Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar

"Possibly the best shooter on the Genesis system."

With particular shooter series on the Genesis System, it’s difficult to find a truly amazing game that allows you to play through with intense challenge, visuals, control and audio to roll into one hell of a game. Thunderforce 4 or rather Lightening Force gives you all of these aspects in one amazing title in which you are the lone opposition to an evil threat. Although the story line isn’t much, and even the small cuts scenes that are shown at the beginning and end of the game leave too much to the imagination, there are very few games out there on the market that allow the type of intensity that is found here. Through nine different stages and four different difficulty types, this game is more or less restricted for gamers that have quite a bit of experience in the shooting genre! Even from the starting screen, most will find that the expansive battles and the all out action shown in the very first scenes of the game is enough to hook them to the overall mission and get them started on one hell of a wild ride. Shooter fans rejoice, as there is finally a game worthy of playing over and over, simply because the challenge is just that damned good.

The game play in Thunderforce 4 is your standard side scrolling shooter that allows you to take different paths at different points in order to get through the nine different stages that are available. Through four different difficulty levels, you’ll find that the action, no matter what setting you have it on, is worthy of taking notice of! For veterans, the higher difficulty levels are probably the way to go, while the game does offer beginners to the series a way to play with the lower difficulty setting that is more or less a training mode of sorts to get you accustomed to the game. Most gamers will probably find that the stages, in all of their glory are exceptionally long, with the final couple of stages seeming to take more time to complete than it was to actually get there. The boss battles, or the lack thereof in certain points, range from the relatively easy battles, to the exceptionally long and dangerous battles in which it takes plenty of reflex, skill and patience to get through them. For those of you who are looking for some extreme challenge, you might as well set the difficulty to Maniac Mode and see if you can get through the game on the paltry amount of lives and continues before you try to use the cheat code!

Control over your ship of destruction is easy to use, as the control here with the Genesis three-button interface is damn near flawless. Because the game is spent piloting in a side scrolling fashion, you’ll find that the game doesn’t really require too much movement other than trying to avoid the shots that are flying at you. Something of interest though is that you’re no longer stuck at a single speed which, in most shooters, you’re stuck at a relatively slow speed! Through the use of an acceleration button, you can go from slow to ultra fast in a simple press of the button, which allows for a different degree of difficulty because the fast you move, the harder it is to control you ship. Other than that, the game is pretty straight forward with a weapons button, and once you’ve gotten a feel for how the game moves and how fast the enemies come at you, you should have no trouble picking up the game and just playing.

Visually, the game is exceptionally detailed and even from the opening screen when the title flashes across, you’ll find yourself staring at the television screen and wondering just what in the hell you’re playing! The fast and furious nature of the game isn’t offset by anything but detail upon detail thrown in on top for good measure. Each stage has a theme and a life all of its own, and there are countless instances of background movement as well as all of the action that comes at you from the foreground. When you really take a step back and look at what the game has to offer you, you’ll find that there isn’t another instance of near perfection on the Genesis in the shooter genre that can touch all of the special eye candy that you’ll find in the game! One problem with this though is that the game stages seem to go on forever, and even with the different paths that you can take with some of the stages, you’ll find that once you’ve been through the game two or three times, you’ve seen everything that there is to see.

I’ve heard people say that the audio here in Thunderforce 4 is grainy, has no life to it or otherwise, and I have to wonder if they were even playing with the sound on. The music score that you find in Thunderforce 4 is one of my personal favorites in which you have heavy guitar rifts placed on a techno beat that just doesn’t stop from start to finish! Something that I found personally entertaining is that the stage music changes tempo with where you are and what you’re doing, but also fits the mood and theme of whatever stage you might be traveling through. All of these things make for an exceptionally well sounding game that goes along perfectly with the action packed visuals.

Thunderforce 4 marks the end of the series on the Genesis and for all intents and purposes, it makes the series go out with a bang. If you’re into heavy hitting shooters that offer up loads of challenge, fun and overall sensory eye candy, then you really are looking in the right spot! The challenge alone should draw most shooter fans in while it may drive away the casual gamer simply because of the length that the game offers you. Once you’ve been through the game a couple of times, it’ll sit on the shelf until you’re in the mode for some more action, but it is well worth the money spent to add to your Genesis collection.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/28/01, Updated 12/28/01