A playthrough of THQ's 1998 shoot 'em up for the Sony Playstation, G-Darius. Played through on the normal difficulty level. I finished the game at Zone O with a final rank of Silver Hawk. I was so close to getting the best rank (Gold Hawk), but to this day I still haven't ever managed to! I was still happy with how well the run went, though. It was definitely one of my best yet. G-Darius is a sequel that blew my mind when I first played it on the PlayStation after getting it for Christmas way back in 1998. It's a port of the fourth arcade game in the series, following Darius, Darius II, and Darius Gaiden (also released on the PS1 and Saturn). It retains all of the trademark elements of the series - you pilot your Silver Hawk against an army of robotic sea creatures in an attempt to save... a planet? Humanity? Peace? Who cares? You fight space laser robot fish. That's the important bit to know. You chose which levels you want to play from a map that appears after finishing off a boss. You get some of the most outlandish yet awesome music imaginable thanks to the infamous Zuntata's efforts, and you get the same stiff difficulty the series is known for - it's not quite as hard as Darius Gaiden, but it's close, especially at the higher difficulty levels. There are a number of new features for this one, too. The first and most obvious is that the graphics have made the full transition to 3D. It plays like a 2D horizontally-scrolling shoot 'em up, but the camera will often pan and rotate the view for dramatic effect, which is especially effective during boss fights. It does occasionally slow down and the bullets can get lost among the details and colors of the action, but it's generally very smooth and very eye catching. G-Darius's capture ball makes a return, but the mechanic is much better fleshed out here. You can capture most enemies, including sub-bosses, and each have their own abilities and powers that will help you out... at least until they're destroyed. This happens once they've taken enough damage (like when you use them as bullet sponges) or once you decide to use them for your destructive efforts. You can blow them up on command to clear part of the screen, or at a most fight, you can consume them to charge your beam weapon. The beam can cut through standard enemies like a hot knife through butter, but its real potential lies in its use in a boss fight. Many of the boss ships will charge an energy beam and fire it at you, but you can use your own beam to counter it. If you can wail on the button quickly enough to overpower the boss's weapon (through a tug-of-war style mechanic), you can consume the beam's attack energy and reflect it back at him for ludicrous amounts of damage. Between this, the tiered ship upgrade system, and the mid-stage branching paths, G-Darius's expansion of older ideas adds a hefty bit of weight and strategy to the game play without needlessly overcomplicating things. I first discovered the Darius series with Darius Twin on the SNES, and I loved it to death. Darius Gaiden and G-Darius were similar experiences for me, and I highly recommend all of them highly enough to shooter fans. But as good as the rest of the series is, this 32-bit effort represents the culmination of a decade of carefully refining and polishing the formula, and it absolutely rocks. _ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete ( punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games! Visit for the latest updates! / 540091756006560 / nes_complete
