Meta-Ph-List
Meta-Ph-List for the original Playstation is a real sleeper that very few people seem to talk about. It's a vertical shooter that gets all but ignored by the shooter crowd and import crowd, and it's tough to say why. Maybe because it came out at the same time as Final Fantasy VII. Maybe it's because it didn't come from some developer like Treasure or Toaplan that gets fans of the genre riled up. It's tough to find anything more than the odd forum post regarding this game, and the general consensus seems to be that it's firmly mediocre. I want to say that I love Meta-Ph-List, one of the few games that really changed my mind about what it is after my initial impression.
Initially, the game feels a bit "eh," as it has some blocky sprites and polygons, generic looking enemies, and decent if plain orchestral music make the game open with a resounding whimper. It doesn't seem like anything special as you select your level from a map of the galaxy. You swoop in, kill some enemies, fight a boss... but if you stick with it, and you get into the systems, there's a shooter that breaks away from genre conventions and becomes, in my opinion, something special.
For starters, the game is a hybrid shooter/RPG, where you can select and replay levels in just about any order, more becoming available as you clear bosses. You have three weapons, a vulcan shot, lasers, and missiles, which you can scroll through at the press of a button. As you kill enemies with each type, you gain experience, and at every 10,000 that weapon will level up, becoming more powerful and expanding its array. Lasers penetrate through enemies to hit others, shot is slightly more powerful but stops on impact, and missiles... they lock on like your laser in the RayForce series, hitting enemies on upper or lower planes. Each weapon is situationally useful, and there's no throwaway. You can occassionally nab a powerup for one of them, which for a brief time powers it way up, causing your shots to become enormous, screen-filling waves of doom. Speaking of waves of doom, you also start with 3 bombs, or as they're called in the manual, "Go2Hell" attacks, which lay waste to the enemies on screen beautifully.
All of this may sound a little like a poor man's Radiant Silvergun, so onto another change: you rotate a cursor around your ship with the L1 and R1 buttons, allowing you to focus your fire in any direction, much like Zero Gunner 2. It apparently can also be controlled by mouse, but I didn't test this method. So, between dodging, positioning your ship, and switching weapons situationally, there's always a lot happening to keep you engaged.
The enemies and backgrounds seem to suck at first, seeming like generic shapes and backgrounds that might be comfortable in Xevious. However, upon returning to stages, you'll find wildly varied backgrounds and more enemies that will make you feel like you're assaulting different parts of the planet or fleet... because you are. See, each mission selected is treated like an individual skirmish, which you can win, lose, or draw, depending on the conditions you meet, which brings me to your HUD.
In the top-left corner, you have two important meters. On top is your shields. Lose them by being hit too often and you die, time to start the whole thing again, so don't let that happen. Below that is your shot power, which depletes as you hold down fire. If it runs out, your shot becomes slightly slower and less potent, but letting off for a second or so will allow it to refill. In the top right, you have a Hit Meter, which goes up and down based on the amount of enemies you've shot down or let escape. Based on the mission, you have higher or lower thresholds for success. In the blue, you win, in the orange, you draw, and in the red, you lose the skirmish. Winning skirmishes allows you to open new areas or find data logs, which advance the story with new cutscenes. Below that is a boss damage meter, which should be obvious.
There are 2 discs of war to play through, and the difficulty ramps up at a comfortable pace. Continuing to replay old planets will allow you to build up your levels to allow you to move on at your own pace. The story scenes and opening are subtitled in Japanese, but the entirety of the voice acting is in english along with the menus, making the game more than accessible to Americans like me. I wish you could save between missions, but it seems you only can after clearing the galaxy. There's also an expert mode I have yet to try.
Meta-Ph-List takes a lot of ideas from a lot of places and pieces together something unique and fun. Its production values aren't super strong, but the control, difficulty curve, and scope set it apart. I wouldn't recommend this to someone who just discovered shooters. I'd recommend it to anyone who has played just about everything out there, and is looking for something familiar, but different enough to defy direct comparison. It's inexpensive, english-friendly, and plays well. If you want something off the beaten path, try Meta-Ph-List.
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