Super Hydorah

This is the The House of the Devil for shmups. I’m not even into shmups (or horror) but both of these attempts at not only just throwing it back to the 80’s but literally perfecting the experience is so rare and truly unique that I felt like that’s the only real logical comparison for me that comes to mind. Both of them have this dichotomy where they perfectly evoke and nail the era yet are super subtle about it due to the insane passion, attention to detail and humility that they are crafted with.

Love the port, everything looks and sounds great. However, the controls are tough. It would be good if we could change the sensitivity, or even use the gyro controls. As it is, the ship moves extremely fast, and it’s almost impossible to make small maneuvers. It’s especially bad in the second stage, where the vertical scrolling appears to be buggy, causing you to move even faster and crash into a floating landmass when you shouldn’t. EDIT 1: In response to the developer, I played with the touch control settings, but still couldn’t find anything that allowed me to navigate difficult sections reliably. There are three problems with the current two control schemes: 1. When using the mode with speed ups, it feels very awkward, and having to use precious shield/ammo containers for a speed up makes an already difficult game much harder, especially since this option doesn’t work any better than the default. 2. The “drag” option is arbitrary. By that, I mean you are simply applying some arbitrary multiplier to the number of pixels you drag across to get each sensitivity level. The problem with this is that none of the sensitivity levels are a simple 1:1 with the screen. The ship ALWAYS moves just a little bit extra or a little less than you move your finger, and least on an XS. Because of this you have to constantly reposition your finger, and it often results in an unfair death. 3. It gets very confused when you use a second finger. Charge shot is an obvious offender, but it is also a problem with the “drag” option - sometimes your finger runs to the edge of the device. To try to keep moving smoothly, you “pass off” to your opposite finger on the other side of the screen. Maybe you can fix this by having the game detect if your current control point is in a “dead zone”, and if a second drag point is found elsewhere on the screen, it takes priority. 4. Many control options could be alleviated by adding controller/keyboard support. Maybe a quick update?

I own this game in three games platforms it’s just that great. The soundtrack is amazing and the fine details that were put into this game put it over the top. I wish I could review it higher than 5 stars.