DoDonPachi Resurrection Review
by Omar (@siegarettes)
- DoDonPachi Resurrection
- Developer- CAVE Ltd.
- Publisher- Degica
- PC, Xbox 360, iOS, Android, Arcade
It’s hard to know where to start with CAVE shooters. Each version of their games come with so many revisions, arrangements, and alternate modes it’s difficult to work out exactly what each version is bringing in. While the rare physical versions contain manuals that give you at least a preliminary idea, these are almost always absent from the digital versions, including this one. The ritual of finding changelogs in forum discussions might be familiar to the fanatical, but it’s a confusing mess to the more casual players. DoDonPachi Resurrection is no less complicated.
DoDonPachi Resurrection faces some strange competition as well: from its mobile port. Compared to the base game here (ver. 1.5), the iOS version provides more maneuverability and supplements that with a new mode that sees you trading off intentional close calls and rapid destruction to build high score multipliers. It’s not the most balanced version, but it provides an interesting twist to what is otherwise a straightforward, if proficiently made shooter.
It’s also a welcome distraction from the mundane theme, which centers DoDonPachi’s regular mix of military sci-fi around the Elemental Dolls, a set of powerful war machines that transform into…robot schoolgirls. While these bosses are designed well enough, its an absurd mix that is hard to read as anything but otaku bait.
Thankfully Resurrection also comes packaged with multiple arrangements of the base game, and more interestingly, the Black Label version. The Black Label versions are a special remix of the game, typically giving you more power alongside new challenges and dangers. If anything, Black Label feels like the true version of the game, making the most of Resurrection’s focus on building up chains and cancelling bullets. Black Label Arrange is also worth noting, a crossover mode with CAVE’s own Ketsui, which provides an alternate ship and scoring system based on that title. Set alongside the chaos of Black Label, it provides a beautiful burst of bonus points with every enemy destroyed, comparable to Capcom’s Mars Matrix.
Regardless of the version you decide to start with, you’ll be treated to what is undeniably a finely crafted shooter. Every moment of this game is a cacophony of destruction and feedback, accompanied by an energetic electronic score and wailing guitars. Resurrection as a whole is an aggravated mechanical heartbeat, refined through many entries by CAVE’s expertise in the genre. Yet while I intellectually know that, and know that I’m nowhere even near teasing out the depth of the base game, I found both the theme and the relentless energy of the game tiresome, especially when divorced from the stop and start pace of the mobile version. Given that, Black Label ended up being the saving grace for me.
To counteract the increasing chaos of these arrangements are the Novice modes. While not quite removed of challenge, these versions cut the bullet count of the original game down to something more manageable. These provide a more languid experience for the more casual shooter fan, and allow you to enjoy the spectacle without the stress. It’s also a good place to start for players looking for something that’s completable without the intense dedication needed for the regular modes. I managed to use only a single extra credit on my first run, so a single continue run should be manageable with practice. There’s even a Black Label Novice mode, to get a taste of the changes made for that version without the absurd difficulty that comes along with it. .
Even with the addition of Novice Mode, DoDonPachi Resurrection remains a game very much for the CAVE fanatic. There’s definitely an immediate appeal, but it wears thin faster than other CAVE titles, even other titles within the DoDonPachi series itself. At the end of each run I found myself relieved rather than exhilarated. It doesn’t help that Resurrection is unwilling to give up its secrets readily, either. There are so many approaches within just the base game itself, and it doesn’t get any clearer when packaged alongside several other arrangements. None of these are well explained, or documented, and it’ll take a player willing to put time in both researching the game externally, and learning the minutiae through play to begin to understand it.
This is the sticking point for Resurrection. I could go into painfully small detail about the exhausting demands of the game, but ultimately Resurrection is a game that assumes you’re already prepared for what it’s asking. It doesn’t have the bizarre candied worlds of Deathsmiles, or the bloody satisfaction of chaining in Guwange. It’s a seemingly straightforward shooter that’s hides incredible depth in the details. It asks for dedication before satisfaction. This time, it turned out to be just a bit too much to ask from me.