Were there ever plans for theese sequels?

[Shatterhand]

I've been wanting to post this for sometime, dunno why I didn't before. Well, now I am doing it

I have X2 for the PSX.

If you like the original Project-X, you'll be at home with X2. The gameplay follows the same suit, with large enemies that take an absurd amount of hits to die (And if you kill an enemy to fast, a clone of it appears. It's like you have to keep fighting the same enemy for a period of TIME, and not just until you kill it), pattern of enemies that appear once and never more, stupidly hard difficulty, 3 different ships to chose from with the same atributes of the ships from Project X...

Some mechanics are different. Instead of a Gradius weapons bar, you get new weapons by getting icons released by certain enemies. The icons cycle between the available weapons, and getting the same icon twice power ups your weapon. You never lose a weapon, you can switch through your weapons by pressing square. At first only 2 weapons are available (Laser and Ripple), but as the game advances, more powerfull weapons become available (Something I hate in shmups.)

There are also secondary weapons, which are collected in the same way of the primary weapons. You also never lose them, and they also can be powered up. One interesting thing is that you use ALL your secondary weapons at the SAME TIME, so later in the game you get some ridiculous firepower. Also, some secondary weapons appear in certain levels and never more. Ex: In the first level there are 2 icons which cycle between homing star and missiles. After this, they don't appear never more, so you have to choose if you want a powerfull missile, a powerful homing star or a weak missile plus a weak homing star.

There are also an icon that gives you extra stuff - it may be Speed up, Speed down, invencibility or Extra health (Yes, the game has a health bar). It's kind of stupid, as 95% of the time you WILL get the extra health, unless you are some kind of god who can breeze through the game without being hit.

There are also smart bombs, that work like your usual smart bombs, and like Akira said, vert and horz levels like Salamander (Some levels even switch the perspective in the middle of the game).

The level design is great sometimes, and others are just stupid.
There's one enemy in the first stage, for example, that's very annoying, he runs at your direction SO DAMN FAST, that's just impossible to dodge him - you have to memorize what his path, and that's very boring IMO. Another example is in the desert level (I think it's level 2, can't remember) there's a part where the scenery puts you in one ship tall line, and lots of enemies appear in front of you. They are easily disposable by just holding the fire button, but they come so fast that soon you will be cornered at the top-left of the screen - with stuff SHOOTING at you. There's nothing you can do but bomb your way out. If you have no bombs, you are screwed. Also, the hitbox of your ship is too big to dodge some stuff, and lots of bullets are too fast sometimes, which makes them impossible to dodge if you don't know beforehand where they will come from.

But like I said, some parts are genious: in the 1st vertical level (I think it's in the middle of level 2 or level 3, can't remember now), there are some enemies that circle around your ship, while you stay in the middle, and they shoot at your, and keep moving, so you have to dodge stuff and keep inside the circle. The Asteroid Belt level is just great: it's also vertical, and you have to dodge enemy fire and some big asteroids. There's a parallax scrolling in the background with some asteroids. Somtimes your way is completely blocked by asteroids, then your ship moves INTO the background, (There's a warning before it does it), and you have to look at the background and be careful to not crash into any asteroids.

The graphics and sounds are breathtaking though. The GFX is not as good as Raystorm (Imo the best looking shmup on PSX) or G-Darius, but it gets very close. There are lots of cool backgrounds with parallax. Level 1 is in a city, and you have lots of buildings in the background (Again, in parallax layers) and in some buildings you can see the reflex of your ship in the windows of the buildings. This is even cooler when you are battling a big ship.

The intro is also very cool, though it doesn't give any tips of what the game is about, anyone would think it's either a racing game or a new FPS. Oh, and in one part of the intro, a computer shows: "Project:.... X 2"

Like Project X, it falls into average stuff which gets too much overrated sometimes. You surely will get some fun of it, but it won't turn your life upside down.

In a side note: When seeing the credits, you see some known names: The game was done by the original Team 17 duo: Andreas Tadic and Rico Holmes, Bjorn Lynne did the music, Martyn Brown produced the game. There are only more 4 people involved with the game, and 3 of them only worked on the intro.

[Drake1009]

Wasn't what became Tomb raider initially meant to star Rick?

[Shatterhand]

Yes, I also heard about that.

[7-Zark-7]

Straying O/T a touch, but any word on the current fate of Core Design? Just been catching up with the magazines from the U.K. mentioning Jeremy Smith "resigning" from Eidos,& that the studio's future is up for review following Crystal Dynamics being given the task to revive the Lara Croft shambles.
I'm no Lara fan, but it'd be sad to see Core bite the dust after all these years.

[Shatterhand]

Yes, I posted about this in other post. Without Tomb Raider, what's left to Core to do?

It's an absurd, Lara Croft and Tomb Raider were CREATED BY CORE. How the hell they took it away from Core? Crystal Dinamics is a pretty good developer, but it's just too unfair with Core.

I really hope they don't dissapear too.