Raiden V: Director’s Cut (PC) review "Five games in, it's Raiden."

I noticed something about long enduring shooter series: fans can usually point to a standard bearer, a killer app, as it were, which rises to the top, justifying the fact that the series has stuck around as long as it has when it would seem that it has no right to. R-Type, Gradius, Thunder Force -- they all have their aces, and hell, in a few cases, more than one. I considered it an exceptional thing that Darius, the fish-featuring series with a three-decade pedigree behind it, is still alive and kicking, when, irony of ironies, there is nothing -- fish theme notwithstanding -- that is exceptional about the canon. I thought that was special in and of itself, until Raiden V arrived in my inbox and I realized that Darius was not alone.

Raiden has been around forever; I remember playing the original when it came out some 27 years ago. It went on to presumably break some record for having graced the most platforms ever for any shoot-em-up.(I don’t know if that’s true, but it must be.) I can’t rightly say that Raiden started its own subgenre of shooters -- the manic shooter as I’ve heard them referred to as -- but it’s certainly at the forefront of that shooter movement. Most gamers are familiar with old school, or standard vertical shoot-em-ups, like, the Star Soldier series, and most gamers are familiar with the Cave-dominated “bullet hell” type of shooter which floods the screen with relatively slow moving enemy projectile patterns that you must penetrate, slipping through the deluge, purposely grazing bullets with the bulk of your craft while your tiny hit box remains safe from harm.



But Raiden has always followed its own manic, but simultaneously unspectacular path, and it doesn't deviate here. Even when it struck out on the side with the Raiden Fighters project, it furnished a slow moving ship and crowded the screen with more bullets than your old school favourites did; but those bullets often moved very fast, and often en masse as dense sheets of death that you were not encouraged to work through, but around, the old way. And Raiden V still works like that. It’s the same game we’ve been playing for decades, but with updated visuals, and finally and notably, a handful of phenomenal, rocking tracks, which is surprising for a series which has customarily been bland aurally.

The best and truest thing then, that can be said about Raiden V is that it is true to its roots, while also offering a lot of content -- some of it fresh -- for hardcores to tinker with. Sure, there’s the story mode and boss rush you would come to expect, but story mode here is to some degree organic; your performance dictates the precise path taken to the finale. An inefficient run on a stage rife with ground targets might then segue into a stage which ostensibly acts as a ‘clean up’ strafing run on street level for those missed enemies. It’s a nice touch that gives you the feel of really being on a mission proper.

More strides are made to this end, but most don’t come off as well: your command team is in constant communication with you as the pilot, and so there is incessant jabbering between you and your supporting cast about the politics and ethics of the mission as well as criticism of and encouragement for your level-by-level performance. The voice actors are earnest, but it’s all a bit much and you’ll find yourself tuning out sooner than later. There’s even an onscreen log of everything that’s being said, just in case you missed it while you were actually, you know, paying attention to not dying. The log, as well as a video screen featuring these same conversations, as well as cheer notifications (more on that in a moment) will all conspire to crowd the screen unnecessarily.



Before delving into story mode’s eight stages, you’ll choose between three different ships with varying speed and offensive and defensive capabilities, and then you’ll select your onboard weapons from three classes, each of which has three types to try. The red spread, blue focus and purple chase beam are all here as usual. In a pickle, there’s the always reliable screen clearing bomb, but now there’s also the aforementioned ‘cheer system’ to bring some, well, merriment. The game will prompt you to ‘cheer’ various achievements throughout, and other players are doing the same thing during their plays, so that you are effectively giving strangers boosts in real time, to the tune of temporary secondary weapon barrages.

Look: if you’re a diehard Raiden fan, you wouldn’t be reading this review. Because, quite frankly, it's been awhile since the last release, and as every instalment thus far has been solid, that this game would be nourishment for your starving gamer's soul is a given. But more casual shmup players (if that’s not an oxymoron) will likely approach Raiden V with trepidation, and the hefty price tag as much as the series' reliably unremarkable personality, certainly contributes to that; there are cheaper and more stylish modern offerings out there.

Staff review by Marc Golding (November 01, 2017) There was a bio here once. It's gone now.