Liked Ikaruga? Like Konami? Do you think the Graadius series is a classic that should never die? GET THIS GAME!

I had this lying around in my library for months on end, and I'm kicking myself for not playing it earlier.

Graphics:

This is a 2D game with 3D-esque graphics, and lemme tell ya, this game looks absolutely beautiful. Everything runs smoothly, the enemies, attacks, ships, etc. are well drawn. The game just looks so damn pretty. It's kinda like how FFX awe-inspired people back during the times of the PSX - I couldn't believe how good this game transitioned from its 8-bit form to what it is now.

9/10

Gameplay:

Same old Gradius gameplay, but with an awesome new twist. Your Options now can be set up with different formations. They can be commanded to move certain ways (depending on the type you picked) by hitting R1. While this may not seem like a big deal to you at first, the amount of flexibility and strategy this improvement alone adds a lot to this game. You can have your options spin around you like a shield, freeze them in place for a perfect formation, *direct which way they fire*, or have them space themselves out in a straight vertical line.

There's also been some gameplay tweaks to Gradius V, most noticeably, the tiny hitbox that the Vic Viper has. While this may make you think it makes the game all the more easier, the hitbox was reduced for a damn good reason. There's more stuff on the screen you can run into, and corridors and whatnot are sometimes so narrow you'll be wondering how you managed to get yourself through it. At the very least, this results in a lot less "wtf, he hit my pixel and I lost a life!" sort of moments... but you'll have plenty more hair-pulling opportunities to come later on.

If you turn off the "Revival Start" option in the Config menu (off by default), your ship will instantly regenerate where you were destroyed, and if you had any options on you, you can actually get them back. This reduces the "don't get killed or you get screwed" mentality that made Gradius IV and its predecessors well known and - personally speaking - damn near impossible to beat. However, this little "extra" is actually needed, because of the severe difficulty of the game, even on Very Easy with max lives.

This one change to the game makes it accessible to both beginners (like me) and hardcore veterans. Set the game to the way you want it and off you go.

9/10

Sound:

Music gives a good atmosphere to the game, but there's nothing that truly will r0x0r your b0x0rs. At the very least, it doesn't detract from your gameplay. Sound effects are well done, nothing sounds as if they shouldn't. There's even a small bit of voice acting thrown in - and for some strange reason, it's actually HALF DECENT. Unfortunately, the voice volume is rather low, and there's no way to fix it, so you may miss out on hearing a lot of what is said.

8/10

Controls:

Gradius is very high up there in what people call the "twitch" games - well - next to Strikers and Ikaruga, I guess. Meaning, the controls are as responsive as your reflexes. Tap it a little, and your ship will move the way you tapped, tap a little more, and it'll move a little more. Whether you like it this way is really a matter of taste, but that is what Gradius is, and it's pretty damn good at it too. If you run into something, it'll be your own fault, and not the game's.

9/10

Story:

I don't know the details behind this Story, actually. But hey, it's a shooter... and a good one at that. You're a good guy, and you must save Earth from the bad guys. I'll again leave the Story rating to those who know what's going on, to keep my score from being an uneducated one.

N/A

Overall:

This is one of the few games I find myself playing again, and again and again. It's a simple pick up and play game. Blast some stuff, turn it off. Several hours, do it again... no problem.

Nevermind the fact that it's the same old stuff, nevermind the fact that the game style is old and outdated - heck, it's the very fact that the game style IS old and outdated but well adapted for a next generation console that makes it so fun. While game companies struggle to come up with the "next best thing" and falling flat on their faces doing so, Treasure and Konami did the right thing by taking what was already an awesome and an incredibly classic series, and making one of the best decisions for it: leaving it the hell alone.

Get this game. It's only $30. I've already clocked well over 20 hours into this game, and I feel I am going to surpass 40 (what an RPG normally takes me) because of the sheer simple yet complex concept of this game.

This may be very well the last of the shoot'em genre, but instead of going out with a small croak, it's left a damn good imprint in video game history... a reminder to us all that you don't need anything evolutionary to make a game good.

All it needs to be... is fun. Gradius V has it.

You know what to do.

9.8/10