I'm being an idiot deliberately weird here, but that's the first impression that R-Type Final has made upon me: the music. You might expect a little bit of mellow trance here and there, and it's got that, but this game is all about the smooth melodies. The word "ethereal" keeps coming to mind, except for the repetitively funky hangar BGM. I want the soundtrack. I never want the soundtrack, but I want this one. It's eerie.

R-Type Final is the latest--and presumably last, judging by the title, but there've been thirty-odd Final Fantasies, so who the hell knows anymore--in a series of 2D sidescrolling shooters. I have not played any of its predecessors (at least, not within recent memory; I'm pretty sure I at least tried Super R-Type on the SNES), so I'm coming at this fresh; please, schmup fanatics, take pity on me, for I am ignorant.

The hook of Final, like the games before it, is the use of the "force," a powerup satellite that attaches to the front or back of your ship. When it's attached, it can be equipped with one of three different upgradeable guns by picking up the icons dropped by destroyed Power Armors; you can also send it out with the X button, firing it across the screen. Not only does it do damage to any enemy ship it touches, but it serves as an invincible, mobile independent cannon, targeting and eliminating incoming hostiles.

However, that involves standing still, and that's just stupid. R-Type Final isn't a Mars Matrix or Ikaruga, from the Psikyo or Treasure school of bullet-flood shooters, but that should not be taken to connotate a lack of intensity. There's not a lot of volume here; you will not be taking on entire entrenched armies all by yourself. You're just up against an adaptable, clever enemy that can come from anywhere, including behind you. You've got your standard fragile fighter jets, sure, but there are also giant mechwarriors, fanged monstrosities that explode into showers of white-hot lead when they die, pods that constantly spawn giant glowing dragonflies that hit like anti-aircraft fire, and the expected bioorganic mutations, horrific offspring of machine and alien with the worst qualities of both.

There is no forgiveness in this game; you have wronged it and you will pay. When you lose a ship in Final, you lose all your powerups, including the force, and are sent to an earlier part of the stage. There's none of this arcade-style, Gunbird-ish "jump right back in" nonsense here; if you die, things will get harder. I find that to pass stages, I need a lot of practice and a lot of patience, because Final is set up to reward a flawless performance.

Each brings a new charge attack to the party, along with different available missile types, a new look, and a completely new reaction to picking up a powerup icon. Grab the blue jewels when you're flying the Andromalius, and you'll get something kind of like an automatic cloudburst, raining bolts of lightning down upon anything within a very short range; if you're in the Shooting Star and you get the same icon, you wind up with a bizarre-looking but intensely lethal circular rainbow laser, which no doubt tears the hell out of enemy ships with the awesome power of love.

If you're a completist and a shooter fan, then R-Type Final is aimed squarely at you. You see, there are ninety-six of these ships to unlock, and each of them has the potential to totally change the way in which you approach a level. You can't just fall back on memorizing the patterns in which powerups appear, the way you can in, say, Gradius; you have to figure out which powerup actually does something useful given the ship you're in, and keep that in mind while you're dodging another hail of bullets, or navigating an underwater maze, or attempting to find the sweet spot within the strange solid-mercury "body" of the first boss, where you can shoot at its weak point while simultaneously not getting impaled on one of the stalagmite-esque "fangs" it grows at irregular intervals.