"Einhander provides some good old fashion space blasting in a beautiful world."

Platform: Playstation

Genre: Shooter

Publisher: Square EA

Developer: Square

ESRB: E (Everyone)

Released: Q4 1998

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Einhander 

With so few shooters on the market gamers looking for a true test of their reflexes are being forced to look to other means by which to improve their motor skills (and quite frankly I really don’t want to know what exactly they are doing to keep their reflexes up…shudder…). Thankfully there’s Einhander for the Playstation. Square took the magical world of space shooters, polished it up real nice with some polygonal goodness, and made sure that the screen is almost always packed full of bad guys and things that can blow the player up. It’s how shooters were meant to be with a little bit extra style for good measure. It’s beautiful.

Taking the tried and true approach of keeping the story simple (hey it’s a shooter, what we want to do is blow things up after all). Basically it’s well into the future and the moon has been colonized, the thing is that it wants independence. As such they’re gone to war against Earth and their last hope of defeating the Earth’s forces is a little fighter by the name of Einhander who will be taking on this arduous task.

Story aside, Square has become synonymous with impeccable graphics. From Final Fantasy to Seiken Densetsu they’ve been making players jaws drop for years now. Einhander continues this fine tradition, as the visuals here are stellar. The lighting effects are dazzling, the design of the ships, mechs, etc is breathtaking and the explosions from destroyed ships are beautiful.

While the visuals are pure Square goodness, the controls are very solid too. Everything is setup nicely so that everything works out to be very intuitive. On top of this players can acquire weapons from fallen enemy ships and attach them to their own as Gunpods. It takes a little getting used to when handling ships with multiple Gunpods on them, but after getting comfortable with cycling through the arsenal the Einhander can be a devastating piece of machinery.

Of course music and sound play a pivotal role in a shooter like this and Einhander delivers admirably. The sounds are very rich, and with the base up they really pack a punch. The music is very good electronica as it is very moody, and not the generic dance music that is so common in action titles.

Einhander provides some good old fashion space blasting in a beautiful world. It’s wonderfully nostalgic while fresh enough not to feel worn out. A great title that’ll make many an old time gamer think bake fondly of the shooters of the past.

- Mr. Nash