Sol Cresta review – distinctive, but slightly untidy shooting thrills

You could forgive the team at Platinum if they built their debut in the 2D shooter genre from the conventions of bullet hell.

The style made famous by Toaplan, Cave and their peers, after all, is often projected as the genre’s higher form, with its preference for excess commonly dazzling players, collectors and press alike. All of that might make bullet hell particularly appealing to a studio more typically focussed on energetic, happily excessive triple-A action games.

Sol Cresta reviewPublisher: Platinum GamesDeveloper: Platinum GamesPlatform: Played on PS4Availability: Out today, 22nd February on PS4, PC, and Switch.

With Sol Cresta, however, Platinum are extending a series that began almost 42 years ago with Nichibitsu’s 1980 release Moon Cresta. Back then, even the titles that started to hint at what might be possible with high bullet counts were over a decade away. Moon Cresta’s was an era before danmaku, and the Bayonetta studio has made an impressive commitment to respecting the genre’s conventions as they were through the first half of the 1980s.

That’s not to say Sol Cresta feels exactly like a shooter from that time. Rather, Platinum have undertaken a substantial effort to modernise the classic genre template, embellishing it with an intricacy and pace informed by contemporary titles, while making sure it is faithful to what shooters were over four decades previously.