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Super Hydorah is a loving homage to classic shooters, for better or for worse

by Omar (@siegarettes)

• Super Hydorah
  
• Developer-  Locomalito , Gryzor87 , Abylight 
  
• Publisher- Abylight
  
• PC (Steam), Xbox One
  

As of writing this there are two things that I’m sure of: Super Hydorah is a fantastic homage to the shooters I grew up with, and I might never be able to finish it. It’s obvious that Locomalito grew up loving the same games I did. The aesthetics, soundtrack, and even opening waves of enemies make his love for arcade shooters like Gradius and R-Type clear. The measure of a good homage, of course, is whether they make the originals their own, or simply imitate it. Hydorah undoubtedly makes the spirit of those games its own, but it brings the frustration of those early games along with it.

As of writing this, I’m stranded about halfway through the game, knowing that the levels ahead will only be more difficult. I’ve gone back to play other stages and earn new weapons, failing repeatedly along the way and watching the amount of credits used steadily tick upwards at a depressing rate. I’ve enjoyed it so far– gunfire lands with satisfying feedback, and the controls are the smoothest of a modern shooter–but it’s hard not to be disheartened by my lack of progress.

What’s most striking about this is that it contrasts so strongly with my experience playing Locomalito’s last game, Cursed Castilla EX. I suffered the same amount of losses, and find myself at similar walls of difficulty, but it never felt insurmountable or disheartening in the same way.

This is all down to certain elements of each game’s structure. Cursed Castilla and Hydorah both have a heavy focus on memorization, both sending you back to checkpoints upon death.  But Cursed Castilla’s pace is determined by how fast you can move through stage, while Hydorah moves at the same speed every time due to autoscrolling. Successive runs through Cursed Castilla were often faster for me, which gave a sense of mastery, while Hydorah’s fixed speed made failure feel more penalizing.

Hydorah’s powerup system is also more gradated–weapons are advanced through pickups collected through multiple stages, and decrease in strength when you die. Cursed Castilla has a singular weapon changes, each which vary in usefulness depending on the situation. While Hydorah’s system is definitely preferred to the way older games stripped you of powerups entirely, it still evokes a similar feeling of helplessness when you take a hit. This is especially true when facing bosses, where you’re unable to restore weapon power between bouts, making each successive attempt more difficult due to your depleting weapon power. 

What’s even more painful is the way that Super Hydorah takes away one of your super weapons and movement upgrades when you die. These are gained through a powerup that gives you a choice between speed, special weapons, and a shield, which there are only a few of per stage. Losing them on death is supposed to encourage you to not be stingy with powerful weapons, but in practice it makes everything but the shield feel low value.

Basically, everything in Super Hydorah is designed to force you to master the game, and to penalize you until you do. It means a good run is rewarded with high weapon power, plenty of super weapons, and bosses that get down quick. Failure interrupts and destroys that momentum, so your goal is to make each run as flawless as possible on your way to a single credit clear. But if you fail everything will only become more and more difficult. There is a certain satisfaction in overcoming impossible odds, after all, that’s the almost the premise of the genre, but often I found that a bad run meant that I was better served starting the game over and grinding out the first few stages again for powerups, Instead of trying to learn the newer stages. It made every setback feel immense and made it difficult to appreciate all of the genuinely incredible action sequences along the way.

In a way, that’s only in keeping true to the spirit of the old games. Modern shooters have grown more difficult, with bullet hell shooters leading with unreasonable shot patterns and demands of precision. At the same time they’ve become more forgiving, incorporating modes for more casual players and allowing you to jam credits in until you see the ending. They allow you to set your own challenge and improve at the pace you desire. Super Hydorah, for better or for worse, forces you to play to its demands. If you don’t react fast enough or don’t have a sequence memorized you won’t see the rest of it. Each challenge is a strict gate to the next one. That’s probably nostalgic for some, but for me it reminded me of the aspects of older shooters that I’m not keen to return to.

There’s a lot of genuine love and passion in Super Hydorah, and in a way I’m glad it exists. I can’t help but smile when I see the craft and detail put into making such a high quality homage to the games I love. But there’s only so far that passion can take me right now, and I’m not sure if it’s enough to see Super Hydorah all the way through.