock: how did you unlock the other ships so quickly, chap? Were you already hot stuff at RayStorm? To my shame, it's one of my few favourites that I still haven't single-credited.

[Zaarock]

Er, I just credit feeded. Pretty funny considering I've never even continued on futari, but I wanted to unlock the rayforce ship which made the game a lot more fun for me. There is another 50 point achievement for actually 1ccing arcade or extra.

TBH now that I've got lagless mame set up and stuff I'll probably concentrate on Rayforce more than this, that game did a lot more things right IMO. The scoring in that is more strict due to only ground targets though.

[Klatrymadon]

Ah, yes. I should probably credit-feed and unlock them myself, since it doesn't really matter either way outside the ranked modes. I bet I still wouldn't reach the end just yet, though! Seriously rusty at this one. I seem to be scoring much better with the R-Gray 2, even though I used to play with the first ship almost exclusively.

Totally agreed on Rayforce, too. It's one of the most flawlessly-designed games you could hope to play.

[monkeyman]

There's no shame in credit feeding to unlock the ships, I mean it's not like anyone round here is going to claim they completed the game after doing so. Plus the R Gray0 is such a good ship. I found I'm doing much better in ranking mode now I have that ship available (still only stage 4 and haven't broke 3 mil but I'm getting there).

It's just a shame stage selection is locked away as I'd love to practice stage 4 and 6 as they seem to give me most trouble. I figure by the time you get through 13 ship mode you'll already have a good handle on each stage (in terms of survival not scoring).

[Raizen1984]

Pro-tip: Don't listen to GameSpot.

[Klatrymadon]

Christ, that really is a lot of misguided, poorly-researched horseshit, isn't it? I'm tempted to apply for a job at somewhere like GameSpot or IGN, and compile a portfolio consisting mainly of complete overhauls of their own clueless fucking articles.

Sadly, I probably won't be climbing up the leaderboard for a good while, as my 360 has decided to stop switching on.

[ZOM]

...I'm tempted to apply for a job at somewhere like GameSpot or IGN, and compile a portfolio consisting mainly of complete overhauls of their own clueless fucking articles...

that would be golden!

[EPS21]

Pro-tip: Don't listen to GameSpot.

Must... contain... rage...

This guy seriously thinks this remake was supposed to drastically change the gameplay for "this day and age" in 2010. What does that even mean? He complains of the boring bosses, perhaps replace them with a cinematic of the R-Grays taking it out, with a QTE at the end to say "Press A to destroy the ship!." He then goes on to imply the only difference between this game and Xevious or 1943 is the lock on laser. Fucking retard.

[BrightSuzaku]

WHAAAAAAAT. Xevious =/= Raystorm HD. Raystorm HD would have to try a lot harder at boring/frustrating me to match my opinion of Xevious!

(Yeah, my opinion of Xevious is pretty low. I'm crap at it, and it bores me.)

Also, these bosses do not bore me. No, they frustrate and challenge me. In a good way.

[EPS21]

Also, these bosses do not bore me. No, they frustrate and challenge me. In a good way.

I think the most frustrating part is, even though I've played this enough to know exactly what to expect from each boss, and each attack really aren't that complicated, they still get me. Alllllllllllll the time...

Really liking R-Gray0 so far, the added firepower and speed give you lots more room for improvisation. No bomb is fine since Rayforce was like that anyways.

[BrightSuzaku]

I still need to do a continue-run just to get the R-Gray0. It's on my to do list. Along with surviving Levels 2 and 3 without continuing. Lawls.

[colour_thief]

Another way to fix it is to set the Xbox to 720p (but displaying on a 4:3 screen, CRT computer monitors should be able to do this) with wide mode on, and then using the video settings to stretch the play area to full screen. Incidentally, this trick also works for fixing Raystorm HD (which otherwise forces the original game's 4:3 to be stretched to widescreen, even when displaying in 4:3 video modes).

Raystorm HD is a 16:9 game, the game has no native 4:3 mode (there is no traditional arcade mode that preserves the original aspect ratio). They took the original 4:3 game, zoomed it in slightly and then widened the field of view. All you're doing is performing an anamorphic widescreen stretch (which can be done at any 4:3 output resolution).

Perhaps "fix" was too strong a word. I've read about the zooming/cropping, which anamorphic widescreen can't help with. But more than any of that, it's primary technique for filling up 16:9 is stretching. Here are some reference shots. I find it most noticeable with the large spherical bullets.

Raystorm HD (X360, at 16:9):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8061898/raystorm-x360-wide.png

Raystorm HD (X360, at 4:3 anamorphic widescreen):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8061898/raystorm-x360-norm.png

In 16:9, the bullets look like ovals instead of circles. To my eyes the anamorphic widescreen is approximately like the original game, though since it has cropped some of the screen it's got to still be off slightly. Also, the HUD and GUI only have the correct aspect ratio at 16:9. So you get an approximately correct gameplay aspect ratio and an overly tall HUD and GUI.

So as far as I can tell, playing the game in anamorphic widescreen, while not perfect, is definitely the lesser of 2 evils. But this is coming from someone with a huge pet peeve about displaying video at the correct aspect ratio.