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Bangai-O Spirits Review
Written by Robert Falcon on Friday, August 15, 2008
Plenty of levels, a splendid mix of shooting and strategy, you can create your own levels, co-op for up to four players, wild gameplay.
Crazy hard.
Treasure never ceases to amaze us. Its resume reads like a "must-have" game collection; Radiant Silvergun, Gunstar Heroes, Guardian Heroes and this year's must-have XBLA shooter Ikaruga. One of its forgotten classics, Bangai-O for the Dreamcast, gets a revisit with this week's Nintendo DS release Bangai-O Spirits. There's no better time for it than now, as it comes to obliterate those end-of-summer blues.
All you need to know is that you control a super-robot with explosive capabilities. It can fire homing missiles, bouncing lasers, swing a baseball bat and sword and launch eye-popping special attacks by storing energy generated by fruit. You'll need all of these assets, as every level throws every single kind of enemy imaginable at you. If you're not trying to bring down cannons strewn along walls, you're dealing with a robot five times your size that wants to smack you around.
Bangai-O Spirits features over a 150 levels, each one increasingly harder than the last. Fortunately, you have many weapons in your arsenal, including an abundance of super-attacks. Some work better than others, including a homing attack where hundreds of missiles lock onto your nearest target. Our personal favorite is a repellent attack that fires nearby projectiles at the enemies that launched them. Keep in mind, however, that the game is at times painfully difficult. You won't always fly in and easily destroy your foes. More often than not, it's the other way around.
Visually, Bangai-O doesn't cease to amaze. Despite a few hints of slowdown and some boring story sequences (the in-game characters aren't nearly as humorous as the ones in the Dreamcast edition), the game looks tremendous, as you'll launch hundreds of missiles with fireworks going off like a Fourth of July display.
In addition, the music is terrific and the sound effects work well, even if they're somewhat lacking. You've got explosion effects and occasional whistle noises; that's about it.
Along with the various levels and modes available (including a "Treasure's Best" batch that'll keep you busy as you tackle each insurmountable challenge), you can also create your own levels from scratch using a stage editor. You can share them with others through the innovative Sound Load technique, where levels are generated through noises. We're serious, it works tremendously well. The game also supports co-op multiplayer through multi-cart hook-up, so you can work with friends in blowing up enemies. Single-cart play would've been awesome, but considering how much is going on with the game, it's not a big deal.
It's been awhile since we've had a Nintendo DS game come along and totally kick our ass, but Bangai-O Spirits does it in a very good way. The game's just as frantic and furious as the Dreamcast port, but the additional levels, creation tools and sound loading make it a game no one should do without.
