Raiden Fighters Aces Co-Op Review

Review System(s): XBox 360

Nicholas "bapenguin" Puleo Wednesday 27th of May 2009 08:47 AM

I remember wondering into the local mall arcade as a teenager and seeing a pair of twenty-somethings dancing to near perfection in this arcade SHMUP, that's short for "Shoot em Up." They each gracefully dodged the thousands of on screen bullets, pirouetting into powerups, with the most noticeable one being a giant purple heat seeking beam. It was beautiful to watch not only in execution, but in looks. The game was Raiden II, and I was in love.

While it seems SHMUP games these days are a dime a dozen, it's still hard to touch the classics. Seibu Kaihatsu, the Raiden franchise's developer, went on after Raiden II and III to release the Raiden Fighters games. These three games; Raiden Fighters, Raiden Fighters II: Operation Hell Dive and Raiden Fighters Jet all were a small departure from the previous games and are combined in the Raiden Fighters Aces pack published by Valcon games. The Raiden Fighters games allows players to choose which craft they'd like to control, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Each ship has two unique attacks, missile and laser, upgraded by picking up the M and L tokens for each prospective weapon. In addition to these, there are S tokens that add drone wingman, also unique depending upon your ship. Finally there are medals you can collect for bonus points, and each game in the series adds a unique twist to this system to maximize your score.

Each ship has their own unique attacks, speed and handling.

The Raiden Fighters Aces collection for the Xbox 360 adds a ton of great options for fans of the classics gameplay which help keep the experience true to the original. With graphical options that change rendering framerate, to filters that add scan lines to make it display look like it's on an arcade CRT screen, and even the ability to flip the screen horizontally for the true arcade cabinet view; there's dozens of options to tailor the game experience to look and act exactly how you want. I don't think I've seen a collection of games that was so in depth in its attention to detail and tweaks to the controls and play styles. Add to that online score leaderboards complete with downloadable replays of the top players (you can also save your own replays) - and you have a full featured classics collection.

Co-Op in the Raiden games is drop-in/drop-out, so players can jump in at any time to assist their friend. Of course in doing so you'll snag one of their precious credits, something that's not an issue with free play enabled. The Raiden games are quite hectic, and there's no shortage of on screen bullets. Throwing another player into the mix adds to the chaos, and you'll begin to wonder whether you are looking at a game or a video of cheerios being poured on your televsion screen. It's a kind of controlled chaos, one that, once you find your focus, it's easy to control and conquer. And it's completely satisfying to play with a friend.

Sometime's it's easier to just close your eyes and hope for the best.

Point totals are separate, but both players are working towards the same completionist goal. Team work can come in the form of covering different areas of the screens, or communicating which kind and types of power-ups to pick up. Both players can get two drone ships in co-op, so announcing when you maxed out your wingmen to your friend so they can upgrade as well is a nice gesture of team work.

There's not much to complain about for $20. You get three full featured arcade titles with tons of options and replayability thanks to dozens of different choices of fighters. If there's one fault, it's that you'll be restricted only to local co-op. Still after completing all three games, I find myself going back for more. Perhaps it's the replay I downloaded from the online leaderboard of the number one player in the world, it reminded me of that day in the mall arcade. It gives me a goal to shoot for. Perhaps there's someone out there in the world that downloaded my replay and thought the same - eh...probably not.

The Co-Op Experience: Team up through three Raiden Fighters games in traditional SHMUP gameplay. Players share credits and powerups as they fight through the billions of on screen bullets and enemies. Sadly online co-op is missing.

Score: 4.5 out of 5

Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience. Our General Score is more representitive of the overall experience.

Tags: xbox 360 raiden 2 player co-op reviews

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Reader Comments

bapenguin at 08:48 AM on 5.27.2009

I should note for achievement whores - the game is a $19.99 title with 1000 achievement points.

Biohzrd451 at 08:54 AM on 5.27.2009

Yea I thought about picking this up, I remember one time going to a bowling alley with some friends and Raiden II was there, well I had been a fan of the game forever and was quite good at it so my friend decided to cover my eyes will playing, somehow though I managed to dodge bullets for about 10 secs before dying lol.

I want to pick this up though def one of the best arcade games of all time.