I skipped this during its initial run but finally got it as a Christmas present in 2011. It's probably the best horizontally scrolling shmup I've ever played.
Games That Desperately Need Reboots: Einhander
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 On 03/03/2013 at 11:56 AM by Ryan Bunting See More From This User » |
There are many games and franchises that we all wish would come back, and just last week I covered the first of many that I wish would return - Zone of the Enders, but today I've got a game that I'm not sure many of you have heard of, but you may have seen this game on the shelves at an Electronics Boutique in 1998.
Einhander is a pseudo-3D side scrolling shoot-em-up, which in itself isn't wholly original, but the weapon and ship system is, and it's almost entirely the reason for this game needing a sequel.
The storyline isn't anything we wouldn't expect from Squaresoft, and it makes sense for a side-scrolling shooter. The Earth and the Moon are at war because the Earth is tired of the attitude it's been getting from the Moon, or something like that, but you pilot this kick-ass ship called an Einhander (which means "one handed" in German if you seriously couln't translate that yourself.) that has it's own native machine gun as well as an arm and Gun Pods that allow you to hijack weapons from enemies you kill. These weapons range from gatling guns, to missile and grenade launchers, and even a sword weapon that extends from the arm of your Einhander and tears enemies apart.
For only having one hand it sure can WIELD A LOT OF FUCKING WEAPONS.
The background of the first level is very reminiscent of Midgar from FF7, which isn't very surprising, but it definitely looks pretty damn cool for a setting in a shooter. The view isn't always fixed at a purely 2D perspective, on occasion the view will turn 45 degrees or so to show you enemies or bosses coming at you from the front, and vice versa. It adds a nice extra little bit of depth to the gameplay, which is already awesome with the weapon system they have in place.
This afterthought of a Square game happens to have the ShinRa building in it?
The levels progress like you would expect from a shooter, point A to point B, but the interesting little nuances are what make the levels great, sometimes you're descending down a huge shaft (the 5th graders are chuckling), other times enemies come from the background and fly in front of you, other levels have to archetypal train you have to destroy that's filled with turrets and enemies from all over the place, and the boss fights are pretty intense. The bosses have your traditional blinking sweet spots, but most bosses you can destroy separate parts of them, arms, legs, weapons, etc., and make the fight a little easier on yourself, eventually leading to the PSX explosions and debris we all know and love!
The main reasons this game deserves a sequel is because the weapon mechanic was revolutionary at the time, and I think would still hold it's own in todays market, and especially in a world flooded with "Battleduty Call of Modernfield 5: Back to World War 6" we need a good old fashioned shoot-em-up. On top of that, this game was severely underrated - it didn't follow the Gradius archetype or the R-Type "R-che-Type" (haha, see what I did there?) and they pretty much said "Hey, let's make a scrolling shooter and see how it turns out" and they were able to make an original and very fun scrolling shooter, with an inventive and innovative weapon mechanic, creative use of views, fun bosses, a decent selection of ships (including the two hidden ones!), which all together gave us a very enjoyable shmup experience, which I think that if modernized with beautiful graphics while maintaining the nostalgic chaos that is shoot-em-ups, Einhander 2 (Zweihander?) could very well be the next great game - even if they made it for PSN or XBLA, I'd happily pay 20 dollars for it.
TL;DR - Squaresoft/SquareEnix ignores past franchises that kicked ass, they need to make an Einhander 2 god damn it. Just as bad as they need to make a new... Ikaruga... game... Welp. Part 3 is on it's way now.
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