Rigid Force Redux (Switch)

Rigid Force Redux is a confusingly named space shooter by the equally confusingly named development team Com8com1. Strange naming conventions aside, is this title part of a grand voyage, or should it get lost in space?.

Rigid Force Redux tells a tale of one ship versus a mighty army of robots, aliens, and everything in between. Naturally, your ship has an A.I available to assist in furthering the plot and spouting space jargon at you. You can see an effort has been put forth here to give the title a little story clout & what’s here is good, what is even better if like me you’re a little “skip” happy with the cutscenes it literally does not detract from your enjoyment at all!. 

Visually Rigid Force Redux is a fantastic little stunner of a game, brilliant lighting, and explosions. The 3D models animate well and nothing goes out of the way to distract you from the action. Some of the bosses look like “generic sci-fi” boss got Google’d whereas some others are pure nightmare fuel in the best way.

Rigid Force Redux proudly states within its promotional campaign the music that permeates the very pores of this title, Synthwave. The music is ideal for the game and ignites that passion for the arcades within, it doesn’t grate on you while you play and helps get you in a zen-like status. The voice acting for your A.I counterpart is well done and fortunately, the spoken lines are mainly stuck in the cutscenes so you’re not stuck hearing them time after time.

Rigid Force Redux has what I feel is a very intentional look, this also ties into how the game feels and pretty much every other facet of it. It feels very much like a homage or a “retro gone modern” fusion of R-Type and Gradius in the best way. 

This may fall in the Shmup genre but unlike alot of the ones we have covered before it is closest to Satazius from the Shmup collection. Rather than a screen full of colourful bullets to dodge like in a Danmaku title, the environment and enemy placement is done so intricately to create the same kind of challenge in a different way, akin to that of a puzzle at times. 

You initially start with your basic Ship, just the one here, you gain different power ups with change your shot, standard, lazer, fire or homing shots. 

Another power up you’ll soon fly across adds a gun pod to the front of your ship, you can get up to 4 of these. With the press of the shoulder buttons you will rearrange these pods to further the spread or eventually fire behind you. It’s a brilliant system that really clicked straight away and was the first inkling beyond the visuals that R-Type had a hand in inspiring this title (think The Force). 

As mentioned a few times, there is quite a lot here that could be considered a homage to R-Type, remember the aliens in the second stage that flew up from the ground? Got them here!, remember the section in stage 1 where you fly through a ring and destroy it from the inside, yep you guessed it, here. Rigid Force Redux does have some fantastic set pieces of it’s own, the main one being where an enemy ship chases you throughout the stage.

The game is made up of 6 stages, this will fly by in around 40 minutes to an hour, you have to play them through on Story Mode to unlock the more Hi Score focused Arcade and Boss Rush modes. 

Overall Rigid Force Redux is a fantastic title if not a little too reliant on R-Type nostalgia, it is a very satisfying shmup and shouldn’t be ignored for the above fact, it would be good to a sequel really expand on the different worlds and the unique set pieces this game had. Arcade mode adds another score variation to make it a viable play mode, its just a shame you can’t go through the game in one go with it, instead you just do the stage you picked.

Would I reccomend Rigid Force Redux? I would, it’s wildly different than recent Danmaku titles and for fans of the R-Type & Gradius style shmup it’s a quality title. It is also quite welcoming to newcomers which may be put off by the higher difficulty levels of titles like R-Type.