R-Type Command

This revelation quickly divides the gamers who will and won’t enjoy this sequel. Those who aren’t amused by Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, or Final Fantasy Tactics won’t get anything out of R-Type Command. But if you’ve enjoyed any of those games, and are prepared to endure excessive load times and other annoyances, R-Type Command is an engrossing way to spend hours with your PSP.

Strength Training

I was less surprised to see Mortal Kombat turn into a puzzle game or Mario turn into an RPG than what we have here. R-Type Command doesn’t gain special treatment or extra publicity like other big-name spin-offs have. So why do it? Why make a strategy game that will have so many scratching their heads?

Because, as the developers have shown, there is quite a bit of depth to draw from:

(1) Anyone who has played R-Type will instantly recognize these outer-space environments. Many involve asteroids, rock formations, and alien-designed structures that force you to carefully move toward the enemy or face certain death.

(2) Using the same perspective as the other R-Type games, R-Type Command is completely two-dimensional. You “scroll” across the screen by moving along the hexagonal grid. Enemies are hidden with translucent hexagons that appear beyond your fleet’s field of vision. You’ll have to scroll toward the end of the level to uncover and destroy the enemy threat.

(3) R-Type is known for having cool ships and enormous/monstrous boss battles. They’re back in R-Type Command, and they’ve brought their friends along for the ride. There are dozens of units to control within your own army, and several to battle throughout each stage. But the numbers can’t compare to their execution – you won’t just command the little ships of Super R-Type. Players now have access to space stations, which can attack enemies and repair allies.

(4) Strategy games don’t usually have power-ups; they have resources that you can gather for money, to build a fortress or to create new units. R-Type Command takes the latter route, allowing players to snatch materials floating in space. You’ll also gain materials by completing missions, which frequently provide access to units that couldn’t be created prior to that mission’s completion. This is the standard for most turn-based strategy games, but is still exciting thanks to the variety of classic and newly inspired ships and intergalactic vehicles.

The art of unearthing enemy locations, and the challenge of battling enemies with more than one attack capability (all of which double as their weak points), is something truly special. But it’s not necessarily something an R-Type fan will appreciate. While the inspired features were made for the fans, the turn-based gameplay was created for another audience entirely.

As a die-hard fan of strategy games, R-Type Command was easy for me to love. Each element – whether it’s the simple controls and gameplay perspective or the new way of experiencing memorable boss battles – carries something distinct and vital.

Inconvenient Store Shopping

We’ve all had days where it seemed like everything took forever. The clerk at the post office is extra slow, the line at the drug store is unusually long, and when you head back home, traffic slows to a 20-mile-an-hour pace, making that 30-minute errand take over an hour.

That scenario perfectly describes what it’s like to play R-Type Command with the movies feature turned on. You have these great stages to explore, cool battles to fight, and an exciting army to build – all drawing from the strength of the R-Type brand.

Then you get into a traffic jam. After making your first attack, it’s only a matter of seconds before the game attempts to show its graphical prowess with elaborate (and real-time) movie sequences. These movies show a three-dimensional view of ally and enemy ships as they blast each other into oblivion. On the drawing board, this must have been an incredibly cool idea. On PS3 or Xbox 360, it might have been a real showstopper.

But on PSP, a handheld that must load each and every element individually, it’s more annoying than a meteor shower. You can skip the animation sequences but only after they have loaded. That defeats the purpose since the load times (8-10 seconds) are nearly as long as the actual sequences. Movies come at random; they may be triggered by any attack, so there’s no way of determining when one is going to strike. Their frequency is pretty high – expect two of them for every five or six attacks. The only way to bypass these delays is to turn the movies off.

By default, unit movement is very slow. You can increase their flight movement (how fast a unit moves after you’ve selected its course of action) from the menu screen, but the slow cursor movement remains. The hexagonal design makes it tough to pinpoint exactly where you want a unit to go, adding seconds to each unit selection. For example, if you want to fly diagonally, forget the D-pad exists. It can barely move up and down in this game without screwing up. The analog stick helps, but it can still be frustrating when you overshoot your target by a space or two.

Like most strategy games, R-Type Command lets you cancel a move before it has been completed. This is great for those times when any wrong move could lead to a Mission Failed screen. But rather than backtrack one step, if you cancel a move, the game drops all selections for that unit. This makes the game feel sluggish since you’ll have to re-do a lot of small steps. Most strategy games allow you to backup one action at a time. As minor as this complaint may be, it’s one that will come from strategy gamers – the very people R-Type Command was made for.