Consolation Prize

Rebooting a franchise is not an easy task to undertake but the same development team that brought us the excellent Pac-Man Championship Edition have managed yet again to apply the same skill and panache to an arcade classic reinvigorating Galaga with Galaga Legions.

Galaga (1981) is a top down shooter and sequel to Galaxian (1979), which in turn was born out of the success of Space Invaders (1978) and took the formula one step further and instead of the processional left-right pacing of the invaders introduced waves of alien ships that left the formation and dive bombed the player in desperate kamikaze like manoeuvres. Galaga Legions retains the feel of Galaga yet builds upon the core game-play successfully fusing it with some new game mechanics that hauls the franchise into 2008, and thus makes this a much more interesting prospect for the modern gamer than if was just a rehash of the old classic with enhanced graphics.

The game-play in itself retains the simple single screen “kill everything” nature of the original and basically requires the player to destroy wave-upon-wave of enemies in order to survive as long as possible and notch up the highest score. Each wave of aliens becomes progressively more complex but the game affords the player some foresight of enemy attacks as fading blue lines trace flight paths across the screen and entry points are momentarily highlighted with orange glowing squares.

The chief variant in this reincarnation are the two new “satellites” attached to the player’s ship. These can be strategically deployed, remaining static, but set to fire in the direction governed via the use of the right joystick until they are recalled to the parent ship. The use of these satellites and placing them at locations to coincide with the forthcoming alien attacks is tantamount to your success at dispatching the swarms of aliens quickly and efficiently. In addition to the use of your satellites at certain points in the game you can gain a legion of Galaga aliens all following and firing in sync with your satellites giving you a huge boost of firepower which can prove to be invaluable.

Galaga Legions looks great with bright and colourful neon’s lighting up the screen but importantly it fits perfectly into the Galaga family tree providing a fast and fluid, but challenging shooter. Leader board glory hunters will certainly revel in the opportunity to try and top the bill in the “Championship” mode but it’s still worth a look nevertheless just for the more classically linear “Adventure” mode.

Galaga Legions is available from Xbox Live Marketplace priced at 800 Microsoft Points.

Once I found the option to chance the graphic skin I really started to dig it.