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Review: Raptor: Call of the Shadows (1994)

At a Glance

ESRB Rating: NR - Not Rated
My Rating: Ages 10 and up
Genre: Shoot em Up
License: Commercial
Fun-O-Meter:
Release Year: 1994
Review Published On: August 7th, 2016
Played on: Thaddeus

Available on:

Windows

Available from:

Steam

Areas of Concern:
  • Mild to moderate violence


How to Save and Pause:

Being an old DOS game, there isnt an autosave function. Instead, your game is only saved when you select the diskette shaped offices in the upper right of the hanger.

On the other hand, if you need to pause the game, simply press ESC to bring up the pause menu.

Time needed per session:

Plan on playing for at least ten minutes, as this gives you enough time to clear two stages.

Does this game pose issues for Christian players?

Some players may have concerns
Like most shoot em ups, players spend their time shooting things or blowing them up. Usually this isnt much of an issue, as none of the enemies appear to have pilots, but there are a few situations where you can spot a body among the wreckage.

Screenshots

[view screenshot]
An early boss

[view screenshot]
A casualty in Tango Sector

[view screenshot]
Buying a new weapon



Game Overview

During the DOS era, there were quite a few Shoot em Up titles. Most of them were very simple, or clones of arcade titles. This was probably due to the limited abilities of home computers of their time, but Raptor: Call of the Shadows managed to stand out. Its easy to see why: with rich colors, shadows, proper sound effects and even music, this title was far more ambitious than the typical DOS game.

But its worth noting that while it was pretty advanced and amazing for its time, some aspects of the game havent aged gracefully. For example, it doesnt deviate from the basic Shoot em Up concepts, with every level focusing on surviving the oncoming enemies and a short boss fight at the end. There are no secrets, no side missions, and no real surprises. Each wave is simply slightly harder than the previous one.

Other drawbacks include the lack of an in-game story and a limited selection of weapons that are worth finding and using. Despite this, it was popular enough for there to be several updated rereleases. This review is strictly for the original DOS game, which can still be purchased online.

Id say its definitely worth grabbing a copy of this old gem for yourself, provided that you dont expect it to hold up to todays AAA games.

Points of Interest

Replay missions for more money

After you complete a sectors missions, you can do them all over again. This time the difficulty will be increased, so be prepared to deal with a more dangerous enemy than before. Note that if you play through a sector at the lowest difficulty, youll be forced to leave the sector before you actually reach the end. When this happens, youll lose your money and equipment (explained in game as the price for training expenses) and need to start over from scratch.

Many weapons to chose from

There are a handful of weapons that are always equipped and fire whenever you press the fire button, but there are also miniature nuclear bombs and selectable secondary weapons. These secondary weapons allow for some customized load outs, as nearly all of them feature some unique mechanics beyond just blowing up whats in front of you. Some will attack only ground targets, others only airborne targets, and one will even automatically target something nearby.

Three sectors to battle through

The first location in the game is Bravo Sector, which appears to be a military or industrial center in a rocky, mountainous region. Next are the more heavily defended jungles and cities of Tango Sector, and finally theres the various planets in the Outer Regions. Each sector is harder than the previous one, so I would suggest advancing in this order.

Multiple profiles

You can have quite a few different pilots registered. Each pilot represents a new game, and thus you can have multiple players use the same installation. Additionally, each profile gets a name, callsign and one of four portraits, making them easily to tell apart.

Configuration is hidden

A downside to playing this on Steam is that the Steam launcher is configured to go straight into the game itself. Youll need to launch Dosbox manually, mount the correct folder as your virtual C drive, and run setup.exe in order to change the games settings.

Also, just to make things difficult, this utility doesnt save your changes on exit. Instead, youll need to make sure that you, be sure to choose the option to save your changes before you exit it. Lastly, verifying the Steam cache will reset these settings, which is kind of annoying.

Short and sweet

You can play through Raptor in roughly two hours. This was a long game back in the day, but its nothing compared to the epics that are produced now.

Many of the selectable weapons arent worth it

While its a good idea to install every weapon that is always equipped, youre limited to using only one of your secondary weapons at a time. In theory this sounds like youll be able to change your weapons to reflect the current situation, but in reality youre not going to need to bother. Very few of the secondary weapons are worth purchasing; its more practical to just focus on increasing your damage output rather than thinking about dealing with special cases.

No autosave

Between every level, youre presented with a map of your hangar. This map allows you to access the store, leave for the mission, exit the game or save. Being an old game, this is also the only time you can save the game, and youll need to do this yourself. Autosave didnt become a standard feature until later on, and a lot of us take it for granted, so be mindful about saving often.

Concerns and Issues

Stuff blowing up

All of the violence in this title boils down to somebody blowing up something else. Youre always blowing up enemy aircraft, buildings on the ground or anti-aircraft artillery. Alternatively, youre getting blown up by something else. Still, its very tame since most of the action is about explosions.

You do see humans die however

One of the quirks about this game is that you rarely actually see the people involved. Enemy vehicles have what look like cockpits, but since you cant see inside them it can easily give you an impression that youre fighting an army of robot drones. Unfortunately, this is disproved when you pay closer attention. There are two obviously human characters in the game: You and the shopkeeper. You know your own character is human since you select their profile picture at the start of the game and if you get shot down during a mission, youre shown a cutscene of your plane crashing. During this cutscene, the pilot is briefly visible. Another reminder is that when you visit the store, the owners face appears on the terminal for a moment and you can see your own characters profile on the left.

While that covers the majority of the games depictions of people, there are also a few missions in Tango Sector where people are visible. When you blow up certain cars, a human body will be visible in the rubble, implying that there was someone inside the car when you destroyed it. There is also a sunbather on one of the buildings you can destroy.

Oddly, this is played with in another level where the battle takes place over various farms. None of the humans working there can be harmed by anything you have (including your nuclear bombs).