Darius Alpha

"Silliness."

Darius Alpha has no real justification for its existence, really. I could go on about the series' past -- how we've lead our brave warrior through a myriad of obstacles before. I could also ramble on about how Darius‘ story line and I could speak about the weapon system. Why bother? To be honest, none of this really matters. In fact, the whole game stinks of irrelevancy. Darius Alpha will appeal to only those hardcore shooter fans for one reason alone: there are no levels.

Darius Alpha pits you against the series' bosses in one long, strenuous gauntlet of boringness. Seventeen bosses to be specific. No monstrous space convoys to destroy. No crimson red meteor fields for us to navigate through this time around. Just uninspired boss battles one after another that proves to be nothing less than an exercise in tedium.

Darius Alpha is only known mostly to the community due to its extreme rareness. Prices going into the three-figures is common play on any popular auction website. Nothing more can be said about the unimaginative rehash of all the series' bosses combined into one hu-card other than that it'll bust our wallets. Anyone who actually owns Darius can confess to that it's nothing more than a bore. So who would want to actually sit and beat Darius Alpha? Only people who love to play these games seriously or for bragging rights. You see, the chances that you actually get through the seventeen bosses within the first, second or third time are slim to none. The regular gaming demography will lose interest right around that third or second time.

Going further, Darius Alpha doesn't even let us choose our own weapons. We'll automatically be upgraded to a stronger ship with better weapons after each boss battle. First, our missiles will be more advanced. Second, our Shields will be able to take substantially more damage. Third, our bombs will wreck more havoc. The next boss will be more difficult to keep everything equal; they'll either shoot more projectiles at us, be larger, or require more ammo pumped into them to die. The same formula can applied to the entire set of bosses. If we die, we'll be at a disadvantage since we'll be significantly downgraded and the bosses will retain their strength. If we take too long trying to defeat them, we'll be attacked and penalized for it.

Darius isn't worth the money or the prestige of owning. The most that can be said is that it's a pretentious game and simply a waste of money your hard earned money. Only real shooter fans would wish to actually endure Darius Alpha. If you're any casual gamer, your time is better spent going through some obscure RPG instead of one of the most pointless shooters ever created.

Final - 3

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 10/05/04