R-Type Dimensions EX

R-Type Dimensions EX is all about one of shmup’s classic ideas: tight side-scrolling shooting, dense enemy patterns, and learning routes until they become muscle memory. By our assessment, its big strength is that it gives two treatments of the same game, so the old arcade shape can be experienced in a cleaner modern style or in a more original form. That makes it appealing to players who care about the history of the genre as much as the action itself. The downside is also the nature of the genre: repetition, pattern study, and a fairly hard edge if you are not comfortable with memorizing attack waves. In practice it is a game of focus and failure, then another attempt, which is exactly what makes this kind of shooter satisfying. R-Type Dimensions EX stands above a plain rerelease because it treats the same material as something worth presenting, not just storing.