Flash Review: RaidenX

Raiden X reminds me of those old NES scrollers my brothers and I used to play. It’s not as good (nostalgia bias might be involved), but it still holds up compared to other flash games. I mean, it’s no Jackal, but it’s still a good, difficult game.

Keep Shooting

This game is pretty old, and pretty hard. If you don’t find your groove and stay in it, you will more than likely die. When you die once, you usually die twice, especially in the later levels. If you get hit even once you die, so you really need to make sure nothing touches you. It’s going to be painfully obvious during boss fights that this is pretty difficult. Honestly, your best bet is going to be holding down the Z (the shoot button) and never, ever, letting go.

Seriously, if you don’t kill half of the enemies on your screen before they shoot you, you’re going to die. I’m not even kidding, this is a pretty hard scroller… even on normal. I was pretty tempted to lower the difficulty in the menu but I decided to persevere.

Tips and Info

Power ups (the names were made up by me)

Fire Upgrades:

• Burst (red): the standard burst fire you can expect in a scroller. Fairly reliable and easy to use, this one can get you out of hard spots. This fire mode offers the most bomb damage, but has the smallest radius.
• Laser (blue): a single laser that counts as multiple shots, you can see how many by holding down the fire button and moving left to right. Pretty focused and best paired with homing missiles. This fire mode offers bombs with a good amount of damage, and a fair affected area size.
• Chain Laser (purple): targets whatever is in front of you and keeps that as the target regardless of where you’re positioned on the screen. You change targets when either the first one is dead, or another moves into the path (later upgrades allow chain damage, which doesn’t change the primary target). This fire mode offers bombs that cover the entire screen, but not the most damage.

Missiles:

• Standard Missiles (M): the standard high damage, no thrills missiles. They go in a straight path and cluster a bit until later upgrades.
• Homing Missiles (H): fast, light damage dealing homing missiles. Regardless of your position these missiles find a target and hit it. The fastest firing of the two options.

Misc:

• Medals (red and blue): extra points
• Star: a lot of extra points
• Fairy: very large amount of extra points, moves very fast
• Full Power (P): completely maxes out whatever fire mode and missile you have active.
• Bombs (B): gives you one bomb. Not using bombs gives you extra points. Bombs are affected by your fire mode, but each help get rid of large clusters and are pretty useful on respawns.

Now I wasn’t kidding about endlessly shooting to keep you alive. That is probably going to keep you alive through out most of the game. Go for upgrades, but don’t follow them around. You’ll die if you chase after every power up, so don’t be afraid to let a few get away.

There are a few save slots, but don’t keep saving in the same slot. Pick at least two and alternate which one you overwrite per level. This will let you go back a level without having to restart the entire game just to fix a mistake. You can name your saves to help keep it organized.

Sights and Sounds

This game is pretty old, and doesn’t look that great now. Still, it looks pretty good compared to other games its age. The sounds are pretty decent. Each fire mode has a completely different sound and feel, as do the bombs. The music is alright, but could be a little more catchy. All and all, this sounds and looks like a fun game.

Overall

I’d recommend this game, but only to a few people. It’s pretty hard, and I remember NES scrollers being a bit easier. If you like a challenge, however, then this game is definitely for you. I have to keep restarting every other level, not only to get a better start on the next level, but because I run out of lives. You start out with 15. Now think about how I need to restart ever other level because I run out of lives. This doesn’t start till about level 3. This game is definitely rough. It’s fun though.