[PS4] RayStorm NEO-HD - 1CC - 12,052,400 Pts (R-GRAY1)
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Finally M2's Ray'z Arcade Chronology got a western release for both PS4 and Switch.
This is a collection of all three Ray games (RayForce, RayStorm and RayCrisis), ported with the utmost care and quality that only M2 is known for. This collection is easily the definite version of the arcade games to play. Updated visuals, perfectly accurate to the arcade, very low input lag, great practice options, leaderboards, downloadable replays, extra widgets and with plenty of extra bells and whistles and attention to detail that gives this an edge over any other port and even unofficial emulation.
The only negative I can give it is that it's missing the extra modes from the PS1 and 360 ports, which were really neat by themselves as they completely redid all the stage layouts, bosses and graphics.
This run was played on the RayStorm x RayCrisis HD Collection.
This is a separate release from the Ray'z Arcade Chronology, which is identical to Ray'z except for the fact that it's missing RayForce.
They are offering this separate release because there was already a version of RayForce on the market by City Connection (the Saturn Tribute one), and is aimed at the people that already bought that.
This action seems a bit misguided to me as the Ray'z collection is offering a far superior version of the game and RayForce is by far the most desirable game out of the collection for most people, but I guess it's nice that the option is there?
Many people were turned off by the high input lag of the Saturn Tribute port, so they definitely wouldn't hesitate to get the M2 version over it.
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RayStorm is the sequel to RayForce and came out in arcades two years later in 1996.
This was originally going to be in the same style as RayForce, but this got scrapped early in development and was remade with 3D polygons instead, as that was the trend in the game industry at the time. This was early 3D too, so it looks quite rough and it definitely didn't age as well as RayForce did, which still looks beautiful to this day. This has led to Storm and Crisis being somewhat overlooked in the community.
In terms of gameplay though, I think RayStorm and RayCrisis are far superior.
RayForce was incredible for having a scoring system that almost had modern depth, which for 1994 standards was buck-wild, but it was still somewhat restrictive.
RayStorm and RayCrisis on the other hand are simply a natural evolution of this system. With more mechanics that add further depth and with more complex chains to pull off. You can do so much more in this to optimize score it's insane. The pacing is also just way better, RayForce had long periods of dead air in almost every stage, which made grinding that game somewhat painful.
RayStorm adds a couple new mechanics to the RayForce formula:
- You can now lock onto any target, even if it's in the air.
- Locking all your locks onto a single target at once fires a powerful mini-bomb.
- Inclusion of a rechargeable smart-bomb, that can be used for both survival as well as score.
- An entire new ship that has a maximum of 16 locks with a lock-on laser that works completely differently!
R-Gray2 can get almost double the score from the higher locks, so leaderboards are generally split as the two ships are basically two completely different games.
RayStorm is also by FAR the hardest entry into the Ray series.
You definitely need to know exactly what you're doing, and even if you do there are still some very nasty RNG moments that can screw you over.
You also just don't get any extends at all, the two extra lives you start with is all you get.
Bombs also recharge veeery slowly, generally you'll only be able to use a single one per stage.
I'm not sure why they expanded on the scoring mechanics and then just removed score extends, seems like a wasted effort to get people more involved in the system.
For scoring you want to get later locks on high value targets as usual as later locks give bigger multipliers.
Bombs also play a huge role as enemies destroyed by the bomb count towards the multiplier.
One thing I don't like is how RNG the scorebombs can be though. The bomb shoots a series of circles that land in a somewhat random pattern, and this can make the score variance pretty substantial if you get unlucky.
One nice QOL addition that the M2 port made is showing you how much score you got from a bomb.
More info on the Shmup Wiki entry:
https://shmups.wiki/library/RayStorm
Will definitely be playing this more and trying out the other ship.
Both deaths in this run were extremely silly.
Special thanks to ININ Games for providing a key!
Intro - 00:00
Stage 1 - 01:36
Stage 2 - 03:26
Stage 3 - 05:48
Stage 4 - 07:53
Stage 5 - 12:11
Stage 6 - 15:35
Stage 7 - 18:40
Stage 8 - 23:19
Ending & Credits - 26:09
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