Stuart Campbell: Now Playing Ketsui Death Label DS

Posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 8:00 amShare this post

This month I’ve mostly been playing Ketsui Death Label on the DS, because somebody has to.

“Bullet hell” shoot-‘em-ups never get reviewed properly in the West, either in print or online, because almost nobody knows the first thing about shmup culture. It’s an area of gaming that’s turned inwards on itself almost as much as the world of the 2D fighting game, which is now almost completely impenetrable to outsiders. (Street Fighter 2 and its derivatives have now been released about eight times in the last two years, because it’s the last fighting game that the ordinary gamer could understand.)

(Left) Like, way loads of bullets. (Right) Fewer bullets, but bigger.

It’s into that world that Cave/Arika have chosen to release the DS’s first bullet-hell shmup (and indeed only about its fourth shmup of any kind), and it’s not likely to get much of a welcome. Cave’s games are at the hardest end of the hardcore spectrum (their last major home release, Mushihimesama for the PS2, is probably the most insanely extreme bullet-hell game ever – heck, even the name is almost impossible to spell), and while Ketsui is relatively restrained by their standards, this DS implementation of it is so refined and distilled that anyone but the most hate-filled, crazy-eyed shmup fanboy is going to recoil from it in horror.

The first thing to note is that this isn’t even an attempt to port the vertical-screen arcade game. The “Death Label” tag signifies that the DS game is exclusively a boss-rush, featuring only the increasingly-gruelling stage-end guardians from the coin-op, which are hurled at you one after the other with steadily-increasing savagery. There’s the traditional complex scoring system to figure out, which is essentially based around proximity to enemies, with point-blank shooting producing the biggest rewards. But even beyond that, the game is structured in such a way as to have almost no appeal to anyone but the most absolutely dedicated shmup devotee.

(Left) Pretty much the same bullets as picture 1, but blue. (Right) Don't know what to say about this one.

The main mode offers eight difficulty levels, of which three are unlocked at the start – Novice, Normal and the final Doom Mode, a special mode which pits you endlessly against the game’s final boss, Doom. Each difficulty setting you beat unlocks the next one in line. Novice mode gives you just three bosses to deal with, who are limited to very restricted shooting, and even without using your Bomb weapon it’s easy to complete first time in roughly 90 seconds. Normal mode gives you four bosses and ups their firepower a bit, and so on through Hard A, Hard B, Hard C and Very Hard, by which point you’ve got 10 super-enemies to tackle, each of which can fill the screen with the traditional pink and blue bullets. Finally you get to Death Label mode, in which the bosses are in their modified and most fearsome forms, and the bullet patterns are a frighteningly big leap up from Very Hard.

You have two ships to choose from (whose attributes are barely distinguishable), and the game keeps separate high scores for each ship type at each level. So far so good, right? Everyone can find their own level and high-score it until they feel able to move up. Sadly not. Because KDL knows how little chance there is of most players being able to handle any of the higher levels, every time you fail (even if you just pressed Start and then wandered off to make a cuppa) it takes pity on you and gives you an extra life. By the time you get to 20 lives it just gives up on you in disgust and unlocks the next level anyway. But what that means, of course, is that the high score you just sweated blood over is meaningless, because the next time you play that level you’ll have an extra unearned life, each of which comes with numerous extra smartbombs. (You get three per ship to start with, but every time you destroy a boss you start the next one with four fresh bombs, so one extra ship can add as many as 39 bombs to your armoury.) I’d hoped Death Label level might be an uncompromising “true” mode, restricting you permanently to a fixed number of lives because there was nothing left to unlock, but it’s just the same as the others, throwing freebies at you with every restart.

(Left) These bullets are all like bendy and shit. (Right) Bonus tokens completely obscure the screen for much of the game.

So the main single-player game appears to be completely pointless, which leaves only Training Mode, a single-stage score attack where you can battle any individual boss at any of the difficulty levels you’ve unlocked. Unfortunately, even this mode lets you set your own number of lives and bombs, and doesn’t save highscores, so it’s an even bigger waste of time. And that’s it, apart from some multiplayer modes which are basically just lots of people playing the same level at the same time to see who gets the highest score. (You can have up to eight players, but the chances of you ever finding that many KDL fans online at once are pretty much zero.)

I played Ketsui Death Label so much this month because there’s nothing finer than a well-built shmup, and I was desperately hoping to eventually find a worthwhile game mode in it. The technical standards are excellent, proving that the DS can handle real bullet-hell games, and indeed this release made me yearn like a madman for a DS port of the majestic Giga Wing, whose horizontal-format screen and comparatively low graphical standards would be a superb fit for the little handheld. But even for the most fanatic shmup-lover, there’s nothing here that makes any rational sense – after the several hours of drudgery required before you can even meaningfully challenge your own high scores (the number of lives awarded for each difficulty level tops out at 20, so at least at that point you’re fighting on a level playing field), you’ll be too heartily sick of the game and its small enemy roster to bother.

(Left) Scenery: not exciting. (Right) Stay very still and maybe they won't see you there.

(Ironically, exactly when most people will have finally given up, the game releases Extra Mode, a secret reward for beating Death Label level which DOES restrict you to a fixed number of lives. But it isn’t unlocked automatically on reaching 20 lives like the other difficulty settings – you actually have to beat Death Label, which features all 10 superhard boss incarnations plus Doom, and most people will have absolutely no chance so it might as well not be there at all.)

It’s a real shame, and absolutely mystifying, because Japanese shooting games are usually wonderfully structured in terms of replay value (Gradius V and Raiden 3 being particularly good examples, alongside the stellar home version of Giga Wing), but this one seems to have been constructed with no thought whatsoever as to what the purpose of playing it was. We can only hope that it nevertheless serves to other shmup publishers as a demonstration of what the DS is capable of in this field, and leads to much better future releases for which we’ll owe Ketsui Death Label a debt of gratitude. On its own merits, it deserves none.

By Stuart Campbell

Remember to tune in next month for more Stu. In the meantime visit his website; World of Stuart.

“Mate, you need to pay more attention to the scoring. Using 20 lives does not help your score. Also, if you pay attention to your bomb stock, the auto-bomb uses up all of your bombs for that boss, with no points given for the bullets on screen.”

I’m aware of both of those things, but I don’t see how they justify your second sentence. Getting killed reduces your multiplier, but not to the extent of negating 17 extra lives and their accompanying smart bombs. In Very Hard mode, using 20 lives to battle to the end will give you a much better score than having three lives and getting killed by the fourth boss, no matter how well you played those three lives.

Rev. Stu on October 29th, 2008

Sure, the extra lives will help until you get enough (or good enough) to clear the mode, but after that the only way to score more is to play better and die less, and any increase in lives won’t help a bit.

croikle on October 31st, 2008

Absolutely. But that’s all addressed in the third-to-last paragraph, particularly the last sentence.

Rev. Stu on November 1st, 2008

[...] week we’ve had our first of hopefully many monthly columns from Stuart Campbell, we were pleasantly surprised by de Blob, we took a look at the Call of Duty: World at War beta, [...]

Weekly Roundup | Snappy Gamer on November 1st, 2008

“On its own merits, it deserves none.”
I think this clearly indicates that you indeed dont understand the Shmup culture or Shmups in general, I think Ketsui is a godsend for every Shmup lover.

And when you are talking about “most people wont” you already make a mistake this game is only made for the Shmup society, saying then that most people who will buy this will give up and that kind of nonsense.

“small enemy roster to bother”
Do you even understand that this is a boss-rush mode?
And that there is a remixed single player level in extra mode? Do you even know Ketsui before the DS??

“appeal to anyone but the most absolutely dedicated shmup devotee.” guess for who this game was made…

Finishing the article on a negative note on this game makes you fail even more mate.
I may not be your genre but even worse you also dont get it.
Do your homework better before writing it off.

Dan Fender on November 7th, 2008

“I may not be your genre but even worse you also dont get it.”

Will you be my genre then? Please?

Oddbob on November 14th, 2008

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