On Reflection

A review that reeks of resident retro-man Darran Jones, we’ve got to admit that he’s pretty spoton here. Although we would mark this down a point on reflection because a) some more worthy titles have hit XBLA since and b) because we know that it will annoy the living hell out of Jones.

The Score

No month is complete on Xbox Live Arcade without at least one new offering from those crazy coders at Digital Eclipse, so here’s Gyruss. We’re not going to tell you that Gyruss was the first arcade game to ever feature stereo sound and we’re certainly not going to discuss how the unique forced 3D perspective it uses made it stand out from its more conventional looking peers, or that its creator, Yoshiki Okamoto was fired after its completion and joined Capcom, where he created the likes of Street Fighter and Resident Evil. You don’t want a history lesson, you just need to know if this is better than the likes of Root Beer Tapper and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and indeed it is.

Like Time Pilot (also created by the awesome Okamoto) Gyruss is just a superb blaster that will test your reflexes to the limit and make you realise that sometimes (only sometimes mind) ancient arcade games can still be a lot of fun. Definitely one to try out if you’ve got some spare points rattling around.

7 out of 10