What a mess to end a series on. After what seems like an eternity, the R-Type series finally ends with a whimper in R-Type Final. The set-up sounds promising-take one of the best side-scrolling shooters ever, put it on the PS2, put in every ship that's ever been in an R-Type game, then supply tons of cool weapons just for good measure. Unfortunately, the execution is just plain awful. Never have I been subject to such terrible slowdown in a game. I've endured some bad slowdown (I have to be one of the few who persisted through Banjo Tooie to find every last thing, even when the framerate dropped to like 5 frames per second at times) but it's just so awful for a game of this type. It's like playing in bullet-time! What the heck! It's not choppy really, the action just slows down to practically a halt. Plus the music and level design is the worst of the series. The music consists of some poorly composed techno and the levels contain areas of just flying, no enemies or challenge, just sit there in the middle of the screen and eventually some ships will come. Still, though the slow down practically kills this game, it's not flat-out terrible. There are still all of those ships and there are some interesting variations that occur if you replay some of the levels. But why bother? Go play Ikaruga or Radiant Silvergun. Sorry Irem, maybe you should consider an R-Type Final 2 to correct this atrocity to one of my favorite shooting series. R-Type Final rates at just a 4 out of 10.
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