Game Arts' Silpheed franchise made its debut on the Sega CD in 1993 with spectacular full-motion video-generated backgrounds and intense shooting action. The company further improved upon the formula by teaming up with the shooting gurus at Treasure to produce Silpheed: The Lost Planet for the PlayStation 2 seven years later. Now Game Arts has returned once more, this time making mincemeat out of enemy vessels with Project Sylpheed (they changed the spelling) for the Xbox 360. Square Enix released the game in Japan a few months back and U.S. gamers will finally get their hands on the game when Microsoft releases it in July.

The plot revolves around an alien invasion threatening Earth. The story unfolds through fifty plus minutes of computer-generated sequences that play out between each stage, with pilots being instructed on which scenarios must be completed.

Unlike previous entries in the Silpheed series, Project Sylpheed's action sequences work similarly to the Ace Combat games -- if they occurred in outer space. Players can speed up and slow down their ship, perform barrel rolls and utilize two different weapons: blasting cannons and missiles (both using separate power gauges). If the player shoots too much, they overheat and become temporarily unavailable.

For protection, an energy shield surrounds the ship, protecting it from a certain number of hits. Once the shield depletes, the ship can be reduced to rubble. The shield can regenerate, however, if the player cools down and doesn't take any significant amount of damage.

Project Sylpheed's presentation looks great. While the in-game visuals won't impress gamers used to Gears of War, they are still impressive. Huge space environments can be explored and well-designed spacecraft and nifty lighting effects -- particularly with lasers and the glow of a ship's thrusters -- provide additional highlights. The frame rate moves smoothly (judging from the Japanese version), and as far as audio goes, expect a re-working of the dialogue into English with the same level of seriousness as the Japanese release. It really doesn't make sense for Microsoft to take a cornball approach, especially considering the amount of work put into the beautiful CG sequences.

Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't appear to be capitalizing on what would be a big feature with the game -- online play via Xbox Live. Sylpheed doesn't support the service in any way, not for versus play or even leader board support. At least the company makes up for this with a very reasonable $39.99 MSRP. Not a bad price, especially considering the amount of single-player missions.

Game Arts' latest arrives this July and GameDaily will post a review. In the meantime, warm up those trigger fingers.

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