| Title - Psyvariar 2 : The Will To Fabricate （サイヴァリア２ ザ ウイル トゥ ファブリゲート） |
Maker - SKONEC / Success Catalogue No. - T-9907M |
| Type - Shooting
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PSYVARIAR 2 The Will To Fabricate is the latest offering for Dreamcast shooting fans and is certainly not to be sniffed at. Developed by the Korean company Skonec and released in the arcades by Success, this shooter has got to be one of the most original ones out there along side Treasure's Ikaruga. At first glance Psyvariar 2 looks to be a blatant rip off of Ikuraga with it's flashy camera angles, fast moving backgrounds with multiple layers of clouds but that's were the similarities end. Psyvariar 2 has NO power ups nor Speed Ups to collect. The only way to power and speed up your craft (robot) is by using the BUZZ system. This is achieved by skimming your craft against the sides of the thousands of on comming bullets. The more BUZZ chains you can achieve, the more powerful your craft will become. This system doesn't feel so good at first since your craft moves so slow with such a lousy firing rate. But after a little experimenting, I found that if your "shake" your craft from side to side a few times, it will start to roll. Enabling it to fire out bullets at a much faster rate whilst allowing you to move quicker to dodge the enemies oncoming attacks. Psyvariar 2 takes place over 6 (even though I can only access 5 for some odd reason) short but action packed stages. Each stage is as beautiful as the last with each featuring a giant boss at the end that takes no mercy in throwing everything it has at you. Whilst some of the backgrounds could do with a much further draw distance. The make up for it in detail. The first level boss is a prime example of shear beauty by the way it fires 5 beams down to the earth resulting in one of the most beautiful (If an explosion can be called beautiful) explosions ever seen in a video game. The Dreamcast's last shooter to be released, Boarder Down, was criticized greatly about it's music. Whilst I liked it, it could have been better. Well, being European I love the music in Psyvariar 2 with it's Eurodance style tracks. Try to imagine a Marc Snow track mixed with a bit of Euro rave with a tinny bit of Taito's Zuntata Team's music and that would probably be a pretty close comparison to what we have in Psyvariar 2. All in all, great stuff (^v^) Earlier I wrote that there are 6 stages but I can only access 5 of them. How the 6th stage is accessed I've yet to find out. I've finished the game with the woman character on ALL level settings including Very Hard but still there is no 6th stage. If you look at the ranking tables you'll notice that the top scores all have AREA 6 next to the score. Could this be some hidden level which will be revealed after playing for so long? Or must the game be complete with both characters? If so you'll be in for a hard time since the male character's game is far more difficult than the woman's. The guy's bomb is next to useless and his weapon seems to be far weaker than the woman's too. Maybe there's a point to this that I'm missing. All will be reviled once I've read or struggled through the instruction book. So is Psyvariar 2 The Will To Fabricate worth getting? In short, YES !! It's far better looking than Border Down. It's far more original than Ikuraga in my opinion but it is quite short. Then again, completing the game with the male character will keep you busy for quit some time. I've only had Psyvariar 2 for two days now but have already played it 8 times while Puyo Puyo Fever has only been on twice. So it's certainly got that addictiveness to it. My copy came with this cool Psyvariar 2 dog tag curtsies of Sega Direct.
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