11:51 pm
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Space Giraffe, then
I love Tempest 3000. Lots of people, of course, love Tempest 2000, but I never owned a Jaguar and so the closest I got was the PC version, which was fun but never quite enough. T3K is quite another matter; I first played it at silly o'clock in the morning in Yak's barn on the big projector, and wasted little time afterwards in spending £200-odd on a Samsung N501 complete with T3K, racking up quite a respectable high score and returning to it every now and then for some serious fun. It has its flaws but it's one of the most accomplished bits of shooting you can get your hands on. It may look like a silly graphical overload with way too much going on for the human brain to handle, but everything's there for a reason and it all works beautifully once you settle into its ways. It's impossible for me to start a game that doesn't last the best part of an hour.
And now it's completely ruined for me. I've played Space Giraffe and I honestly don't think I can ever play T3K again.
Because - and pay close attention because this is important - it's not Tempest. It looks rather like Tempest, it has some Tempesty enemies, it has you piling round the top of a web in space, blasting things that climb up it, it has a jump feature, it has a superzapper and all of that. To the uninformed observer, it's Tempest 4000 with a dangerous array of weapons-grade graphical flourishes. But looks can be deceptive. Play it with your Tempest hat on and you quickly discover that it's about as unTempesty as it's possible to get. It's the antiTempest.
The web, for starters. Really, there isn't a web. There's an near-invisible web framework that serves as a handy framework for your power zone, which grows, becoming your traditional Tempest-style web, as you shoot stuff, collect power-ups, use the superzapper or accomplish anything, really. If the power zone's activated you can (a) fire directional hoof shots, and (b) 'bull' enemies off the rim. The bit where you are. And that's where the fun really starts.
In Tempest, you really don't want the bad guys to reach the rim. That means trouble. In Space Giraffe it's a case of 'bring it, bitches', a game of intergalactic chicken where you dare the enemies to come hang out on your rim. Because once there's a decent gathering, power zone permitting, you can bull a load off at once and start sending the bonus multiplyer through the roof, and that's how you start scoring large and racking out the extra lives. It's the risk/reward principle at its most extreme and it's positively intoxicating, especially when the risks keep on mounting.
Which, naturally, they do. Just letting the bad guys congregate means that you're not shooting anything, so you're not growing your power zone, so you have to play a careful balancing act, picking a few off in hope of nabbing a power-up (which results in a jump, which results in an instant power zone - see?) and gradually building up momentum towards that oh-so-desirable 9x multiplier. But just one lapse in concentration, one slip, can blow the whole gig. It's seat-of-your-pants stuff, especially as your entire visual cortex is being assailed by the best the Neon engine can throw at you.
Oh yes, there's a lot going on visually. A long-misplaced friend once described Spheres of Chaos as looking like a migraine he'd once had. That - in a good way- is nothing compared to Space Giraffe.
But it's all readable. The visual cues are always there once you learn them, and there are audio cues to go with them, meaning that once you've cracked the psychedelic Minter code it's all there to see, even though it may at first seem like you're peering into Terence McKenna's brain. And once you're there you can really start to play. Levels that at first seem like an exercise in scraping through with your dignity, if not your stock of lives, intact, become fun-packed exercises in finesse and taking the fucking piss - even when you find yourself completely hemmed in, the controls are so smooth and responsive that you can still get away with it rather than blunder into instant death. I only managed to get a few hours play in over the weekend (with, it must be noted, expert tutelage), but got went from nervous baby steps to having a right old laugh reasonably quickly. Still, I'll maintain, with an equal mix of luck and judgement, but I was definitely getting there and loving every second of it.
At a price, though. In getting there I had to pick up a whole new instruction set and eject just about every Tempest 3000 strategy in the book. And it's going to stay like that. Space Giraffe - even in its current alpha form - is so much lovelier in every respect that I really can't go back to T3K.
And, fuck it, I don't care. I'll see you from somewhere near the top of the leaderboard when it hits XBLA.
Current Music: I Love Horses/Moaner (10:10) (repeat)
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