What is XBLAH BLAH BLAH?
One thing missing from this blog is my own thoughts on XBLA games. I hadn't really been thinking about it - I post links to other reviews anyway, what else could I possibly add to that?
Instead, I'll do something different - a feedback or a critical analysis of sorts. A list of what I thought were really great, and some either bad or even just nitpicky - to help the developers on the little things. Instead of an arbitrary score I'll post my final thoughts on the overall product.
What's good about Triggerheart Excelica?
- It's a decent Shmup to add to the XBLA lineup.
- The grapple ability - where you shoot out an anchor onto an enemy and fling them around - is a lot of fun, and trying to use it to your advantage by bouncing enemy fire off and getting more 'gold' works really well.
- Flinging your grappled enemy or debris into oncoming enemies is awesome and brings in some extra strategy that isn't grabbing different weapon power ups.
- Levels 4 and 5 are the best levels of the lot with a lot of interesting enemy formations to wade yourself through.
How could Triggerheart Excelica have improved?
- Despite being in HD, it just looks like it's been filtered up to the resolution. The small text that appears during the game can barely be read on a 720p screen. It's really only readable when in TATE mode! That's a pretty big oversight.
- The game is incredibly short, like 20-30 minutes for completion. It's over very quickly with little to go back to other than playing with the other character. The Boss System which gets easier if you're playing bad works against the game since it doesn't really make you want to play the game better.
- I realise this game was originally made on the Dreamcast and merely ported to XBLA - but some sort of Cooperative mode being added would have made the game a whole lot more interesting, even if it doesn't make sense to the 'storyline'.
- The Leaderboards are poorly implemented - they just keeping track of the top 100 players rather than everyone. That doesn't work well with the Xbox Leaderboard style - not even your own best time or kept, or your friends, so you can't compare unless you're all in the top 100! While on Leaderboards, separate ones for each level would have been sublime in a separate mode - but no, it's completely ignored.
Final Thoughts
The original game was considered a very average shooter, and nothing has really changed. It's a damn shame that Warashi didn't go that extra mile and include a ton of leaderboards because the way they've done it is just really broken.
