Truxton Extreme

I'm a big shmup fan (despite being generally bad at them) and also a huge fan of Toaplan's work (grab the Toaplan collections from Bitwave Games if you haven't). I knew Tatsujin had some Toaplan veterans on staff but it's been a long time and technology has changed a lot since Toaplan went under and when I first fired this up, I was concerned this was just going to be another slow 3D shmup that wouldn't be interesting. I was very wrong and this is both a good shmup in its own right but also a worthy successor to Truxton. In many ways, this feels like what Toaplan would have evolved into if they had managed to survive until the PS2 era and that's a compliment. The price may seem a bit high but for those who want to dig in, there's quite a bit of content here. Shmup stories are normally a waste of time and something I usually consider pointless. The story in this won't win any awards but they took a series that had no story before and actually wrote one with morality questions and themes like human expansionism, fusing humans with technology, cloning and other things, along with multiple characters that each have their own developer backstories, conflicts and secrets. This is all told through motion comics that happen between missions and again, they aren't mindblowing but are decently done. I found myself actually letting them play out and not just rapidly skipping through them, which is unheard of for me when it comes to stories in shmups. There are 6 story missions for each character to play through and while many of them are repeats, some mix things up, especially toward the end. There's an Arcade mode that plays through all missions at once with no story, a local only co-op mode, plus a mode called Arena which is a timed score attack caravan style mode. Differentiating from the arcade games, high scores are kept for each individual level instead of the game as a whole and each of these has an online leaderboard as well. I would have loved to see replays to go along with this as they can help a lot with practice and strategizing. In the Truxton tradition, levels are lengthy and reward patience and memorization. Some battles can get hairy but this is not a bullet Hell either. There is also an easy difficulty mode and practice mode available. The slow scrolling through the levels will initially mislead you into thinking this is a slow moving game but the pace ramps up quickly. You can get several ship speed upgrades and can cycle through your speed with a dedicated button. There's also a number of weapon options which can be upgraded but this is my only real major criticism in that I found them to have some balance problems. If you stick with the white weapon that has seeking bullets, you will have a [I]much[/I] easier time overall than with any of the others but perhaps your mileage and strategies will vary. You can also power up an on-demand enhanced shot by killing enemies and tougher enemies will award more charge than weaker ones, though this sometimes feels off balance too. This shot does both more damage and gives much more score for enemies killed with it so strategic use of it is key if you want to rank high. If you die, you'll go back to a designated checkpoint but you have to be on your toes as some of these are nefariously placed and you could spawn surrounded by enemies and you'll have to move quick to not instantly die again. The presentation is not state of the art but solid. The 3D art style is consistent and the ships look distinct from each other and the stage backgrounds are gorgeous. The soundtrack features some original tracks and many remixes of tunes from the old games that have their own identity but also will evoke memories of the original right away if you're a fan. It runs great on both my main PC and my MSI Claw 8 AI+, plus it's Steam Deck certified so you can confidently run it on a variety of hardware. I finished the campaign and will keep plugging away at Arcade and Arena mode from time to time. I'm happy to see that Tatsujin has managed to repackage the magic of Toaplan's older games and I really hope this does well enough that we can see them take on other classic shmups or make their own original new one. Shmup fans and especially Toaplan fans should not miss this.