![]() ![]() Plus, levels hide many secrets, such as hidden superweapons, methods of unlocking bonus levels, and more. Tyrian boasts dozens of levels with beautiful variety: mining quarries, coral reefs, planetary cores, flesh-asteroids, war fleets - the list goes on, and you'll be seeing dozens of levels no matter which of the branching paths you take. ![]() Most shmups have only 10 levels at most because the devs stretch the game out by unfair, time-wasting deaths, but Tyrian has precluded that option, so only one approach remains: actual content. The varied obstacles you must overcome never rely on nonsensical, untelegraphed attacks that give the player no time to react, so it's a good type of challenge, one that teaches the player through each loss instead of demanding repetition. Levels last long enough to be tough, but each attempt rewards the player with experience and a better idea of what to do next time, never revoking too much progress in doing so. Each is neither too long nor too short, letting that one life last just long enough to raise the stakes once things start heating up, but the game never feels spiteful if you lose that life and start the level over. Tyrian's levels are challenging but never trollish. To recap, Tyrian is better than all its peers because it has superior customization, weapon diversity, user-friendliness, health systems, learning curve, gameplay speeds, difficulty modes, and AI. See how tough you really are after "Lord of Game" mode kicks you to the curb! For you MLG-types, try one of the many difficulty modes, which actually improve enemy AI and projectile speed instead of just slapping on a few more steel hulls on every foe's ship. You can even use an option to adjust the game speed whenever you feel like it. The difficulty never reaches bullet-hell levels of hatefulness, but there's no way you'll be getting past some of these challenges without an understanding of the game mechanics and thoughtful customization. No aspect of gameplay is overpowered, and you'll still need skill to deal with hordes of tough enemies and bosses. If all this sounds too easy, believe me when I say it isn't. At last, a shmup with a system that sets no arbitrary gate to player entry! Even if you do die, you must restart only that level no game overs or extensive rehashed content by failure. Finally, drones that replenish health if you can reach them, a hail-mary that requires player skill to make use of. Next, a health bar instead of just one touch resulting in death. First, a shield bar that regenerates if damage is avoided long enough. Tyrian actually wants you to have fun, so you have a multi-layered defense system. Most other shmups never grew a brain and developed beyond the primitive extortion-by-quarters arcades, killing you in one hit. Speaking of user-friendliness, Tyrian's chief brilliance is its health system. Some upgrades appear after certain levels, instilling long-term strategy into customization that stays fair thanks to an incredibly user-friendly saving system that includes both autosaves and dozens of spaces for manual saves, a much better system than having to beat the whole game in one sitting. Player skill is rewarded new tools of destruction, and the player can re-appropriate spent upgrades to try out new ones, encouraging experimentation and adding replay value by diversity. Unlike other shmups that have points systems to pad a blink-and-you'll-miss-it campaign, Tyrian's points system doubles as currency to buy various upgrades, including weapon powerups, new ships, more weapons, options, shields, and a generator that allows for more efficient use of these. However, Tyrian stands above its competition, achieving a level of quality that puts almost every other game of its genre to utter shame.Īn immediately apparent aspect that promotes Tyrian above other shmups is the customization system. ![]() This, along with blatantly insubstantial amounts of content that banks on the player wasting time doing the same stages repeatedly due to getting one-shotted or obtaining worthless bragging rights, has resulted in the genre having very limited appeal. A game in which repetition and memorization is the only way to avoid dying in one hit from waves of oft poorly telegraphed obstacles is not an acquired taste. This strange disparity is due to no inherent flaws of the shmup genre but by flawed design that permeates almost every title. Yet few genres are currently so niche as this simple mode of gameplay. Few video game genres are as intuitive as the scrolling shoot-'em-up move a ship around while shootin' up the bad guys. ![]()
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