Solaris Japan Blog

Team Shanghai Alice, the undisputed champions of Japan’s dojin shooting game scene, return to the fore with Undefined Fantastic Object.
A shooting game’s premise rarely changes: you fly vertically, pounding through screens choked with glittering bullets on a total adrenaline bender. Survival and big scores are everything. At your disposal are a standard shot, a concentrated stream of fire and a meaty, screen-raping bomb.
Long term fans of Team Shanghai Alice’s Touhou games will be enthused to know that Sanae Kotiya, a boss from previous Touhou entry Mountain of Faith, joins regulars Reimu and Marisa as a playable character. The all-female cast are part of an ongoing plot that’s as convoluted as any soap opera - but unless you have a grasp of Japanese it’s inconsequential.

Undefined Fantastic Object is a bizarre moniker, representing not only a back-story about magical flying ships but a fresh scoring element in the shape of a UFO. Yes, the twelfth Touhou game has gone paranormal. Colour coded spacecraft pick-ups bounce around the screen, converging into one large craft when collected in sequences of three. When destroyed, it neutralises on-screen bullets and pays out a healthy score multiplier, offering different bonuses depending on the colour type. Chasing unidentified fantastic objects amidst a ballistic haze may sound outrageous, but this novel touch is an unobtrusive extra that really enriches the experience.

The music is nice but not remarkable, and graphically it’s not so much a leap as a subtle improvement over its predecessors. But the award once again goes to all the pretty bullets. Touhou games may seem a bit girly, but few do vicious dojin danmaku like Zun, Team Shanghai Alice’s one man army. Astonishingly creative, UFO is a pure tour-de-force, a blur of bullet candy that envelopes from the start.
Unlike commercial shooting games of the same ilk, UFO’s curtain fire is slow by comparison – a hollow criticism often levelled by genre aficionados at the Touhou series.

In fact, the pace is inviting, a breath of fresh air in a scene inundated with titles designed around coin-feeding specifications.
In upping the bullet count but slowing down the advance, Zun has simply concentrated the basic cerebral element of the manic shooter. Moments of adrenaline are protracted, stretched, locking the player into awesome sequences that run and run.
Of course, this means very little if the onslaught lacks imagination, but somehow Zun continually churns out fresh and exciting patterns without running the lake bone-dry.

UFO’s boss battles are thrilling, with some of your adversaries packing several health bars and a host of attacks. In one of the more memorable encounters, Ichirin, the stage three boss, is joined by Unzan, a mean-looking cloud spirit. As she lets loose, the spirit morphs into a string of giant fists that come charging from all directions – an impressive sight.

Commercial shooter houses could, and indeed probably have, drawn much from the Touhou games. UFO is a confident piece of work, one that demonstrates both experience and talent. If it’s guilty of anything, it’s that it does little new, even with its curious spaceship fetish. It’s merely a stable progression of an older template – skinned with new bullet patterns and little else.
It’s arguable that this is the nature of most shooting games, and by that note, Zun has committed no crime – he’s just one man after all.

Tom Massey