Lights, Camera, Action!!
User Rating: 8 | The Red Star PS2
Legion of a dying breed. It seems like its been light years since a good co-op game around in the 2000-2007era of gaming.What you get from Red Star is a game in the mold of Final Fight/Streets of Rage 2 mixed with a bit of Contra in the setting of the cold world of Russia.You have 2 characters that you can choose from(third character is optional later) The big huge guy who moves like Max on Streets of Rage 2 his melee attacks are strong and does damage, the down side however that his speed is slower than a snail.The speedster of the game goes to the fair lady, very fast, very agile, she can do back flips to avoid enemy's and her combo's are faster than her partners.You can block, attack enemy's lock on to enemy targers by pressing the R1 button. However you have to be careful about over using your gun, as it my overheat and then you have to wait for it to cool down. This is crucial during boss fights where 9 times out of 10 your gun does the only great amt of damage to overhead bosses.The special attacks that your character can perform comes when you have built your melee attacks up and your blue meter fills up.(Guy does super gun attack, Lady does super melee hit the ground attack) The learning curve is not long to get adjusted to, and the bosses arent always that tough. But what I really like about The Red Star is that every level doesnt have the same enemy's to fight.Each stage that you progress through puts you against a different enemy with different fighting styles.You can press select when a new enemy appears to see a description of the enemy and what they are "working with".
One thing that caught me off guard **spoiler ahead** is the stage where you jump in a aircraft fighting in the feel of a la -U.N Squardron or Area 88 whichever name you prefer to call the classic shooter game **spoiler ends**. There should of been more levels in the game like that but I cant complain when you have a good oldskool game that delivers as a shooter and a side scroller. Not the best but it can definetly hang with the big dogs on campus.
-Oldskool77 
