Aldric
Member
It's already been a decade since the revival of one of Nintendo's historical franchises and what a game that was.
Probably one of the most ambitious Nintendo games ever and certainly the most ambitious mobile game at the time, Uprising is still a curiosity ten years later. A unique mix between a rail shooter and a third person shooter/beat em up, it's a deceptively simple action game that hides a surprising amount of depth under its simplistic (and controversial) controls. If the air sections are relatively classic if spectacular and intense rail shooter experiences the ground gameplay is a completely original take on the shooter genre. There's no cover system here, instead the game is entirely based around movement and precise aiming thanks to the touchpad controls. Somehow similar to Smash Bros mechanics, Pit can dash with a flick of the analog stick which grants him a comfortable amount of invincibility frames. He can't abuse it though because there's an invisible stamina bar that depletes everytime he dashes, and Iframes get progressively shorter after each dash.
Dashes aren't simply defensive though, since the nature of the shots fired by Pit will depend on the direction in which he dashed. There's also a mechanic where weapons automatically charge a shot after a set amount of time. So in total there's 8 different types of shots possible (neutral shot, forward shot, side shot, backward shot, same with charged shots) each with different effects, trajectories, speed and power. On top of that there's a melee component to the combat offering possible combos with ranged attacks and a special stinger move that allows you to close the distance with the opponent, and a bunch of other subtleties like the fact weapons have a stat called shot cancellation that allows them to cancel enemy projectiles by shooting them down, an ukemi mechanic, or the entire powers system that allows you to customize your playstyle with additional limited abilities such as giant lasers, healing spells or movement buffs. Oh and of course there's a total of 108 weapons in the game, each with their own characteristics which drastically change the gameplay depending on which one you use. All of this combined creates an intense, lightning fast and pretty demanding experience especially at the highest difficulty levels:
Because yes there's multiple difficulty levels, it even has one of the best difficulty sliders I've ever seen in a videogame. Basically you can customize the level of challenge before every chapter by using the ingame currency you get from defeating enemies to "bet" on a difficulty level. The more money you use the harder the game is but also the more money and the better loot you get. The slider goes from 0.0 where the game basically plays itself to 9.0 where the challenge becomes bullet hell level. Die once though and the difficulty automatically is lowered by an entire point along with the quality of the loot you got. So if you want to beat levels at the highest difficulty you basically have to one shot them. No second chance.
Presentation wise the game is also top notch, with plenty of great setpieces during the rail shooting sections and great art direction by the character designer of Order of Ecclesia. The OST is also brilliant with a lot of memorable tunes in a variety of genres composed by a team of all stars japanese artists like Motoi Sakuraba or Yuzo Koshiro:
Narrative wise the title also does very interesting things. There's a lot of story in the game, the script is massive. Characters have tons of lines of dialogue, including a lot of entertaining banter, but the narrative side never conflicts with interactivity because it always takes place during gameplay. Characters comment and discuss about in game events while you're playing and it never gets distracting because it's always timed in order to happen during a downtime or when you're fighting against relatively easy opponents.
I could also spend a lot of time talking about the robust multiplayer or all the sidecontent like unlockables figurines, dioramas and artwork, the achievements (some of them utterly brutal), the boss rush mode etc but this is already long enough so I'll stop here. Great fucking game and here's hoping Nintendo's knack for rehashing old games makes it land on Switch in HD with more traditional controls so that this masterpiece gets the recognition it deserves.
Probably one of the most ambitious Nintendo games ever and certainly the most ambitious mobile game at the time, Uprising is still a curiosity ten years later. A unique mix between a rail shooter and a third person shooter/beat em up, it's a deceptively simple action game that hides a surprising amount of depth under its simplistic (and controversial) controls. If the air sections are relatively classic if spectacular and intense rail shooter experiences the ground gameplay is a completely original take on the shooter genre. There's no cover system here, instead the game is entirely based around movement and precise aiming thanks to the touchpad controls. Somehow similar to Smash Bros mechanics, Pit can dash with a flick of the analog stick which grants him a comfortable amount of invincibility frames. He can't abuse it though because there's an invisible stamina bar that depletes everytime he dashes, and Iframes get progressively shorter after each dash.
Dashes aren't simply defensive though, since the nature of the shots fired by Pit will depend on the direction in which he dashed. There's also a mechanic where weapons automatically charge a shot after a set amount of time. So in total there's 8 different types of shots possible (neutral shot, forward shot, side shot, backward shot, same with charged shots) each with different effects, trajectories, speed and power. On top of that there's a melee component to the combat offering possible combos with ranged attacks and a special stinger move that allows you to close the distance with the opponent, and a bunch of other subtleties like the fact weapons have a stat called shot cancellation that allows them to cancel enemy projectiles by shooting them down, an ukemi mechanic, or the entire powers system that allows you to customize your playstyle with additional limited abilities such as giant lasers, healing spells or movement buffs. Oh and of course there's a total of 108 weapons in the game, each with their own characteristics which drastically change the gameplay depending on which one you use. All of this combined creates an intense, lightning fast and pretty demanding experience especially at the highest difficulty levels:
Because yes there's multiple difficulty levels, it even has one of the best difficulty sliders I've ever seen in a videogame. Basically you can customize the level of challenge before every chapter by using the ingame currency you get from defeating enemies to "bet" on a difficulty level. The more money you use the harder the game is but also the more money and the better loot you get. The slider goes from 0.0 where the game basically plays itself to 9.0 where the challenge becomes bullet hell level. Die once though and the difficulty automatically is lowered by an entire point along with the quality of the loot you got. So if you want to beat levels at the highest difficulty you basically have to one shot them. No second chance.
Presentation wise the game is also top notch, with plenty of great setpieces during the rail shooting sections and great art direction by the character designer of Order of Ecclesia. The OST is also brilliant with a lot of memorable tunes in a variety of genres composed by a team of all stars japanese artists like Motoi Sakuraba or Yuzo Koshiro:
Narrative wise the title also does very interesting things. There's a lot of story in the game, the script is massive. Characters have tons of lines of dialogue, including a lot of entertaining banter, but the narrative side never conflicts with interactivity because it always takes place during gameplay. Characters comment and discuss about in game events while you're playing and it never gets distracting because it's always timed in order to happen during a downtime or when you're fighting against relatively easy opponents.
I could also spend a lot of time talking about the robust multiplayer or all the sidecontent like unlockables figurines, dioramas and artwork, the achievements (some of them utterly brutal), the boss rush mode etc but this is already long enough so I'll stop here. Great fucking game and here's hoping Nintendo's knack for rehashing old games makes it land on Switch in HD with more traditional controls so that this masterpiece gets the recognition it deserves.
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