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.

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.

I have really nothing to say about this game except that 1). to suggest a narrative, if the above blurb is to be believed, that there is an indigenous race on earth that is not human and THEY are the bad guys is ah, remarkable to say the least, and 2). to have all that and no ending? To not tell me if the humans or xeviousians come out on top? Just a loop that never ends? Or is that the xevious secret weapon, an “eternal recurrence bomb?” I mean yeah it’s more likely the developers couldn’t have been arsed to make an ending but said oh well we made it so hard it’s not like anyone’s beating it anyway but still, it’s fun to imagine

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.

It's Xevious! This game inspired like a trillion billion jillion different shmups and to be honest I'm not the biggest fan of Xevious-likes, but here we are. This game does a lot of interesting things with the shmup genre. There's obviously the main gimmick this game has with the dual-layer gameplay where enemies are both in front of the solvalou that must be shot with the main weapon whereas enemies on the floor below must be destroyed with carefully-aimed ground bombs. It do provide a level of depth not seen in other shmups of its ilk, but I think it can be a little overwhelming at times. This game also has its fair share of secrets, such as the mysterious Sol Citadels that can be destroyed by bombing specific ground tiles for extra points, as well as the S flags that show up on random tiles of a certain tile row on the map for extra lives. Those extra lives are also extremely necessary as this game does not pull its punches at times, throwing huge amounts of bullets at your large-hitboxed, slow moving ship.

I think what makes this game really stick for me despite me not being the biggest fan of the style of game it pioneered is its aesthetic. Things are just so.... sterile? The music is this very short bloopy 5-second loop that plays the whole time, enemies are usually very basic shapes in grey colors, the ground is a flat green for grass, brown for dirt, grey for road, blue for water, etc. It makes a game that just has a certain strange vibe to it. Not very worldly, but also not very otherworldly either.

All in all, it's a game that I respect and enjoy the vibe of for sure, but dual-plane shooters like this just aren't really my jam when it comes to the shmup genre.