The name is dumb, of course, but I’ll take it. Thanks to a certain long-running JRPG series the word Final has lost most of its meaning around these parts, but when R-Type took it on as a suffix back in 2003 it really meant it. R-Type Final was intended as a grand farewell to a genre seen to be on its last legs, and a send-off from one of the all-time greats at that. A funereal air hung heavy over its slow, stately missions, and when Irem turned away from games development in 2011 it felt like part of R-Type Final’s prophecy might have come to pass. A gaming legend was no more.
R-Type Final 2 reviewDeveloper: GranzellaPublisher: NISPlatform: Played on Switch and PlayStationAvailability: Out April 30th on PS4, Xbox One and Switch
Reports of the genre’s death were greatly exaggerated, of course, and in recent years a cottage industry has risen around this most humble breed of shooting games. Pick up a Switch and you could fill its storage with some of the all-time greats – Esp.Ra.De! Gradius 2! Darius Gaiden! – alongside modern classics such as Devil’s Engine or Rolling Gunner, making it one of the best platforms for lovers of the genre since the PlayStation 2.
It’s fertile ground for a comeback for one of the grandees, even if this isn’t exactly the grandest of comebacks. R-Type Final 2 comes off the back of a modest crowdfunding campaign, bringing together some of the old team headed up by Kazuma Kujo at Granzella, and it is a more modest thing – there’s a creakiness to its Unreal Engine powered levels regardless of what platform you’re on, a flatness to its models and textures that goes beyond mere tribute to the PlayStation 2 original.
R-Type Final 2 – Gameplay Trailer | PS4 Watch on YouTube
Through all that, though, R-Type Final 2 does retain the all-important atmosphere of the originals, a solemn strangeness that undercuts the desperation of your plight battling against impossible odds in the hostile void. It’s what makes R-Type special, as do the exquisite mechanics that have served the series so well ever since the 1987 original. Irem’s original template delivers shooting that’s slow and strategic, the tempo pinned back by the charge cycle of your beam – told with the brilliant sci-fi whine that’s as much a part of R-Type’s appeal as anything else.