Gaiares

"Game Play....good....Difficulty...BAD!"

Insane difficulty. This is the first thing that will come to most Genesis gamers minds when it comes to remembering or even speaking of Gaiares. A shooting game that tested the skills of every shooting game fanatic, Gaiares brought to the table a set of skill, visuals, game play and audio that isn’t easily matched by any other shooter for the Genesis other than the Thunder Force series! Taking control of a lone fighter pilot and a rather interesting doppelganger weapon, you’ll blast your way through several stages of beautiful, yet insanely difficult battles that pit you up against some of the most interesting enemies that you’ve faced yet. While the game and most of it’s players will have used an invincibility code to get through the game, you’ll find that the challenge isn’t so much to just beat it, but learn the different strategies and control options that are involved to get you through. For die hard gamers who have beaten every other shooter there is, Gaiares will test not only your mettle, but your patience and sanity.

The game play is nothing short of insane, with the difficulty level of the game ramped up to a level so high, you have to be inhuman, or extremely fast with your eyes and fingers to get through the game properly. Through several stages of madness, you’ll face off against some of the toughest enemies and traps that any shooter has to offer, and in the process, you’ll become an expert at the genre! The game isn’t all about blowing things up though, in which you get a special accompaniment called a TOZ that will copy your enemies weapon and make it available for use against your opposition. This little feature is something that I haven’t seen yet in another game, other than a slightly less direct form in Play Station’s Einhander, so you’ll find that having a little variety in taking your opponents weapon is worth taking notice of. The TOZ can be fired at an enemy, in which it latches onto the target, modifies your weapon to whatever it just attached to and then allows you to use it. Through this, you’ll be able to upgrade that weapon by attaching the TOZ to another enemy of the same type, but you’ll also be put at a disadvantage by losing the weapon in question while the TOZ is adjusting!

Controlling your ship through the stages is something that takes extreme reflexes and skill to accomplish and master. With the different ways that you can take throughout the game, you’ll find that dodging your enemies’ fire and otherwise takes skill and patience as well as plenty of practice. I really can’t recommend the game to beginners, in which you have to have a good understanding of shooter control, the Genesis control and just an overall feel for games of this type in order to use it effectively! You have perfect control of your ship regardless, with all of the main functions being available from the start, with the speed, firing and TOZ all on the front three buttons. This is something of a relief, considering that if you didn’t have all of these options on the go, and trying to take out the enemies as they came at you, you wouldn’t get very far at all.

For the longest time, I’ve waited for a shooter that hasn’t had anything in terms of image break up and visual slow down. Finally, I’ve got a game that I can say hasn’t got much wrong with it yet, and displays the game in such a fashion, that your eyes would be popping out of your head! Considering that this is a Genesis title and the limitations on the hardware have been apparent in several games, you’ll find that Gaiares is a game that has nothing more than detail upon detail, special effect upon special effect. The stages are huge and beautifully animated, with plenty of action going on during the battles. The bosses that you fight are sometimes two or three screens high, all of which have a certain amount of uniqueness to them that I’ve seen in other games, but not to this degree! You’ll be hard pressed to find another Genesis shooter that is as visually refined as this title is, from beginning to end.

Audio wise, you’ll find that Gaiares is a game that has plenty going for it to add onto the visual display. The tunes, while not extremely memorable, are more than competent to get you through the game both in the music and the sound effects that you hear! With a straight, fast paced action sound track, it’ll take you through the various stages with an almost foot tapping quality that is hard to find in games like this on the Genesis {other than Lightening Force} and you’ll find that listening to it from beginning to end is more enjoyable than it is a chore. The sound effects, while in my opinion generic, are done well enough to blend into the game with just enough action and crescendo’s to keep the pace of the game to a maximum rather than a minimum. In my opinion, you’ll find that there isn’t anything to complain about in this aspect either, with furthers my belief that shooters like this for the Genesis are far and few between!

Gaiares is a shooter that has plenty of things going for it from game play to audio. The visuals are something short of amazing, and you can see that the game truly pushes the limits of the Genesis hardware without falling victim to different problems that most games of this type do! The control is dead on with all of the main functions being on the go, and with the audio tracks that keep you going through the game, there is nothing more that you can really find wrong here. However, the one thing that this game has and excels in far too much, is that the difficulty level is set so high that beginners to this type of genre will have absolutely no hope of actually making it anywhere! Veterans and experts alike, if you’re really into shooters and you’ve got grapefruits the size of Texas not to use the invincibility code to get through, then this is game and after this little adventure, you won’t look at shooters the same way again.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/08/01, Updated 12/08/01