I chose a blurry image to represent the blurry, dizzying feeling of awesomeness that this game gave me. Oh hell yeah. I should be in marketing.
So! Last month I wrote about how a simple commercial made me want to play two games that I never got to. Well, until now. After finishing The Battle of Olympus I jumped into Guardic Gaiden, better known to the English speaking world as “The Guardian Legend.”
If I have a forte when it comes to gaming, shooters are not it. It took me far too long to beat just the opening stage. But what is quite brilliant about this game, and I’m sure would be even more so for it was one of those games I just got as a child without any rhyme or reason to the purchase. Why? Well, because if I didn’t really know much about the game going into it, beating the first shooting stage and being taken into the entirely different top-down Zelda-like world would probably have blown my young mind.
And the Zelda-like gameplay segments were awe inspiring. Starting with a simple gun and access to only a few areas, I slowly opened up access to the world by completing more shooting stages for keys and more powerful weapons. The world is quite haunting, only inhabited by enemies and these blue ball things called Landers who serve as shop keeps and the occasional hint giver. But the majority of the hints needed to proceed in the game are in the form of electronic notes left behind by someone. Who that is is never revealed, and honestly not that important, but what it manages to do is create a completely haunting feeling. Whoever left these notes had either attempted this task before and failed, or knew someone would have to do it one day and left these messages as a final form of communication. Really gives a lonely feeling.
Basically that task is to destroy this spaceship planet1 via the destruction of the aforementioned corridors. Switching between the two forms of action really kept the game exciting for me as the challenge grew in two extremely different ways at once. The shooting stages had a continuous difficulty increase that became quite infuriating at times, but I was able to make my way through.
Getting to this game years and years past my original interest was quite worth it. It had a wonderful atmosphere and managed to make a delicious blend of two genres that I really still have trouble believing actually worked together that well. It’s a piece of gaming art and if you’ve got the opportunity, I highly recommend it.
- Or something like that. [↩]
