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G-Darius HD is, as the title indicates, an HD remaster-ish of side-scrolling shoot-em-up G-Darius, but since it’s a game I hadn’t played before, I compared both versions which are part of this package, and from what I saw of the early parts of the first stage by comparison, there’s not a huge amount of ‘remastering’ for the new version – to these eyes, at least.
In my run-through of the game, I played through 5 stages – each of which can feel a bit samey from one to the next, in terms of how they’re set out – and while they do go on a bit, there are 15 stages in total if you want to 100% them.
It’s rather like the arcade game Outrun, where you start with just the one race available, but the end of each race allows you to turn left or right. This gives a fair number of different combinations of stages to work through, but since I’m a newbie to G-Darius HD, I went left each time, giving me the easy route… apparently, since they’re not exactly “easy”.
I say I hadn’t played this before… I *think* that’s the case, anyway. Side-scrolling shooters like this just remind me of R-Type, which is the one with which I was most familiar.
I like how the graphics are certainly just as you’d expect in the arcade from back in the day, with explosions – as you shoot a baddie – looking something from a laserdisc player game in the ’80s like Astron Belt… sort-of. Basically, they don’t look like standard sprites, but something a lot more cool.
It’s good fun, but I died plenty of times… and I’d challenge anyone to try it on just ONE life!
G-Darius HD is released today on Nintendo Switch and PS4.
Check out more Nintendo Switch reviews!
Important info:
- Developer: ININ Games
- Publisher: ININ Games
- Players: single-player
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.