Why Game? 1 - TextFiles.com

an individual is in fact a “system manipulation”
gamer. They care not for the experience, the
narratives or innately sublime delight that can
be had from simply playing frivolously. They
require systems and rules which can be broken,
used and abused before finally being mastered
and controlled. You know who they are, they
play Devil May Cry 3 with the grace of an ath-
letic ballet dancer. They partake in Virtua Fighter
as if the control mechanism between man and
game simply don’t exist. They’re the ones on
Shikigami no Shiro who fly through bullet hell
without blinking an eyelid. These people need
SkyGunner explained to them along slightly dif-
ferent lines.
What the US magazines of the day failed
to grasp was that underlying everything in Sky-
Gunner is an incredibly deep combo system as
rich and finely balanced as anything found in a
good shmup or fighter.
Destroy an enemy craft and not only does
its tiny pilot, replete with tiny airman goggles
and billowing scarf, parachute through the air,
but the destroyed vehicle gives off splash dam-
age. Anything in the vicinity is then automatical-
ly damaged too. This is where the science comes
into play, and you need to be sure to explain
this fully to any possible converts.
If anything nearby has a sufficiently low
enough health, be it a gun turret, aircraft or
simple porthole, it too will explode in a shower
of pyrotechnics and accompanying splash dam-
age. This domino-like chain reaction will contin-
104 The Gamer’s Quarter Issue #3
ue, and in an ingenious move by the designers,
the damage will increase with each subsequent
enemy. What this means, is that while some of
the tougher enemies early in chain might need
weakening, once things gain momentum it’s
entirely possible to take down entire fleets of
relatively tough enemies with a single shot of a
missile.
Some added benefits of this are that it
increases the score multiplier. First to x2, and if
you’re really good all the way up to x13, allow-
ing for some huge scores. And remember, the
higher the score, the higher the rank, and high
ranks equal prizes such as faster engines and
unlockable extras.
As mentioned, this combo system under-
lies everything and later enemies can only be
destroyed using it. The first time it seriously
comes into play is during a stage that features
a castle on a lake at sunset. Amidst a backdrop
of orange-hued carnage, with ships and planes
all battling it out with caricatured ferocity; keen
eyed players may have noticed the seemingly
indestructible cannons around the perimeter.
The trick to defeating these are waiting for the
small lines of enemies that eventually make
their way to the giant cannons. Timing is very
important here, but if these lines are used to set
off a combo, then the cannons become history,
allowing for easy approach to the final target.
Falling on Deaf Ears
Even with the lavish attention to detail
and the hard work that has been invested into
such a product, some people are still reluctant.
To add to such frustration, critics will feel the
need to balance things out by listing arbitrary,
irrelevant and nonsensical problems at the end
of supposed reviews.
Some will complain of slowdown. They
complain that during a level with fifteen enor-
mous cargo ships in the sky, not to mention
dozens of large missiles, smaller enemies and
a variety of other gunships, that when they
fired a barrage of fireworks that set off a long