W-Ring - The Double Rings for PCE
Review #8147
W-Ring - The Double Rings
Trying to out Gradius Gradius
Gameplay
Great movement with three selectable speed settings. Weapons can upgrade quickly with plentiful power ups. They don't get overpowered so you need to carefully avoid taking damage. One hit loses your power up and another kills you. Four or five weapons with a bomb subweapon which fires automatically. No major complaints but also nothing exciting or new about it.
The gimmick is an option/shield which surrounds your ship and can deflect small shots. It moves with your ship but only covers part of it so you must move backwards to move it to the front or forward to put the ring behind you. Kinda cool but I prefer the R-Type option.
Level Design
Short stages with a lot of interesting elements and events. They steal from other, better games, but mesh together well here. Bosses are underwhelming though.
Theme
Gradius rip-off, but a good one. The ship is a dead ringer for the Vic Viper and many familiar looking enemies appear. No plot or cutscenes or any other presentation.
Art Style
Awesome sprites and ho-jum but nice backgrounds, especially for an early gen title. However, colors are muted and dark and enemy bullets are a dull brown which makes them hard to spot. Most of my deaths were caused by those dumb bullets.
Audio
Excellent music for the most part. It's got a decidedly 8-bit sound, which I'm all for. Tracks sound like Ninja Gaiden.
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