Raptor: Call of the Shadows

Game: Raptor: Call of the Shadows
Developer: Cygnus Studios
Platform: PC
Release Year: 1994
Stephen's Rating: 7/10

Basic Plot 

The story is very brief and is an afterthought in comparison to the gameplay. You play a top pilot who takes control of an advanced airship called the Raptor. Your mission is to travel across space to various planets, taking out the heads of various "MegaCorps".

Gameplay 

Raptor is a 2D raster graphics vertical scrolling shoot-em-up. It was one of the closest things I experienced on a PC that matches the traditional "spacies" games you'd find at the video arcade with the exception of Galactix and maybe Megapede.

There were two aspects to the game; the levels themselves which involved flying through and destroying enemies and defeating a boss ship at the end, and in between levels the player was able to sell and buy equipment to upgrade their Raptor ship.

The player started with a bare ship with a basic machine-gun. From the first level the player was able to obtain their first upgrades (air-to-air missiles) which complimented rather than replaced the basic machine-gun.

Every time you kill an enemy you receive credits, which can be spent on upgrades in-between levels. The harder the enemy, the more credits you receive. There was a huge arsenal of weaponry and upgrades, and you could equip your ship with multiple weapons at any one time (usually one primary or "selectable" weapon, and then several smaller accessory "always-equipped" weapons).

The Pulse Cannon.

The weapons included:

• Reaver Twin Machine Guns: the starting weapon which could be removed if the player wanted. Always on.
• Air/Air Missile: a selectable weapon which fired missiles periodically which damaged air targets only.
• Plasma Cannon: A weak weapon which fired a small blue "fireball" in front of the ship. Weak, but always equipped.
• Bomb: Selectable weapon useful for destroying buildings.
• Air/Ground Missile: Selectable green missiles which only damaged ground units. Fires at a fairly low frequency.
• Dumbfire Missiles: Selectable. Fires missiles which damage both air and ground from a slightly random position around the Raptor ship. Useful because it sometimes spat missiles out the side of the craft allowing you to hit ships outside your direct line of sight. Fairly low damage output.
• Micro Missile: An always equipped weapon which fires a stream of small missiles in front of the ship. Very useful.
• Missile Pod: Like the Air/Air Missile but fires faster.
• Auto-track Minigun: Interesting selectable weapon which fires a machinegun at enemies automatically without having to move or aim at all. Very powerful early on but the damage output is too low in the later stages of the game.
• Power Disrupter: Air to air selectable weapon which stops an enemy ship firing. Not very useful.
• Laser Turret: Like the Auto-track Minigun but fires a laser in bursts, and only hits air enemies.
• Pulse Cannon: The most powerful weapon in the shareware version. Fires a stream of energy pulses directly in front of the ship.
• Deathray: A selectable laser weapon which destroys anything in front of the ship in long bursts.
• Twin Laser: Like the Deathray but fires two beams... the ultimate weapon.
• Megabomb: A one-use utility item which destroys everything on the screen.

There were also extra shields you could buy (up to 5 layers of shields before your ship is damaged at all).

Unlike other shoot-um-up games the player did not have "lives". Once you died, you died, and had to re-load to your latest saved game.

 The hangar you visited after each level. Here you could save your game or upgrade your ship.

Positives 

Great game mechanics, fun to play. Polished, good sound effects and nice array of weapons.

Negatives 

It was missing some of the simple fun of the original arcade spacies games. Shallow story.

Memorable Moments

There was an easter egg where if you changed your computer clock to the birthday of one of the developers the intro music as you booted up the game changed into something different.

As a kid I played the shareware version of this game, and it wasn't until I was at university that I played the full version and got to experience all the weaponry.