GyroBlade

Meh. You probably already realize this is an old school style shmup. It's not bad. It's just meh. It's mechanically barren. You move your helicopter and you shoot. Every level seems to have 3 helicopter enemies that drop a power up. This power up will rotate between green and orange. Green is a more focused and powerful straight shot while orange is a spread out wide shot. You can power these up 5 times by collecting more power ups without dying. Due to this, the game does have a bit of a gradius syndrome where the game gets harder when you die. This is mostly because enemies are somewhat tanky in this game, so without a powered up weapon, it's hard to clear the screen of enemies and you have to do more dodging. Scoring is about as basic as they come in shmups. You gain score from killing enemies and picking up "P" stars, which are worth 1000 points each at the end of the level. When you lose all your lives and you use a credit, your score resets to 0. That's it. To high score you want to kill as many enemies as possible, pick up as many stars as possible, and not die. The game's 8 levels feel like a repetitive slog. While I think the game has a decent variety of enemies, their…

Composer here. This is the first time I've heard my music in a game released on Steam and on consoles, which feels pretty surreal. I guess, as plus points go, that's gonna be pretty unique to me, though. Leaving obvious bias at the door, this game is great fun. I can certainly see myself firing it up when I want to pass a little time. The gameplay doesn't try to do anything groundbreaking, but because of that, it's intuitive, and it's tightly-tuned for a really satisfying feel. The graphics are clear, too, with some good telegraphing. I particularly like how shadow distances are used to help you quickly gauge whether something's on the ground or at the same height as your chopper. The visuals are bright and colourful, and authentic to that 16-bit Japanese PC look. Ironically, I think the sound needs more work. There's no menu music or sound effects, and the volume of the gameplay sound effects is all over the place. I know my M-DRIVE pack didn't offer a huge amount of tracks for an action game like this, but it would have been nice to hear more than two different BGM tracks, a game over jingle, and a victory jingle upon completing a level. Finishing a level currently feels a bit…

Great fun for anyone into Retro games, particularly Tiger Heli. If you're into PC Engine type shooters or anything of the sort, you'll probably like this. Basically the perfect treat for a Retro Gamer.

Looks great, and the gameplay is simple. Controls are tight with an old wired 360. However, it is one of those arcade style designs where things get tougher and more numerous until you inevitably die. Once you do, you respawn in the middle of that upgraded malestrom with the puny starter weapon, requiring multiple hits to take down the most basic of targets, meaning the fight is now basically impossible. When this happens in a boss fight, you might as well start over. This leads me to the ultimate conclusion: when a game treats you like it needs quarters to survive, even thought it lives with you in your house and you handle all the bills, it is not your friend.

Here is the thing with this style of shmup....just looking at the photos you will have a very good idea if this is your game or not. Gyro Blade is an ok shmup, but doesn't really stand out in any area. It is extremely basic with just movement and an attack button. The enemies are standard, the power-ups are standard, the difficulty is standard, the game speed is standard, and so forth. It really doesn't feel like it progressed passed the NES days of 1985. In fact...by the time you think of games like Xevious or Legendary Wings....you have already surpassed this one in depth. Here is where the real problem is: I can't say it isn't fun. Repetitive, yes, and to a greater degree more repetitive then say 1942...but it isn't boring. But is it $5 fun? You can do better. So my advice to shmup fans: get the game on a big discount (like $1), or don't get it at all. It is really that simple.

Retro style shoot-em-up that looks like what was in arcades around 1985~86, if you have ever played Toaplan's Tiger Heli it's like that but with air enemies as well. Worth the price if that's what you like (I do). I do wish there were super bombs and maybe more variety in aircraft colors. It may be color coding to differentiate between air (red), and land/sea (green) though.