Gunblade NY - "Path" Comparison

#1GELPosted 9/4/2010 6:02:15 PM
I was gonna save this clip for my upcoming video review but I realized I can't be the only person curious about this.

Anyway, you ever look in the instruction book and notice how it mentions that Enemy and Vehicle movement is based on the player's actions "providing a different experience every time you play!"? Well I wanted some clarification on that so I recorded myself playing Stage 1 four times, synced them up, and compared.

Now one thing that's VERY obvious is that the enemies dodge your attacks in real time, you can tell that just by paying attention when you play and that alone is unusual for a rail shooter. But what this video makes clear is that there are no set paths! Not even branching paths, the rails in this rail shooter appear to be amorphous!

The way it SEEMS to work is that enemies spawn in, you attack them and they dodge, then the camera chases the enemy. Once all enemies in that group are defeated, it triggers the next scripted event (like the helicopter dropping off those purple guys) that the camera swings over to. Obviously a very interesting and unique feature and makes memorization not nearly as effective!

Said feature is most apparent in Gunblade NY. I'm putting together a comparison video of LA Machineguns now but from what I've seen, while it has this feature, the enemies dodge less and die faster on top of the game having more scripted events giving it a more railed feeling than it's predecessor. I wouldn't call it bad or even inferior though, just different. Gunblade NY has stronger enemies and unpredictable paths while LA Machineguns has more enemies and a faster pace.

So if you wanna take anything away from this beyond "Wow that's cool", I'd say to give Gunblade NY a bit more play! I know it's tempting to stick to LA Machineguns what with it being faster and prettier and it SEEMS like "the same thing but better", but both games have their own flavor and there's more to Gunblade NY than you might initially think!
#2GEL(Topic Creator)Posted 9/4/2010 8:10:45 PM
Just finished the LA Machineguns comparison and yeah it's not even worth uploading :P It's basically a more traditional rail system. Not that that's bad though considering the breakneck speed and sheer number of enemies!
#360HzPosted 9/5/2010 12:01:01 AM
yep that was the big difference when it came out in the arcade, the action was never quite the same like other rail shooters...