The Ghost Blade - DC review

[CMcK]

I know this is arguably a retro game but it is a new release so I'm adding it to this forum.

The Ghost Blade is a new vertically scrolling shooter from the somewhat controversial DC developer Hucast. It had a troubled gestation with the original coder bailing due to conditions in his home country.

Anyway this is a traditional vertical shooter for the DC which feels like a tribute to Toaplan rather than a Cave inspired effort.

Your vehicle of choice offers a focused and spread variation shot of the main weapon plus a screen clearing bomb. Bullet patterns are pretty standard fair for the genre and work well. There are one or two issues with enemy attacks being the same colour as your attack but this is only really with bosses.

I don't want to sound too negative but this game does have a flaw. The framerate does take a dive from stage two onwards. It does seem to vary with the character you selected but it is always there. It's a shame as the first level is smooth and slick with loads of action and lovely high resolution visuals.
The screen clearing bomb is pretty ugly and really jars as it obscures the action and kills the framerate.

How much this affects the gameplay really depends on your sensitivity to the varying framerate. It's well worth persisting with IMHO.
The game is solid, the graphics excellent and the tunes are thumping complementing the game well.

A cautious recommendation for all you DC and shooter fans out there.

[Leon Retro]

I didn't know about this. I had a look at a video - and I like how richly coloured the graphics are. It's a nice looking game. It's a shame there are severe frame rate issues, but that might not bother be too much. The box art looks really nice, so I will probably buy it.

Thanks for your thoughts, CMcK

[Team Andromeda]

The music sounds ace, it's the bullet patterns that put me off getting the game. But I usually agree with CMck so no doubt end up getting it lol

[briareos_kerensky]

The Ghost Blade is a new vertically scrolling shooter from the somewhat controversial DC developer Hucast. It had a troubled gestation with the original coder bailing due to conditions in his home country.

Not to mention HuCast announcing that the 3-disc edition will be out in November the same day they released the others. And of course it's the edition I preordered back in 2013.
I'll be happy to add my impressions when HuCast will honour my order.

[briareos_kerensky]

Just spent my second hour with Ghost Blade and...completed it. Uh.
There are two modes, normal and novice; the main difference is in novice there's autobombing. Of the three available ships, the Milan is the strongest, able to chew through bosses easily; the downside is that its normal and focus shots are both very narrow, with the focus shot having a higher rate of fire. The other two ships have standard wide/narrow modes.
There are power-ups, but upon death, even on continue, enough are dropped to get back to full strenght immediately.
Killing enemies with the focus shot releases tech chips for more points and to fill the bomb gauge, and I guess this is what makes the game so easy.
I completed the game by using the focus shot only, that makes you go slower, and apparently enemies have more trouble tracking you while moving at a lower speed. Add that all enemies drop tech chips, and you can stockpile bombs easily, giving plenty of them to clear the screen when the situation is particularly tight.
Stages aren't that short, but aside from how they look, there's nothing much to tell them apart: there are few enemy types and those are repeated throughout the game. The patterns they weave are decent enough, with only few cheap situations; for some reason however, I think that stage 4 has nastier patterns than the final stage, stage 5.
Graphics are nice, I really like most airplane designs Ghost Blade features. The framerate, however, is highly erratic and you can't really predict when it's going to drop. For example the first time I hit stage 3 the framerate dropped heavily when the first flying platform entered the screen, and then got back up to normal levels; on my subsequent credits the game slowed down, but never to the level of the first time in level 3, but the framerate never recovered. One thing I don't like is that the bomb covers everything, including your ship.
Music is...uhmm...I don't really know. Sound effects just drown the music and I still have to listen to the soundtrack included with the Collector's Edition.

Not a great effort really, very average.