Silpheed: The Lost Planet

"This game is like my review: short and not very good."

After playing the R-types and the Galagas of many years ago, I was surprised as well as pleased to see a recent mild resurgence, or at least more interest in the genre, due to an innovative and brilliant shooter game called Ikaruga. As if to confirm my hypothesis, I heard news of an R-type Final game coming to the States in a bit. Of course, where do I think primarily of videogames? In the videogame store.
So there I was, thinking about shooters, when BICKETTY BAM this holographic cover of a videogame frazzles my retinas with its holographic shiny-ness. It was called Silpheed :The Lost Planet, and wouldn't you know it it was a shooter. Well. Don't that beat all. I rented it on the spot, and the cashier said, "This looks intense." Intense! Now there is a word that defines the shooter genre. And if the game looks intense, it must be intense, no?
Sadly, no. Silpheed is one of the more boring shooters I have played, with slow pacing, not many enemies on screen at a time, and a motley assortment of 9 weapons that range from the classic straight shooter (in about 5 varied forms) to guns that shoot to the side, or that shoot out 60 degrees from your ship; overall there is no awe-inspiringly powerful gun, or giant screen clearing bomb of intergalactic death. The gameplay is disappointing, bosses rarely pack any punch, the enemies fly in slow unfiring formations, and the game is short. Gahhh.
But the graphics are craziness. As the game will proudly tell you, the backgrounds are fully polygonal, and the game looks beautiful. The music is decent, not terribly memorable, and while I like the captain's voice when he narrates the captain's log, the voices of your pilots in game sound horrendous and muffled, and in some cases really funny. Like the stereotypical asian guy, who says things like, "E-vuh-sive. . .manyoovers!". Audio, not so hot.
And the replay value is. . .umm well, you CAN play it again, but I see no incentive to. The game is just not very good.
Silpheed is representative of a dangerous trend in videogaming. The placing of graphics over gameplay in terms of priorities makes games so much eye candy merely relying on novelty to sell, and makes games more expensive to design as the graphics have to be sharp to keep up with the competition. This trend is a positive feedback loop in which games invest more in graphics and less in gameplay which requires other companies to invest more in graphics. . .overall making videogames a much duller and more derivative field. Silpheed is a dangerous portent of things that could come to pass if more time is not spent on gameplay in making videogames

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/19/04