Previous days games can be found here, but today we have...
The Reap on PC
Look at that, a PC game in a box, cute.
Finland's Housemarque were formed in 1993 when two smaller development teams (Bloodhouse and Terrormarque) merged. They are best known for the Stardust series and, although I'd played the PS3 version of that and various games from them over the years, they didn't really get on my radar until they worked with Eugene Jarvis on the phenomenal Nex Machina in 2017. It was at this point when I found and bought The Reap, a PC exclusive shooter originally released in 1997.
This game marks the greatest lengths I've gone to so far to play something from my backlog, becasue it just doesn't work on Windows 10.
I had to use VirtualBox and an online guide to set up a Windows XP virtual machine - nothing too taxing, but something I've never done before and certainly a lot more involved than jamming a cartridge into a Master System and turning on the telly.
Firing the game up I was immediately reminded of the classic shooter Zaxxon; The Reap is an isometrically scrolling shooter, however, in a since deleted 20 year retrospective of the game, Housemarque said they were more directly inspired by a Neo Geo arcade shooter called Viewpoint. There's an interesting graphical progression across these three games.
Zaxxon has that classic, clean 8-bit style sprite-work, Viewpoint updates this to beautifully detailed 16-bit environments and enemies, and The Reap offers what is described as '3D modelled worlds and rendered graphics' that give an astonishing sense of depth and detail embellished by a liberal helping of, then, state of the art effects.
It's was in the detail that I first thought that there might be a kind of black humor to The Reap: As you destroy enemy vehicles and buildings tiny human figures run from the rubble and are flung from wreckage. Some of these are flagged as 'Scientist' or 'Government Spy', others seem to have given names; 'Sanna' or 'Ennis'... Intrigued, I checked the manual and discovered that you play the role of a mercenary, clearing planet Earth of human life before they can discover that their whole existence is that of universal lab rats. No one plays a shmup for the plot, but that is a pretty cool twist on the usual genre tropes.
These types of shooter usually fall into one of two sub-categories; defensive or offensive, and I prefer offensive. I take more pleasure in working out what should be destroyed next than I do in making my through bullet-hell patterns. Luckily for me The Reap definitely falls into the 'Offensive' category. It's a very tough game and the enemies are not shy with the missiles, but the focus is very much on destroying them before they destroy you.
The destroying itself is undertaking with a range five different upgradeable weapons, of which two can be loaded at any one time. So no lack of variety there, and the havoc wreaked is beautifully rendered with all the effects power DirectX 5 can muster and accompanied by decent if unspectacular sounds and an age-revealing 'metal' soundtrack.
I saw three levels in the time I played, there are ten in all, so whether I ever see the end is debatable (especially if the difficulty keeps ramping up at the current rate) but it's there and ready to go on my Virtual XP the next time the mood takes me and I definitely want to see more of this fun and incredible looking game.
The Reap - Definitely worth the effort to play
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