~ Juegos que Hay que Jugar Antes de Morir ~
Parte 2 — Los 80: Caída y Resurgir

Juego 42: Xevious (1982)

Ya se empiezan a formar los verdaderos bullet-hells de naves tal y como los conocemos. Ganas de la saga 1943.

First off, the music is atrocious. Just an annoying two second loop that repeats forever. I had to play with the volume turned off. Overall though, Xevious is a pretty good game that was extremely influential for the shoot 'em up genre.

However, my stupid ass thought "what if I played through all unique areas in the game" and was promptly met with the realization that the later levels suck. I think it's pretty clear the game was never meant to be played like this, the player was really only meant to get to the first mother ship and maybe a little farther. Areas 1-8 are the game at its best, Areas 9-16 are the game at its most tedious and frustrating. They constantly spam projectiles that just appear in the middle of the screen and move toward you, seemingly at random and occasionally spawning right next to you. The last area is absolutely insane, it puts the hell in bullet hell. I didn't want to save scum, and was able to complete Areas 1-8 with only save stating between Areas, but the projectiles suddenly appearing out of thin air was just too much and I started to save scum. This is genuinely one of the hardest games I've ever played and the game isn't exactly designed to be fair after Area 8.

It was especially bad that the site I played this on was terrible, with ads popping up and blocking the screen every 10 or so minutes, the screen going black with "click to make keyboard keys work" quite often (you only need to press a button you weren't before on a controller, but it's still annoying). And save stating and loading a state are not assigned to single keys, but have to be manually set up with the mouse. Not only that, but every time you click the screen or any of the menu options on it, you'll be automatically sent to a new tab you have to close, and the game will still be running in spite of this. What a terrible site.

Yeah, don't play the game like this, don't try to go through all unique areas, you'll torture yourself. Just enjoy a solid early shoot em game and you're golden.

Xevious is certainly an inspiration for vertical-scrolling shooters. Not only is it one of the first out there, but it basically cements all the stylizing and faults that the genre has been fixing and fine tuning. Sadly, Xevious has aged incredibly poorly, but in the sense that you can tell how everyone afterward used Xevious has a base and built from there.

By today's standards there is basically no value to play Xevious for the average gamer, but potential devs absolutely have lessons they can learn from it. Not only does it have the simple scrolling and shooting that you get with most shmups, it also adds in an additional dimension with the way you bomb bases to help clear the map and get additional points. Having both parts that a player has to watch out for can really be a rewarding experience that helps illustrate proper challenge. At the same time, the difficulty levels of Xevious is kinda all over the place due to the game being endless; making for some segments far harder than others. It's not really much to the game's determent to it's design pre say, but it can discourage less willing players to keep going. To add to this, a lot of the enemies introduced will always act in similar fashion, so you can really get a mix bag of understanding what to do with any given enemy while there simply being too much to handle at once. A lot of the pains and woes of Xevious is simply come from it feeling too slow or it being unfair to get barred with so many enemies / bullets. Tie this altogether with a nothing story and bland art style compared to today's standards, and it really doesn't stand out like it did back in the day.

In other words, don't really bother with Xevious nowadays if you can help it. As much as it paved the way for it's genre, the game simply has too many hang ups from the older times to feel enjoyable nowadays. However if you are into game developing, appreciate the genre, or a fan of old school games Xevious still has some value too it.

The most interesting thing about this game is the background being on earth. It's fascinating how it feels to be a paradigm shift in graphics by simply giving you something to look at that isn't yet another star field.

That being said, nothing here is better or more interesting than in many schmups that came before it, and I would argue the combat just feels unfocused. Rather than waves of enemies that you need to figure out how to deal with, it's almost as if they randomly populated them on the map.

The sound effects are basic, and the obnoxious background music that just repeats the same few grating notes detracts from the experience as well.