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For 20 years the trend in shmups has been to pack the screen with as many bullets as possible, but Raiden likes to play things a little differently. This, after all, is a series that helped shape the modern scrolling shooter as we understand it today, so why should it follow even the most protracted fashion in its form? Like R-Type and Gradius, Raiden has been around long enough to know bullet count alone as a 2D shooter status symbol is a meaningless metric.Raiden 5, the first new series entry in nine years, is absolute in its commitment to the traditional shooter form. What that means is relatively low numbers of bullets on-screen at a given time, stripped back scoring mechanisms, and a dose of the hard military sci-fi theme that dominated the emergence of the genre at a time scrolling playfields were becoming a norm.
Don't be fooled, though, as developer Moss has crafted a demanding arcade experience with plenty of nuance - albeit one yet to see release on a cabinet. This is a game that feels no shame in demeaning the skill of its players, and with a mere scattering of bullets Raiden 5 can back you into a corner in a fraction of the time commonly seen in Cave's iconic output.
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