Monday, March 13, 2017

Gunslinger Stratos series

Perhaps, Gunslinger Stratos series is the true demonstration of what Taito Type X3 system can do. The actual specs used for the series are Core i5, 8GB RAM along with Windows Embedded Standard 7 64-Bit and 1080p arcade gaming. What's less difficult is that you can see the on-screen specs of Type X3 system instead of the sticker of the Type X2 actual specs. You can see the graphics card along with the amount of RAM the Type X2 uses when booting up but that's not enough.
The game itself is the online 4vs4 third-person-shooter where you use dual gun controllers like it's a combination of the arcade rail shooter and actual controller elements. You're supposed to defeat the opponent team to win the game by emptying the opponent team cost. The way you decrease the opponent team cost/health gauge is to defeat one of the opponent team members. The gameplay may be comparable to other TPS games on consoles and computers but the rules here may be different as you're supposed to decrease the opponent team's health guage to win by defeating opponent team members. Knocking one opponent team member out causes that opponent player to respawn at a specified position similar to how TPS and FPS games work in multiplayer modes.
Story-wise, it's about two dimensions trying to collide with each other, causing mysterious disappearance and the only way to prevent this is to send the participants back to the year 2015 for VS-team battle. There happens to be two versions of the same team except that they belong to different dimensions. Defeating alternate selves is the way to prevent that serious catastrophe from happening but at the cost of the disappearance of the defeated team's dimension. A simple story like this along with the gameplay rules is one effective strategy.
The second game has the Overdrive-like feature and the third game has the Cross-Link System which enables the entire team to activate it together. There's also the PC version, Gunslinger Stratos Reloaded, which was discontinued. It is a fun answer to the arcade version but I guess that the even PC version is for use in Japan only. The only thing the US website of the franchise offers is the animated adaption which is kind of awful to be frank as the gameplay of the series is extremely effective and fun to the core that the story is less important. If the game's important factor is the gameplay even though it has story with animated cutscenes and such, depending on the game genre, an animated adaption may or may not happen.
If you come across and watch the animated adaption of the franchise before discovering the games themselves, shame on you. You should know that it is a game franchise that started 5 years ago for the arcades unless you want to be ignorant about this introductory part of it.