Dredge starts with your character - a fisherman, nonetheless - making his way through a foggy sea before he inevitably has a shipwreck. Waking up on a deck on a small fishing island called Greater Meadows...his journey begins.
35 years later (...ugh) and, despite my best intentions, I haven’t substantially improved. I’ve often returned to dip my toe into the genre, figuring that critically acclaimed darlings like
Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, or Gradius V would finally give me the motivation to get gud.
I never did, but even though I’m crap at them I maintain an admiration for their purity, the focus they require to master, the complex interlocking systems and, perhaps most of all, for the gaming wizards that can one credit clear these bad boys.
Enter the Ray’z Arcade Chronology, which consists of best-in-class remastering studio M2’s ports of three classic Taito shmups, 1994’sRayForce, 1996’s RayStorm and 1998’s RayCrisis.
Stay Out of the House is split into four sections; the first act is named Night Shift, whereby you go to your character’s night shift at a gas station. Things start out pretty normally, you clean up, deal with customers etc. the store also has an arcade cabinet in the corner which you can play when the store is quiet - oddly enough the arcade game is about a killer chasing you, and you must collect things in order to escape. I really liked this introduction it was a nice build-up of suspense, and even though you can see what’s coming, it still made me jump.
