Review: Deathsmiles - Deluxe Edition
It’s hard to recommend Deathsmiles to the average gamer, let alone the average western gamer. Probably best reserved for the more narcissistic of you, Deathsmiles Deluxe Edition is a wonderfully packaged vignette of Japanese otaku culture wrapped in so many layers of cultural differences that it is nigh on impossible to decipher.
The core gameplay of Deathsmiles is a familiar concept to those schooled on R-Type or Defender. A simple enough horizontal scrolling shmup with some height control that will let you see above and below the borders first presented within a level. Deathsmiles is a little more in the ‘bullet hell’ camp than the aforementioned however, owing more to Batsugun and DoDonPachi than Gradius. While playing the game on its standard modes produces a challenge, ramping the difficulty up full will prove a frustrating and often mind boggling adversity. Seriously the final level and the extra stage are unbelievable. This gameplay is often fun and frantic with the player demanded to dodge and weave with little in the way of power ups save for a few bombs when the screen is a little too full of bullets. This game is fun to play with memorization being key in recognizing enemy attack patterns. In this aspect the bosses are especially good fun.
For however simple that premise may be the game is wrapped up in one of the most visually striking and culturally confusing graphic designs of recent times. For those of us not well rehearsed in anime and manga the Gothic Lolita style is certainly interesting if not befuddling. Here a variety of teen girls take the lead in a halloween styled game where graveyards and dark swamps take the place of the usual spaceports or techno-mechas found in shmups. The girls themselves inexplicably shoot bullets from their bodies while a hovering assistant (owl, bat etc.) shoots from beside. Enemies pop up in front and behind you and will shoot different patterns of bullets depending on difficulty. The graphics themselves are not fantastic but rather functional with style making most of the ground for where fidelity falls flat.
The story is complete WTFerry, with none of the girls dialogue or details making much sense. The final boss also has some of the more choice lines of laughable dialogue. These elements I am willing to forgo because I feel that so much has been lost in translation. The UK package, which is exclusive to the Xbox 360 also includes a great CD soundtrack and CD-Rom. The 3 disc collection is great fan service and at its current Amazon price point of under £15 is well worth a look for shmup fans.
Here story is clearly playing second fiddle here to a game which focuses on gameplay, difficulty and high score chasing and for that matter alone there is much reason to come back for another spin.
