It doesn't seem like there are that many good flying shooters on the NES. You can tell because people often put Legendary Wings on their list of favorites from the system. The only reason you would put that on the top of your list is because you didn't have any other games to choose from. However, when you dig a little deeper into the NES catalog you start to discover that there are some good ones to be played like Zanac and Dragon Spirit. Although they are fun games very few of them are well known.
Life Force is the exception. It is probably the most famous of the flying shooters on the whole system. It also has quite a reputation. People usually put this game on their best of lists to represent the whole genre. I guess it does have a lot going for it. It's made by Konami, who could do almost no wrong at the time. It has some of the coolest graphics of the era, especially those swooping flames in level three. It also has an interesting weapon systems that requires you to think a little bit. I guess it's easy to see why it represents a whole genre. It does everything so well. Okay, so there is one thing it doesn't do well, but I will get to that in a minute.
I remember playing this game all the time in college. It was one of those games that my nerdy friends thought was too hard, so I wanted to beat it. I remember playing that game over and over again and finally beating it after months of off and on play. It's a tricky game because it has so many things popping up. You scroll both vertically and horizontally, and it is not uncommon for things to be coming at you from three or even four directions. You also never know what to expect as the screen scrolls. Trust me, those curving flames will kill you the first time, and probably up through the 20th time as well. The best strategy in this game is to play through it enough times that you know what's going to happen next. Thankfully it's fun enough that you won't really mind.
Remembering the difficulty level I was surprised by how easy of a time I had beating this one again. It really only took me a few tries. By the time I was good enough to make it to the level I had about eight lives and hadn't even used a continue. And it's not like I had it very well memorized either. I only had a good memory of levels 1 and 3 which are the ones that I died in the most. I really don't have an explanation for it. I think I just got lucky or maybe all this Nintendo playing has got me into some kind of zone. Whatever the reason it was nice finding a game that I was still good at.
So what was the one flaw I was talking about earlier? The end of the game is too easy. It really doesn't have much of a final boss It just has this snake thing flying around in a big circle. All you gotta do is shoot him a few times and he's down. It's really odd for a game that has such big, tough bosses. After that you gotta fly through some really skinny spots which isn't a problem if you have some lives saved up. Then there's not even much of an ending. It's kind of a shame for a game that is otherwise great.
Well I guess that's about it for Life Force. It's another example of a sequel that I'm better at than the first installment. I've never been able to beat Gradius, the first game in the series. I've also never been able to beat the original Mega Man or Castlevania despite getting through all the other ones. There are different reasons for this, but in the case of Life Force it's because it is designed much better. In Gradius you pretty much can never get hit. Once you've lost your power ups you're done for. In Life Force it seems like you can always get by until new power ups arrive. Not enough shooters are like this. I never once felt hopeless. Okay I guess I can end this entry now. I guess this is a pretty good game to represent a genre with. I sure can't think of a better one.
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