Peace Breaker (PC)

 I didn't realise until after I'd bought it, but Peace Breaker is from the same developer as another game I've reviewed here, Near Fantasy Space. But what drew me into it was the premise: it claims to be a "fair" shooting game, where, unlike most shooting games, where you're alone against a massive enemy army, you're now just one pilot among many in a massive battle against an enemy force. Worded like it is on the game's page on DLSite, it sounds like this is a game designed to be easier than most shooting games, but it seems the developers saw the "unfairness" of the typical shooting game arrangement as being skewed in favour of the player.

 

It's a mecha game, in the style of Assault Suits Valken or Metal Warriors, though all the stages (that I've seen, at least) take place in spce, with no platforms on which to land. Missions generally see a clash between a small fleet of your side's ships and a small fleet of the enemy side's ships, and each ship releases a bunch of mecha, including you. Though there's some small variance from mission to mission, they generally play out in the same way: a massive, messy battle between many mecha happening in the middle of the field, with bullets flying everywhere and lots of pilots on both sides dying. Then, as the two fleets of ships gradually get closer, it becomes a race to take out your enemy's ships before your own ships (or yourself) gets destroyed. Furthermore, if you're low on health or ammo, you can go back to your launch ship to reload and repair, though it takes time, and the battle carries on as it happens. If your launch ship gets destroyed, that's also an instant game over.

 

In terms of anime, you should be thinking more along the lines of Armoured Trooper VOTOMS than Mobile Suit Gundam: your mecha is fragile, lots of your comrades will die, and it's very likely you will too. It feels especially cruel when you're taken out by the shot of a distant ship's cannon, which can take over half your health in a single hit. But conversely, it also feels very satifying when an enemy ship goes down after several second of concentrated fire from you and your allies. The difficulty level really did have me close to giving up on the game at first, though It took me nearly an hour to get past the first stage! Once you've got past that first stage, and you're used to how the game is meant to be played, it becomes a little easier, and a lot more enjoyable.

 

You've really just got to constantly keep in mind that you are just a fragile, expendable grunt. Stick with the crowd as much as you can, don't try to be the big solo hero, and go back to the ship to get repaired when you need to. Conceptually, it's pretty interesting, but I still have some reservations when recommending it. The problem is that pretty much every stage is the same, and once you've played through a few of them, it's very easy to lose interest in seeing any more. I tihnk it would have been really interesting to have some stages on-planet where all your guys are traversing terrain, maybe avoiding landmines, and so on? It'd have a lot of potential in terms of both game design and narrative. Imagine something like Front Mission: Gunhazard with this kind of setup! Anyway, it's a decent game with an interesting concept, but a short shelf life and a lot of unfulfilled potential. If it sounds interesting to you, get it next time it's on sale?

Uchuu Daisakusen - Chocovader Contactee (Arcade)

 So, Chocovader was an early 00s toyline in Japan, made up of little plastic figures disseminated via Kinder Surprise-style hollow chocolate orbs. Most, though apparently not all, of the figures were based on descriptions of aliens given by people who'd encountered them in real life (plus a few inspired by pop culture aliens, like the xenomorph and Dan Dare's enemy the Mekon). So they are Chocolate Invaders. There's a Game Boy Adance game based on the toys that I think is some kind of Pokemon-like monster catching RPG, but this arcade game is a fast-paced minigame compilation more along the lines of Bishi Bashi Special or Tanto-R.

 

Building on the toyline's concept of taking inspiration from real alien encounter reports, a lot of the minigames are actually based on the events described in those reports. For example, there's a report that in 1979, a group of tiny angel-like aliens broke into an old lady's house and caused mischief, messing up her christmas decorations and such. So one of the games has you playing as one of those aliens, repeatedly jumping on the old lady's furniture, trying to bounce as high as you can before the time limit runs out. You play as the alien in all the games, and there's a kind of silly-but dark feel to a lot of them.

 

You'll play as a classic nineties Grey, choosing the right shaped metal implants to put in people's brains, the Flatwoods monster building up energy to mass-abduct people from an urban area, and a whole bunch more, based on stories of which I'm only vaguely aware. After each game, you're given a score, a success percentage, and a letter grade, and the same will happen at the end of your credit, which gets you a go at four minigames. 

 

There are, of course, high score tables for every individual game, as well as for an entire credit, but what's really interesting is a feature that's now long since abandoned: an internet ranking! The cabinet itself wouldn't be linked to the internet, but instead, you'd be given a password along with your score, and you'd be able to input that password at the website abduction.jp (which now contains information on a "Class Action to end Parental Child Abduction In Japan", though you can see the high score table on the Wayback Machine). There, you'd be able to see your place among the best players in the land until about 2003, which appears to be when the site was taken down.

 

Chocovader Contactee doesn't have the insane manic excitement of the Bishi Bashi Special games, but I do like it a lot more than the Tanto-R games, and the theming is really cool and pretty unique among arcade games. It's a shame (though obviously not a surprise) that the high score website is no longer online, but I think it's still worth a bit of your time as a silly curio if you're interested in aliens or paranormal stuff in general.