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Nearly hidden among thousands of missiles is the newfound refinement in Bangai-O HD, the eponymous giant robot’s third outing. While its DS predecessor Bangai-O Spirits blew the series’ doors wide open – offering customisable loadouts and more than 100 levels that could be skipped or solved – this XBLA version sees Treasure opting for a more tightly controlled, if equally ludicrous, experience. Under constraint, the game’s breadth and strangeness shine, and the distance Bangai-O has kept from other bullet-hell titles feels like a yawning chasm.
At heart, this is a game built around a mean joke. Your object is simple – destroy the enemies – but your path there is convoluted. Although Bangai-O is known to be a high-powered weapon of mass destruction, it’s merely a speck onscreen, dwarfed by war machines up to 20 times its size. Enter a new level and it’s game over seconds later, at the hands of a volley of missiles or crisscrossing laser beams. Bangai-O HD introduces punchlines to this tragicomedy: defeat the boss at the end of a winding tunnel, only to be jumped from behind by two robots; slay a giant ant and be met by a swarm of its spawn that fills your screen like flakes in a deadly snow globe.
Meanwhile, you’ve lost the ability to pick your weapons, so each level is built for a given loadout of missiles, bouncing bullets or napalm. Because the game rests upon split-second decisions, these action-packed levels have a puzzle-like centre. Your basic techniques seem arcane, but grow familiar by force of necessity: using counter-attacks to overwhelm enemy fire, dashing into foes to stun them and gathering fruit to recharge your EX meter. Throughout Bangai-O HD, it’s a question of where and when.
Levels may be skipped only after you’ve failed three times, so must be experienced in order. In guiding the flow of destruction, Treasure joyfully points out all the things its creation can be. You crawl through an interstellar dungeon. You nudge blocks amid a hellfire of munitions. You play cat-and-mouse with tanks, picking them off while avoiding their lines of sight. You inch tensely through a level that consists almost entirely of enemies stacked atop each other, and try not to upset too many of them. In between, you dodge and counter waves of ferocious missiles that would put Gunbuster to shame. Bangai-O HD reveals that the series can be both a chaotic toy box and a lattice of fantastical set-pieces that unfold meaningfully. Of all games, it best resembles Super Meat Boy in how its pieces interlock and prop up a world of complexity – one in which death awaits at the earliest slip-up and the thrill of winning is palpably real. [8]