Game Review: Life Force
2018-Feb-10, Saturday 20:58![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Most people my age probably learned the Konami Code from playing Contra, but I learned it from playing Life Force.
Over summers in elementary school, I hung out a lot with two other kids who lived on my street. One of them had an NES with Life Force and the three of us would pile into his room--his room with its own television, what a luxury--and play Life Force over and over again. We weren't good at it all, since we weren't steeped in arcade culture and didn't understand high score charts, one credit clears, or any of the other ways that arcade junkies measured their prowess. But with thirty lives and two players, we could get through the whole game and that was good enough.
Today, I needed something like that.
Ah yes, the famous teeth of space.
Life Force is an NES port of an arcade game called Salamander that was made more like its predecessor Gradius. Like Gradius, it's a sidescrolling space shooter with waves of enemies, some of whom drop power ups when killed. Unlike Gradius, it alternates between horizontal and vertical scrolling stages and has a two-player option. Player 1 pilots Gradius's Vic Viper and Player 2 pilots the "RoadBritish." Obviously, that's "Lord British," but the Japanese ロード could be read either way. Much like グラディウス, actually, which is why the series isn't called "Gladius" like it's supposed to be.
Also unlike Gradius, and probably the single most crucial point in why I've been able to beat this game so many times, after death the player just respawns back where they were rather than returning to a checkpoint. Combine that with the Konami Code and it obviates the need for memorization and perfect execution that are so common to arcade shooters. For much of the early game, I died over and over again but still managed to muddle through. It wasn't until I hit a lucky streak later on that I stayed alive for longer than a couple minutes.
Thank you, Konami Code. ⬆️⬆️⬇️⬇️⬅️➡️⬅️➡️🅱️🅰️▶️
A one-man fleet.
I mentioned the lucky streak and that's probably my biggest complaint about Life Force, as well as the reason why I've never played Gradius. The key component of Gradius's power up system is that enemies drop powerups, but those powerups don't provide power to the player directly. They go into a gauge that slowly increases through different powerups and activating it consumes that gauge and provides the powerups. It starts at Speed and moves through Missile, Ripple, Laser, Option, and Force. Ripple is a set of ring-like beams, force is a shield against projectiles (though not collisions), and the others are self-explanatory.
Just a few powerups improves survivability dramatically. I got some powerups in the initial approach on the first stage but then hit a rock, and after that I chewed through thirty lives pretty quickly and had to continue on stage 4. After I continued, I got an Option and the Laser in the beginning of the stage and then I didn't die until the gauntlet at the very end of the game. Two Options with Laser and double Missile means the screen is constantly filled with fiery death and enemies have a very hard time surviving more than a moment. The rich get richer and the poor die once a minute.
The odd thing is that while that's a Gradius tradition, the arcade version of Life Force has distinct powerups with discrete effects like most others games. It was changed for the NES version, maybe to make it closer to Gradius. But I would have preferred the arcade version.
The visuals are...well, they're Gradius. It's not Gradius if space isn't filled with moai heads, dragons, skulls, and weirdly-organic backgrounds with no explanations in-game explanations about where all this is coming from. The manual states that a creature names Zelos, large enough to swallow a galaxy (!), ate the Gradian star system and now you have to save it by shooting everything in sight. I feel more annoyed after reading this because galaxies are not solar systems and this isn't the first time I've seen that confusion. Sigh.
On the one hand, nearly everything is either blue, red, or orange. NES games aren't known for having expansive color palettes, but Life Force doesn't even make use of all the possibilities. On the other hand, a lot of the sprite work is great. The best are the solar flares in the Prominence stage, which arc out from walls of fire on the top and bottom of the screen in a brilliant burst of death, but the moving moai heads are also one of my favorite. Half the bosses--the dragon head that spews blasts of flame, the skull that launches its eyes at you, and King Tut's head--look fantastic, but the others aren't that interesting, and most of the enemies are the same generic spaceships that show up in any shooter game. The exception is the Prominence stage, which is full of flocks of firebirds, dragons, and fireballs that chase after the player and explode. It's beautiful and by far my favorite stage.
My favorite part of Egyptian history is the interstellar empire.
Life Force is one of those games that's clearly better in the arcades and the home console port is clearly an inferior version, but I don't care. This is a comfort game for me, like Quest for Glory. It brings me back to those old summer days as I play terribly and chew through thirty lives in my quest to get to the end of the game.
Does it hold up? It doesn't matter, because that's not why I played it. I'll always have a soft spot for Life Force, especially with the Konami Code. If only we all had the cushion of thirty lives.
Over summers in elementary school, I hung out a lot with two other kids who lived on my street. One of them had an NES with Life Force and the three of us would pile into his room--his room with its own television, what a luxury--and play Life Force over and over again. We weren't good at it all, since we weren't steeped in arcade culture and didn't understand high score charts, one credit clears, or any of the other ways that arcade junkies measured their prowess. But with thirty lives and two players, we could get through the whole game and that was good enough.
Today, I needed something like that.
Ah yes, the famous teeth of space.
Life Force is an NES port of an arcade game called Salamander that was made more like its predecessor Gradius. Like Gradius, it's a sidescrolling space shooter with waves of enemies, some of whom drop power ups when killed. Unlike Gradius, it alternates between horizontal and vertical scrolling stages and has a two-player option. Player 1 pilots Gradius's Vic Viper and Player 2 pilots the "RoadBritish." Obviously, that's "Lord British," but the Japanese ロード could be read either way. Much like グラディウス, actually, which is why the series isn't called "Gladius" like it's supposed to be.
Also unlike Gradius, and probably the single most crucial point in why I've been able to beat this game so many times, after death the player just respawns back where they were rather than returning to a checkpoint. Combine that with the Konami Code and it obviates the need for memorization and perfect execution that are so common to arcade shooters. For much of the early game, I died over and over again but still managed to muddle through. It wasn't until I hit a lucky streak later on that I stayed alive for longer than a couple minutes.
Thank you, Konami Code. ⬆️⬆️⬇️⬇️⬅️➡️⬅️➡️🅱️🅰️▶️
A one-man fleet.
I mentioned the lucky streak and that's probably my biggest complaint about Life Force, as well as the reason why I've never played Gradius. The key component of Gradius's power up system is that enemies drop powerups, but those powerups don't provide power to the player directly. They go into a gauge that slowly increases through different powerups and activating it consumes that gauge and provides the powerups. It starts at Speed and moves through Missile, Ripple, Laser, Option, and Force. Ripple is a set of ring-like beams, force is a shield against projectiles (though not collisions), and the others are self-explanatory.
Just a few powerups improves survivability dramatically. I got some powerups in the initial approach on the first stage but then hit a rock, and after that I chewed through thirty lives pretty quickly and had to continue on stage 4. After I continued, I got an Option and the Laser in the beginning of the stage and then I didn't die until the gauntlet at the very end of the game. Two Options with Laser and double Missile means the screen is constantly filled with fiery death and enemies have a very hard time surviving more than a moment. The rich get richer and the poor die once a minute.
The odd thing is that while that's a Gradius tradition, the arcade version of Life Force has distinct powerups with discrete effects like most others games. It was changed for the NES version, maybe to make it closer to Gradius. But I would have preferred the arcade version.
The visuals are...well, they're Gradius. It's not Gradius if space isn't filled with moai heads, dragons, skulls, and weirdly-organic backgrounds with no explanations in-game explanations about where all this is coming from. The manual states that a creature names Zelos, large enough to swallow a galaxy (!), ate the Gradian star system and now you have to save it by shooting everything in sight. I feel more annoyed after reading this because galaxies are not solar systems and this isn't the first time I've seen that confusion. Sigh.
On the one hand, nearly everything is either blue, red, or orange. NES games aren't known for having expansive color palettes, but Life Force doesn't even make use of all the possibilities. On the other hand, a lot of the sprite work is great. The best are the solar flares in the Prominence stage, which arc out from walls of fire on the top and bottom of the screen in a brilliant burst of death, but the moving moai heads are also one of my favorite. Half the bosses--the dragon head that spews blasts of flame, the skull that launches its eyes at you, and King Tut's head--look fantastic, but the others aren't that interesting, and most of the enemies are the same generic spaceships that show up in any shooter game. The exception is the Prominence stage, which is full of flocks of firebirds, dragons, and fireballs that chase after the player and explode. It's beautiful and by far my favorite stage.
My favorite part of Egyptian history is the interstellar empire.
Life Force is one of those games that's clearly better in the arcades and the home console port is clearly an inferior version, but I don't care. This is a comfort game for me, like Quest for Glory. It brings me back to those old summer days as I play terribly and chew through thirty lives in my quest to get to the end of the game.
Does it hold up? It doesn't matter, because that's not why I played it. I'll always have a soft spot for Life Force, especially with the Konami Code. If only we all had the cushion of thirty lives.
