Retro/Grade is out to do something new with not one, but two genres. It tells the tale of Rick Rocket, “Space Pilot Guy” who just blew up the big baddie at the end of the game. However, the massive explosion has caused a rift in space/time and now he is traveling backwards through his previous battles.

On the surface, Retro/Grade looks like a Shmup (shoot-em-up) in the style of Gradius or R-Type, but it quickly becomes apparent that you are playing a rhythm game with the flavor of a flashy shooter.

The display I played at PAX was setup to use the Guitar Hero controller. This made a lot of sense once I started playing and realized how important music was to the experience. I put on the headphones and started up the game. Being a long time player of guitar based rhythm games, I set it on pro.

I was killed almost immediately.

I then asked one of the Retro/Grade developers to explain the game to me. He asked what I normally play Guitar Hero on, and I told him expert. Even with that, he suggesting starting on this game’s “normal” mode. After a few minutes of play, I could see why.

Each level of Retro/Grade is a song, each with it’s own difficulty range. You hit the colored “fret” buttons on the guitar to move your ship between the different lanes on the screen. Here you need to strum just as your shots (traveling in reverse, remember) cross the front of your ship.When you do, it flows together perfectly with the song. If you miss, you’ve disrupted the timeline and will take damage.

Even with that one mechanic, Retro/Grade is shmup-level crazy in its action. But it doesn’t stop there. On top of that, you have to dodge the enemy blasts traveling across the screen from left to right. This keeps you from being able to laze around in a lane, waiting for your shots to line up.

You know those parts in Rock Band/Guitar Hero where you have to strum up and down really fast to hit all the notes? Retro/Grade has those as well, but they take the form of you lining up a barrage of missiles formerly shot from your ship.

Retro/Grade is high energy, flashy, and best of all, a lot of fun. The only downside for me is that all my guitar controllers are for the Xbox 360. You can play with the standard controller, but it definitely felt like it was made for the guitar. Hopefully, it will do well enough on the PS3 that they are able to bring it over to other consoles.

Tags: PAX, PAX '10, PAX 2010 COVERAGE, ps3, psn, Retrograde, rhythm games, Shmup, Twenty-Four Caret Games

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 15th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Features, Indie Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.