Review
Overview – Not a Review
This game is one of the most hated, most beloved, and most insanely hard shooting games ever assembled. Originally released by American Sammy on the Neo-Geo system, Visual Concepts brought it over to the PlayStation with a brand new graphics engine and retooled music.
The premise of Viewpoint is pretty simple; shoot everything in sight, period. Besides your standard weapon, you can use a charge beam, acquire options a la R-Type, and unleash three types of Super Bombs. You have nothing even remotely close to a story to worry about, aside from your predicament being shown in the opening movie. After taking care of some minimal options, you’re off to the hunting.
What makes this old warhorse feel dated is it’s homage to the vintage game Zaxxon; the play field takes place in a 3/4ths view, so you’re moving diagonally up towards your death, rather then up or right. This takes a bit of getting used to on a PlayStation pad, though you can configure your directional input to allow for true diagonals or ‘forced diagonals’, where up is really left, and right is actually up.
As I said, the difficulty is astounding; while trying to do screenshots I died within the first 4 seconds of each level. Areas will be filled with random monsters, patterned enemy scouts, turret guns, and sliding gates that you must shoot open before slamming into them. You’re also only allowed three continues, which means unless you really adore the concept of throwing controllers you should stay far the hell away from this.
The Good
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The Bad
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Final Score: NA – No Review
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