Posts Tagged Galaga

Your two faithful satellites deployed at the top of the screen.

After the unique and well-received Pac-Man Championship Edition, Namco-Bandai decided to remix another one of its classics: Galaga.

Galaga Legions varies quite a bit from its predecessor(s) — your ship is no longer anchored to the bottom of the screen, bosses don’t use a tractor beam to steal your lives, there are many more enemies on the the playing field, and the presentation is filled with lots of modern bells and whistles. Still, it’s a very good shmup in its own right, and a great fit for Xbox Live Arcade.

Bullet points:

• Pressing the right analog stick either up, down, left or right drops a satellite beside the player’s ship that points in the indicated direction. Whenever the player fires, so do all the deployed satellites. However, satellites can be destroyed, and only two can be used at any one time (pushing on the right stick repeatedly will simply teleport the “older” satellite to the ship’s current location).
  

  The titular legions.

• Enemies enter the screen in waves, with the master ship usually at the head. The waves circle around in different patterns, and sometimes end up settling somewhere on the playing field. Prior to a wave materializing, though, the player is shown a glowing track that represents the wave’s path. This results in some fast-paced, Tower Defense like gameplay as it allows for satellites to be accurately deployed and used to decimate enemies.
• While in motion, destroying a wave’s master ship can cause a chain reaction that wipes out all the enemies connected to it.
• Some waves contain glowing ships, and if these are the first to be destroyed, they leave behind a worm hole. Shooting the worm hole expands it until it blows up and summons a ghostly legion of ships that fights along the player’s side.
• As bullets cover distance, the amount of damage they do is lessened. This encourages the player to take risks in order to maximize his score and playthrough speed.