R-Type Command – PSP – Review

This revelation quickly divides the gamers who
will and won’t enjoy this sequel. Those who aren’t amused by Advance Wars,
Fire Emblem, or Final Fantasy Tactics won’t get anything out of R-Type
Command. But if you’ve enjoyed any of those games, and are prepared to endure
excessive load times and other annoyances, R-Type Command is an engrossing way
to spend hours with your PSP.

Strength Training

I was less surprised to see Mortal Kombat turn
into a puzzle game or Mario turn into an RPG than what we have here. R-Type
Command doesn’t gain special treatment or extra publicity like other big-name
spin-offs have. So why do it? Why make a strategy game that will have so many
scratching their heads?

Because, as the developers have shown, there is
quite a bit of depth to draw from:

(1) Anyone who has played R-Type will instantly
recognize these outer-space environments. Many involve asteroids, rock
formations, and alien-designed structures that force you to carefully move
toward the enemy or face certain death.

(2) Using the same perspective as the other
R-Type games, R-Type Command is completely two-dimensional. You “scroll”
across the screen by moving along the hexagonal grid. Enemies are hidden with
translucent hexagons that appear beyond your fleet’s field of vision. You’ll
have to scroll toward the end of the level to uncover and destroy the enemy
threat.

(3) R-Type is known for having cool ships and
enormous/monstrous boss battles. They’re back in R-Type Command, and they’ve
brought their friends along for the ride. There are dozens of units to control
within your own army, and several to battle throughout each stage. But the
numbers can’t compare to their execution – you won’t just command the little
ships of Super R-Type. Players now have access to space stations, which can
attack enemies and repair allies.

(4) Strategy games don’t usually have
power-ups; they have resources that you can gather for money, to build a
fortress or to create new units. R-Type Command takes the latter route,
allowing players to snatch materials floating in space. You’ll also gain
materials by completing missions, which frequently provide access to units
that couldn’t be created prior to that mission’s completion. This is the
standard for most turn-based strategy games, but is still exciting thanks to
the variety of classic and newly inspired ships and intergalactic vehicles.

The art of unearthing enemy locations, and the
challenge of battling enemies with more than one attack capability (all of
which double as their weak points), is something truly special. But it’s not
necessarily something an R-Type fan will appreciate. While the inspired
features were made for the fans, the turn-based gameplay was created for
another audience entirely.

As a die-hard fan of strategy games, R-Type
Command was easy for me to love. Each element – whether it’s the simple
controls and gameplay perspective or the new way of experiencing memorable
boss battles – carries something distinct and vital.

Inconvenient Store Shopping

We’ve all had days where it seemed like
everything took forever. The clerk at the post office is extra slow, the line
at the drug store is unusually long, and when you head back home, traffic
slows to a 20-mile-an-hour pace, making that 30-minute errand take over an
hour.

That scenario perfectly describes what it’s
like to play R-Type Command with the movies feature turned on. You have these
great stages to explore, cool battles to fight, and an exciting army to build
– all drawing from the strength of the R-Type brand.

Then you get into a traffic jam. After making
your first attack, it’s only a matter of seconds before the game attempts to
show its graphical prowess with elaborate (and real-time) movie sequences.
These movies show a three-dimensional view of ally and enemy ships as they
blast each other into oblivion. On the drawing board, this must have been an
incredibly cool idea. On PS3 or Xbox 360, it might have been a real
showstopper.

But on PSP, a handheld that must load each and
every element individually, it’s more annoying than a meteor shower. You can
skip the animation sequences but only after they have loaded. That defeats the
purpose since the load times (8-10 seconds) are nearly as long as the actual
sequences. Movies come at random; they may be triggered by any attack, so
there’s no way of determining when one is going to strike. Their frequency is
pretty high – expect two of them for every five or six attacks. The only way
to bypass these delays is to turn the movies off.

By default, unit movement is very slow. You can
increase their flight movement (how fast a unit moves after you’ve selected
its course of action) from the menu screen, but the slow cursor movement
remains. The hexagonal design makes it tough to pinpoint exactly where you
want a unit to go, adding seconds to each unit selection. For example, if you
want to fly diagonally, forget the D-pad exists. It can barely move up and
down in this game without screwing up. The analog stick helps, but it can
still be frustrating when you overshoot your target by a space or two.

Like most strategy games, R-Type Command lets
you cancel a move before it has been completed. This is great for those times
when any wrong move could lead to a Mission Failed screen. But rather than
backtrack one step, if you cancel a move, the game drops all selections for
that unit. This makes the game feel sluggish since you’ll have to re-do a lot
of small steps. Most strategy games allow you to backup one action at a time.
As minor as this complaint may be, it’s one that will come from strategy
gamers – the very people R-Type Command was made for.