Bangai-O HD
Developer: Treasure
Publisher: D3 Publishing
Platform: XBLA (Exclusive)
Release: November 2010
Price: 800 Microsoft Points
Contributed by: Alex Rubens
Bangai-O HD is the fourth game in the Bangai-O series and the first released for this generation of console hardware, the previous being on the Dreamcast and Nintendo 64. If you haven’t ever played Bangai-O before, the easiest way to describe it is as a arcade-y, dual-joystick shooter that is brutally difficult. This is not a “I just want to sit around and relax” type of game, it is intense and I always felt that if I made one small mistake, I would be done for. While most games of that difficulty are not fun, at all, there’s just something different here. It almost has that Trials HD feel where you can either be frustrated and keep playing or you can just be excited and keep playing; either way, you are still playing the game because it’s just plain fun.
The game ships with over 100 levels but, thanks to the level editor, the possibilities are endless. Players can edit and upload their levels online to share with their friends, making for the ultimate battle of leaderboard supremacy. One of the coolest things about Bangai-O is a move called the “multi-directional counter attack”, which works exactly as described, it attacks in all directions at once. Hold down a button and the character’s meter charges up and, when released, unleashes a devastating attack on all surrounding it. The player is rewarded for having enemies inside of a certain radius of them when they are charging the attack, thus creating multipliers for each one.
With such an arcade shooter vibe Bangai-O really takes advantage of it’s strengths and does them quite well, while not limiting the scope of the game as a whole. The level editor really does turn this into a community game where players will band together competing for top scores.
Bangai-O HD is releasing in November of 2010 exclusively to Xbox Live Arcade for 800 Microsoft Points.
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