R-Type Delta HD Boosted Review [SWITCH]
I’m quite a big R-Type fan and have been playing the series for well over 30 years at this point. I spent a lot of my teenage years playing R-Type DX on the Game Boy Colour before graduating on to the fantastic R-Type Final on the PS2, yet somehow the PS1 exclusive R-Type Delta managed to slip between the cracks, and I never quite managed to secure myself a copy of my own, so I was delighted upon hearing the announcement that it was getting an updated release as R-Type Delta HD Boosted.
R-Type Delta did for the R-Type series what G-Darius did for the Darius series: A full 3D polygonal debut for the series, bringing it into the 32-bit era while keeping the core gameplay of the series intact.
There’s a total of seven levels to work your way through here in Delt HD Boosted, and they can all be quite challenging, each ending up in a screen-filling boss battle. That said, R-type Delta HD Boosted is still a console game at its core, so it’s not as brutal as other arcade ports, and even though there’s often a lot going on on screen, it never quite enters bullet hell territory. I found that most of the difficulty of the game came from accidentally crashing into scenery or, in particular, the Level 3 boss, which takes up the whole level.
Just like with other entries in the series, you’ll often find yourself funnelled into narrow sections of the levels with enemies on both sides, which makes paying attention to your surroundings at all times essential, and the gameplay can even feel a little claustrophobic at times. Thankfully, with the tap of a shoulder button, you can increase or decrease your ship’s movement speed at will, allowing you to avoid incoming obstacles or to slow down and carefully navigate a particularly narrow section of the level without crashing into the walls.
R-type Delta lets you choose between three different ships, with the main difference being the type of Force Device each one is equipped with. This is the series staple ‘R-Type Ball’, which can be shot forward or backwards and eats incoming enemy fire to protect yourself. The positioning of your Force Device will be essential for clearing certain sections of the game, especially when enemies are coming from both sides of the screen.
Like most shmups, practice makes perfect, and you’ll soon recognise and become familiar with the enemy patterns. Thankfully, there’s a somewhat generous continue system allowing you to just back into an earlier checkpoint, which there seems to be at least two or three on each stage. That said, R-Type does feature classic ‘Gradius Syndrome’, resetting all of your power-ups upon death, which can make restarting from a mid-level checkpoint feel so much harder when you are reduced to your starting shot type.
I did find that completely restarting a run can be quite annoying. The time from selecting your ship to being able to actually play the game is 42 seconds! There’s no way of skipping the intro cinematic, which is a little annoying and is something that could have been implemented by City Connection to make the experience a little more streamlined.
To help you progress further into R-Type Delta’s later levels and help with enemy pattern memorisation, there’s a Training mode, which lets you practice parts of levels you have already cleared. It’s a shame it only lets you practice a level after clearing it, as it can be quite tedious to have the play the whole game through from the beginning just to get stuck at a late game section, but I guess that is part of a genre and part of the appeal overall. Training mode lets you set all types of conditions, including what power-ups you have, so it’s perfect for practising for that elusive 1cc, and there are definitely certain sections of this game that feel like they have certain loadouts in mind when they were designed. It’s a lot of fun testing our different sections and finding a better way of progressing with the correct weaponry.
If you are finding things a little challenging, you’ll be pleased to know there are a total of three different difficulties to choose from: Kids, Normal & Bydo. So you can always try knocking down the difficulty or increasing it if you are feeling bold.
Presentation
I spent my time playing the Switch version on the Switch 2, and I’m pleased to say I felt no latency or lag playing in handheld or docked modes, with the game running beautifully.
There are three display modes: a normal mode, which is essentially the same as the PS1 original, an expanded which slightly gives you a more visible screen but is pretty much what would have been cut via overscan on a CRT and the ‘Full’ mode, which stretches the image to fit the screen.=
There’s also an option to switch between High and low texture detail. High is on by default and looks like if you were to take the original PS1 game and run it few an emulator with a resolution boost, it still looks very ‘PS1’ but a lot cleaner around the edges. The ‘low’ texture version looks much more ‘crunchy’ and is pretty identical to the PS1 original. I actually quite preferred the new textures, so I decided to stick with them.
Here’s an example of the same screen with the low textures and new textures: –
Along with the new coat of paint, there’s also the option to switch between the original and arranged soundtracks, which is a nice addition, with the arranged OST sounding particularly awesome.
Conclusion
R-Type Delta HD Boosted has made the original version obsolete, and I think it’s great that so many people are now able to experience the classic and challenging entry in the R-Type series on modern hardware. Do not sleep on this game! R-Type Delta HD Boosted is challenging, methodical and a lot of fun.
If you missed Delta the first time around, you owe it to yourself to pick this up. City Connection has done a great job preserving a classic, and I would love to see City Connection give R-Type Final the same treatment!
9
Nintendo Switch review code kindly provided by City Connection and Clear River Games