Final Thoughts

[Pix]

#5471

I’ve played through to the end on the default difficulty over the last couple of days. It’s so often the case for me with these shareware titles but I don’t get the love for Raptor at all. It’s reasonably good looking but the gameplay get’s monotonous very quickly. Every boss feels like a minor variant on the one before, the enemy patterns are all quite similar, and just repeat in different orders. I expect to need to learn patterns, strategies and routes in a shooter and there is barely any of that here. It’s certainly frantic and the 3rd episode innovates a bit more but I didn’t particularly enjoy myself in all truth. Maybe smaller ships would have helped so there could have been more screen real estate. I’m not entirely convinced about playing with a mouse either – it’s clearly the way to go on this game given the speed advantage but still odd. I didn’t even like the music all that much, I’d swear one of the tracks is on a 3 second loop.

I can’t even make the case about there not being better shooters on the PC at the time. It’s not a genre I ever played much but from the handful I did buy Xenon 2 came out a few years earlier and blows this away. Silpheed had better gameplay and that ran fine on an XT.

Looking at the Steam reviews, I’m clearly in the minority here. A ton of those reviewers talk about playing this when they were 9 or 10. Maybe nostalgia is a big factor. I’d have been a bit older myself. I’m sure I played this on a coverdisc and for a freebie the first 9 levels would have been fun enough for a quick blast. I would never have entertained the possibility of paying up for the rest even back then. Apologies to all the Raptor fans, looking forward to hearing why I’m wrong at any rate.

[Tijn]

#5473

Wow, only day 2 and you beat the whole thing. Classic, Richard! Haha

[TigerQuoll]

#5478

I think the reason this game is so beloved is because it is so much more approachable than most top-down shmups. You can cop a lot of hits before dying and you can generally bumble your way through the whole game on the lower difficulties without having to memorise a whole lot of patterns or strategies.
Blowing stuff up in this game is also especially satisfying.

[firefyte]

#5480

I can see where this game is coming from, especially in the era, but having played it again now, it didn’t really feel like that much of a challenge once you get geared up.

It does feel like some of the arcade games of the era, but I think some earlier and later titles did this much better, with greater variation and more interesting features (totally not biased!).

[Mr Creosote]

#5501

I wrote down my thoughts end of last year: https://www.goodolddays.net/game/id%2C583/Raptor-Call-of-the-Shadows.html

[TigerQuoll]

#5502

Nice review, Mr Creosote! You pretty much summed up all of my thoughts on the game.

[Mr Creosote]

#5505

I was a bit reluctant to post it since your own post contained many of the same thoughts already 😉

[Titanduck]

#5532

I want to start by saying, I really contemplated not writing this down. I do not like the genre, and I did not want to sound too negative. but i eventually decided to put my thoughts down.

I wanted to complete this game, I am, in all fairness, not good at completing games, so I decided that this month would be when it happened, but this game not only made me regret my decision, it also made me hate it, and the time spent playing it.

I did discover some cool things, So allow me to start with the positives.

I really enjoyed the graphics, it is a very pretty game. The gameover screen, the completing a level screen (and animation) are very, very well done.

The menu is also very pretty, the one looking like a hangar where you choose upgrades and missions.

The hangar just looks empty, correct me if I’m wrong, but raptor is from 94, wing commander came out in 90, and their menus were more alive.

but then again. This is an arcade type game, so i will give it that.

Shoot em ups are not my style, and have never been, i am way too slow to get out of the way, so i will say it’s refreshing to have health, and can be hit multiple times. But the game got repetitive very fast. As Pix already states, the bosses did not change looks, only patterns.

I did not complete this game, i did not even complete the shareware version.

I am a bullet magnet, hence why i’m negative about this genre.

But to give credit where credit is due, The game is very pretty.

[TigerQuoll]

#5533

Don’t feel bad about sharing your opinion, titanduck!
I have a soft spot for this game, but I can see why people might not like it.
It feels like Raptor can only appeal to a very narrow band of people. Fans of shooters will be bored by it – it’s very short, the enemies are mostly pretty boring and the weapons are not as wildly over-the-top bonkers as in other shooters.
Non shooter-fans (such as yourself) on the other hand are not going to find anything in here to change their minds.
The only people I can really see it appealing to are PC gamers that have a passing interest in shooters. People who want to have the experience of playing a vertical scrolling shmup but don’t want to spend too much time memorising every level.

It is painful for me to say this because I have always strongly been in Team Apogee, but Tyrian seems to be better than Raptor in every way I can think of.

[Mike]

#5562

I’m surprised that I seem to like it most people here. I had a great time playing through it. I think the last episode is a little boring but it felt great to have the really powerful last for the last couple levels.

It probably helps that I haven’t actually played that many shmups and don’t have much to compare it to. I remember really liking Tyrian but don’t actually remember anything from it so I guess I should play that next!

Also yeah, never feel bad about sharing positive or negative opinions on a game. That’s the whole point of this club 🙂

[firefyte]

#5565

Beat it out of spite again, really not that hard, unless you ramp up the difficulty level.

I just wish there was a lot more to the game.

[TigerQuoll]

#5579

I beat the game quite quickly as well, so I decided to spend the rest of the month playing various other DOS shmups.
In addition to Raptor, I played Overkill, Space bats of Doom, Major Stryker, Xenon2, Galactix, the Dragon’s Power, Stargunner, and Tyrian.
Most of them are pretty short (and I was not afraid to use cheats), and I would say for me Raptor, for all its flaws, still comes in second of the ones I tried.

[firefyte]

#5580

I agree.
Out of anything that’s not a direct arcade copy or Tyrian, I would probably say Raptor is the best, but not without flaws.

[pointer]

#5588

Tiger’s experience makes me ask – should a game be judged by itself, that Raptor isn’t that great compared to any other games, or should we compare it to others in the genre at that time, that Raptor is still second best of many other shmups?

Because it’s not my genre either, so my experience was lukewarm too. But I still remember being impressed by it back then, both graphically and, if I remember correctly, it being one of those games requiring a 386.