Raptor: Call of The Shadows - Reception

Reception

The game was reviewed in 1994 in Dragon #208 by Sandy Petersen in the "Eye of the Monitor" column. Petersen gave the game 4 out of 5 stars.

Gametrailers.com and ScrewAttack have labeled it as one of their "Top Ten 2-D Shooters."

Raptor had the best graphics of any scrolling shooter during the time of release, and after a decade, the graphics are still considered excellent.

Raptor is noted for being particularly difficult to start out. Although the player can skip right to the Tango Sector and Outer Regions before completing the Bravo Sector, this is almost impossible in practice, particularly since the player needs a fully armed ship in order to survive the levels of the Outer Regions.

Some consider Raptor very repetitive for its time when compared to shoot 'em ups for arcades. The craft's firepower cannot be upgraded gradually, the best the player can do is pickup or buy cheaper weapons and hope to save up for the expensive ones. Since selling a weapon will only earn back half of its credits, this means that many players try to hold out until they can afford the most expensive weapons, instead of buying medium weapons as a stopgap.

Enemies are destroyed purely for money, and they will not release powerups that make the player more powerful. Flying enemies only move in fixed predictable patterns - they will not react or home in on the player's moves (although turrets will). There are no obstacles to avoid (except the enemy ships themselves). The Raptor fighter jet can endure a lot of damage if the player buys Phase Shields, but there are no lives that can be earned - either via points or bought - once the player dies it is over unless they have saved the game. There is no multiplayer support. The display is fixed to only scrolling vertically, never horizontally (as in Axelay for the SNES console).