It's not very often a new take on a classic genre comes along that doesn't feel like a simple HD rehash. Good news for all you shoot 'em up fans out there...Soldner-X 2: Final Prototype is here, and it rocks.

 

Story-wise, this game has about as much to offer as you can expect from a side-scroller shoot 'em up. After saving humanity in the first game, it's again on your shoulders to thwart the plans of a violent alien race hellbent on taking over the universe. Riveting, right? Well, if you're coming into this type of game solely for the story, then you have issues.

 

The action in this game is so frantic, it occasionally approaches "overwhelming," without ever quite reaching it. Enemies coming in from all angles, enemy fire flying everywhere, powerups littering the battlefield, it's almost too much to handle. Almost. As bad as it gets, there's always a way out. It's just a matter of being observant enough to find it and skilled enough to pull it off.

 

 

 

Many casual gamers would look at screenshots or videos of this game and be immediately scared off by the apparent difficulty of this game, but that notion is altogether misleading. Though the game can be very punishing, it can also be very forgiving to shoot 'em up rookies. The difficulty settings do a great job at molding the learning curve an effect that is well tempered by another feature: difficulty scaling. Within each setting, the game scales to skill level. The better you do, the harder it will get. The more ships you lose and the more you get hit, the fewer shots the enemy will fire, etc. While playing through one of the levels a second time after I had upped my game, the scaling mechanic was very noticeable. More enemies were firing more shots at more angles than I knew what to do with. It really facilitates improvement by slowly nudging up what's expected of you.

 

Now, I'm not big on techno/electronic/synth music, but I would buy this soundtrack in a heartbeat. The futuristic bleeps and bloops of this game's music strikes the perfect tone. The sound effects are also excellent. The voice acting is...not as great. Go ahead and cue up your typical two-dimensional informative-but-wary ground control operator and overly-confident go-get-'em space ship captain sound clips in your head. Can you hear them? You've pretty much just experienced what the voice acting has to offer. It's not terrible quality per se, it's just total corn.

 

Where this game really shines is in the graphics department. SideQuest pulled no punches with the visuals here. Rendered in full 1080p HD, everything about this game is gorgeous, from the smallest laser beams to the largest bosses. The cutscenes, however, are pretty barebones, consisting of slightly-moving pictures with a voice-over and subtitles.

 

I really hate using the "Easy to learn, hard to master" line, but I'm afraid it really applies here. You start out with two weapons, with the ability to pick up a third. You grab powerups to increase your firepower, hearts to increase your ship's health bar, and other various floating doo-dads to further increase your score. Simple, right? In essence, yes, but to truly maximize your score and master this game, you're going to have to juggle several different mechanics at once. For example, most enemies drop "chain rings" when destroyed. Picking these up fills your "chain meter" and resets your "chain clock." Once your meter is full, you get an extra powerup. Go too long without picking up any rings, and your meter will decrease. This is just one of several little systems in Final Prototype that add much-needed depth to a usually-simple game genre. Keeping all these balanced is made harder by the fact that you probably have several dozen energy beams flying at you, and any little glance to the chain clock (or the weapon power meter, or the health bar, or the player rank indicator, etc.) can mean a nice, colorful explosion where your ship used to be.

 

 

Besides the paper-thin story, the only thing I can knock this game for is its length. Four campaign levels are available at the get-go, with a few more that are unlockable via secret keys scattered throughout the game. Including the unlockable levels, you could probably burn through the campaign in an hour to an hour and a half. Luckily, the challenge mode add a ton of replayability. With objectives such as "Complete levels 1-3 on normal without losing any ships," and "Collect 999 chain rings in level 2 on any difficulty," this game will last you much longer than a couple of hours.

 

If you're a fan of old-school side-scrolling SHMUPs, there is no reason why you shouldn't enjoy this gem of a PSN title. A hilariously cliche story wrapped in intense action, beautiful graphics, and complex gameplay, hellbent on taking you back to the golden days of gaming...what more could you ask for?