Put simply, Silpheed: The Lost Planet is gorgeous. The environments are extremely well-detailed, the enemies range from relatively simple cannon fodder to frighteningly huge screen-filling bosses, pulsating and gyrating and in general oozing malevolance. Yes, some of the textures and animations in the game are a little weak--the rolling lava springs to mind, as does the bottom layer in the cloud level--but for the most part Silpheed is gorgeous. The screen-filling explosions caused by rapid-fire really must be seen to be believed. And since this is Treasure's first effort on the PS2, we can only imagine how much better they'll get on the black box.

The music in Silpheed is precisely what you'd expect from Treasure--shooty music, full of pumping riffs and speedy delivery. It gets you in the mood for the battles, makes you want to wail on that trigger button (which, thankfully, you can just hold down), and in general fits the game and the genre perfectly. The voice acting is also impressive, reminiscent of Radiant Silvergun in its scope--only this time, the constant background track is in English instead of Japanese. The chatter really makes the game feel more complete, even if it's kind of hard to hear most of the time. Good stuff, though, and miles better than most voice acting.

Well, shooters are all about gameplay, and while Silpheed is no Radiant Silvergun, it's still a solid title. The weapons system has a few too many duds for my taste, and the few bullet-dodging screens are nowhere near as intense as in Silvergun, but the game is still thrilling while it lasts, and it's easy enough to pick up and play again that you'll find yourself wasting your spare time blasting away in it.

The plot is pretty typical shooter fare: alien menace takes over planet, special fighters sent to save the world, yadda yadda yadda. The plot itself unwinds both inside the levels and in between the shooting with some absolutely gorgeous FMV that really pushes the envelope of realism--I dare say it's almost Square quality. The core gameplay, of course, is what you'd expect: if it moves, shoot it.

Since all shooters use the same basic formula, any game in the series has to be at least somewhat innovative to keep people's interest. And Silpheed is no exception. It's not as impressive as I would have liked, but the system certainly works.

The first thing you'll note is a weapons loadout screen. The Silpheed can carry two weapons, one on each side, and at the beginning of the game you have only a straight-firing vulcan cannon and one that fires in a V-pattern. As you beat each level, you unlock more weapons that you can load the Silpheed out with. They range from the typical laser--Optic Beam, here--to the inventive but almost impossible to use--the sword-type thingie. (I could look up the name, but it's not like anyone uses them anyways!) For the most part, the loadouts are fairly standard, and I found quite a few of them pretty useless for my playing style--napalm and the aforementioned sword. Indeed, I found that some variation of 'forward shooter' plus the 'V' vulcan got me the best results throughout the game.

The main scoring 'trick' in Silpheed is the distance multiplier. Depending on how close you were to the enemy when you destroyed it, you get your score multiplied by some factor. Almost touching is 16 times normal score, whereas far away is your basic 1x. If you destroy an entire squadron of enemy ships, you get bonus points, which also depend on how far away you were from each ship when you destroyed it. So the more dangerously you play the game, zooming up to the ships and wailing on them nose-to-nose, the more points you get. Indeed, the only way to beat some of the bosses in a reasonable amount of time is this nose-to-nose battling, which makes for some pretty hairy battles.

The levels range from your inside-the-ship standards to a spinning hyperspace to the inevitable planet surfaces. There are usually one or more minibosses in any given level, and a big ugly boss at the end that will keep you on your toes until you learn its pattern.

Sure, it may sound like almost every other shooter ever made, but it's fun.

There are two difficulty levels in the game: Normal and Hard. You get unlimited continues in each, but you're kicked back to the beginning of the level and you lose all of your points. This means that you have no choice but to learn each level as well as possible; continuing constantly from the point at which you died is simply not an option. I much prefer this method, as it makes me learn the level instead of simply slamming my 'continue tokens' in and not getting enough practice on the hard bits. Normal won't last a full day with most classic shooter fans, but the added challenge of Hard definitely makes the experience more complete. Add the fact that you can reduce the number of hits you take from 10 to 5 and you have a game that can challenge even the experts of the genre.

Move with the stick, shoot with X. It's as simple as that--you can fire the two weapons seperately, but there's almost never a reason to do so. The Japanese original didn't have analog support, and it reportedly had a good deal of slowdown, but the American release has solid support of the Dual Shock sticks and very little slowdown. Yeah, it chugs a bit occasionally, but nothing that hampers gameplay. Load times are minimal, controls are tight, and I didn't feel like I was 'sliding' into shots like the Ray series of games.

It's not the deepest shooter ever made, and it definitely doesn't unseat Radiant Silvergun for the title of 'best next-gen shooter', but Silpheed: The Lost Planet is a very solid offering for shooter fans. Those who adore shooters would do well to buy it; those who just want a quick fix, or the experts who don't like playing the same game to perfection, would probably just want to rent it. Definitely experience it, though: there's a lot of fun to be had with Silpheed, and a gorgeous world to see.