Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: Silpheed: The Lost Planet

Written by John Scalzo on July 22, 2003

Full Review: Pheed me!

Ikaruga has lead a renewed renaissance in the shooter genre. Everyone has begun to sing it's praises. But if you're without a GameCube (or an import copy of the supposedly equally impressive Dreamcast version) then you're out of luck. This brings us to Silpheed. Silpheed: The Lost Planet was an early PS2 shooter that is just now working it's way into bargain bins everywhere. It was also partially developed by Treasure, the team of geniuses behind Ikaruga. And while Silpheed is a decent shooter, read on to find out why the shooter genre wasn't revitalized two years earlier.

Silpheed is a graphically enhanced port of a PC game of the same name first released in 1988 and then redesigned and released again in 1993 for the Sega CD. Silpheed has quite the video game history and with the creation of the PlayStation 2 the developers at Game Arts saw an opportunity to create the game they always wanted to create so many years ago.

Silpheed is your standard top down shooter with a slight twist. The background is interactive so it looks like your ship has the ability to weave in and out of space when in reality it's always going in a straight line. Even with this twist it's the same type of overhead shooter you were playing 10 years ago, and an average one at that. There are no powerups, no level clearing bombs, and no extra lives. But you do get unlimited continues. Your Silpheed ship also has the ability to hold a different gun on each wing, which you can fire simultaneously. Of course Silpheed includes your standard sets of pea shooters, spread shots, lasers, and bombs. Each level has at least one mini-boss and then a midway refueling opportunity to switch weapons. Pretty standard stuff. It is a one button game that shows it's lack of depth halfway through the first level.

Most of the enhancements to Silpheed run the gamut from decent to just plain stupid. The self important story basically boils down to "the tentacled aliens attack, kill them." The word tentacle is used in the script nearly every other sentence and during in-game sound clips (makes sense since Silpheed is Japanese and all). When they're not yelling "tentacles!" the technobabble bogs down the rest of it.

The graphics are actually one of the nicest parts of Silpheed. The backgrounds have a very cinematic depth to them that looks really great and is very disorienting at the same time. You'll occasionally lose the enemies amongst the scenery, it's almost hypnotic. But hypnotized or not, the backgrounds have tons of detail: space battles, fire red clouds, spaceships, collapsing buildings, futuristic cities, it's great. Although one problem is that occasionally buildings or other obstacles from the background jumps into the foreground and it's often to late to know which ones you have to dodge and which ones are still in the background. And there's a little bit of slowdown at the most inopportune times. So on the whole the graphics are good but a few flaws make them just another piece of the average pie.

Soundwise the game is pretty decent as well. Ships fly along, laser blasts, aliens scream, other pilots talk to you, it's an immersive sound experience that any good shooter needs. The music is pretty much generic shooter tunes, but the sound effects are great stuff.

Regardless of what I wrote above, there are two things Silpheed does that aren't part of the standard shooter game. First, you're given 10 hits to play with before your ship explodes, a generous number for a shooter game. And second, there is a very cool reference to 1943 (one of the innovators of the genre) in the second level. It's not much, but I got quite a kick out of it, maybe you will too.