The core mechanic of having options you can spin around and chuck at enemies is admittedly really neat, and the game does have its moments (stage 3, for example, is one where you can really have fun doing this to keep encounters from getting too intense). That being said, it's really held back by wonky collision detection and far too many areas where you need to navigate tight spaces with said janky collision detection. I'd say it's worth going through just to beat but I'm not so sure it's worth the trouble of 1ccing.
No
Average shoot'em up that features a whip ability to smack your enemies.
I'm not gonna write anything long for this but I actually really liked it. It was kind of basic and it was a bit easy at times at least on the normal difficulty. My only real gripes are I kind of wish the game didn't go so hard on tight space levels. I feel like they not only show the worst difficulty spikes but they just do it a lot too. There's also a boss in the 2nd half that feels way harder than a lot of the other bosses where at first I didn't even know what I was meant to be hitting because I'm dumb and then there was this weird tail thing that I feel like could have been designed a lot better. But yeah it's simple but it works as a game. Plus the ship is funny looking and it makes me smile. Maybe I'm just easy to please.
A MOSTLY great shmup that has lots of good ideas but it loses a full star if just because two of the game's bosses are sent from hell and have nearly-unavoidable attack patterns. I swear to god the hitboxes on the fourth boss just don't fucking work cause every time I fought it, it wouldn't take damage from 95% of my hits, and then after you blow its armor off, it has a second phase with a full-screen claw arm that you just can't fuckin' dodge. And then the FINAL boss does the same thing with TWO claw arms.
Decent game, I liked it enough to fight it out to the end but good god it's not at all the best option out there.
Decent game, I liked it enough to fight it out to the end but good god it's not at all the best option out there.
Cleared on January 4th, 2024 (SEGA Genesis Challenge: 44/160)
Whip Rush is another 2D on-rail flight shooter on the Sega Genesis. I've grown quite familiar with the genre at this point, and it's now just a matter of what new mechanic this game offers compared to the others. This time, you can control your speed and I'll admit, it seems like an excellent idea as one of my complaints with Wings of Wor was that everytime you level up, you become faster and while it can make dodging in open areas much easier, when it comes to more narrow points in the game, now that is a real challenge. Here, however, you can adjust speeds at any time which allows for more precise evasive maneuvers. The bad news is that there is only one button, so if you went from fast to medium and want to go back to being fast, you have to be slow for a moment, then medium, and then you can be fast again.
Other than that, you have four power ups with Laser, Missile, Directional Shot, and Assist. Laser allows more damage output in a horizontal direction, Missile allows for multi-direction attacks the more you upgrade it, Directional Shot fires in the opposite direction where you are facing, and Assist will fire in a set direction. What I find interesting is that the game has it to where they also act as a 2nd health bar, so if you take a hit, you only lose the power-up and not your life.
This does give you a bit more leeway compared to other schmups, and you'd think the game would have the easiness that Arrow Flash had from the first few levels, but as you progress along, it really cranks up the difficulty. Especially the battleship area, good grief. And the bosses don't fair any better, but I think my least favorite thing about them is that their music isn't that great, and they use it for all the bosses in the game, including the final boss. Which is pitiful because some of the music in this game is actually quite good.
The visuals in this game are also really nice although it doesn't seem out of the ordinary from other shooters featuring aliens and machines. Well, except for that mech with the weird blue face, and the final boss which literally looks a penis.
On the note of the final boss, when I saw it, I thought "Ok, this is another one of those core final bosses, I'll just chill in the back, maybe move out of the way for a projectile and just mow it down." Well, they actually thought about it and give the boss the ability to stretch forward which allows for its claws to hit which turns a fight from what could've been a cakewalk to a chaotic madhouse that's really difficult to avoid.
It's decent enough of a game, and I did like the ideas it brings to the table, but I'm fine to just only play it once
Whip Rush is another 2D on-rail flight shooter on the Sega Genesis. I've grown quite familiar with the genre at this point, and it's now just a matter of what new mechanic this game offers compared to the others. This time, you can control your speed and I'll admit, it seems like an excellent idea as one of my complaints with Wings of Wor was that everytime you level up, you become faster and while it can make dodging in open areas much easier, when it comes to more narrow points in the game, now that is a real challenge. Here, however, you can adjust speeds at any time which allows for more precise evasive maneuvers. The bad news is that there is only one button, so if you went from fast to medium and want to go back to being fast, you have to be slow for a moment, then medium, and then you can be fast again.
Other than that, you have four power ups with Laser, Missile, Directional Shot, and Assist. Laser allows more damage output in a horizontal direction, Missile allows for multi-direction attacks the more you upgrade it, Directional Shot fires in the opposite direction where you are facing, and Assist will fire in a set direction. What I find interesting is that the game has it to where they also act as a 2nd health bar, so if you take a hit, you only lose the power-up and not your life.
This does give you a bit more leeway compared to other schmups, and you'd think the game would have the easiness that Arrow Flash had from the first few levels, but as you progress along, it really cranks up the difficulty. Especially the battleship area, good grief. And the bosses don't fair any better, but I think my least favorite thing about them is that their music isn't that great, and they use it for all the bosses in the game, including the final boss. Which is pitiful because some of the music in this game is actually quite good.
The visuals in this game are also really nice although it doesn't seem out of the ordinary from other shooters featuring aliens and machines. Well, except for that mech with the weird blue face, and the final boss which literally looks a penis.
On the note of the final boss, when I saw it, I thought "Ok, this is another one of those core final bosses, I'll just chill in the back, maybe move out of the way for a projectile and just mow it down." Well, they actually thought about it and give the boss the ability to stretch forward which allows for its claws to hit which turns a fight from what could've been a cakewalk to a chaotic madhouse that's really difficult to avoid.
It's decent enough of a game, and I did like the ideas it brings to the table, but I'm fine to just only play it once
I'm not very good at these environmental-hazard-heavy shooters (lord help me whenever I get around to trying R-Type).
Whip Rush is a pretty mediocre one, although I will say that I did enjoy the "signature" mechanic--acquiring rotatable options and bouncing them repeatedly off of enemies for huge damage.
All in all it was a fun little diversion, but not something I care to sink my teeth way into.
Whip Rush is a pretty mediocre one, although I will say that I did enjoy the "signature" mechanic--acquiring rotatable options and bouncing them repeatedly off of enemies for huge damage.
All in all it was a fun little diversion, but not something I care to sink my teeth way into.
Not too remarkable, really. Starts pretty promising but kinda falls over and eats shit by the last couple stages, notably having near unavoidable hits during some later bosses. Either way, Vic Tokai would go on to knock it out of the park in later shmup outings, so it feels more like a small misstep leading up to that.
Whip Rush has all the makings to be a sleeper hit shmup for me, an oddly adorable player ship, an incredibly hype first stage theme and a desperate attempt to emulate R-Type down to a battleship stage, bosses with tricky weakspots, an organic final stage and a boss designed after some form of genitals.
Unfortunately it does that shit where starting after the midway point it dials the difficulty up from 6 to like 22, and as always that's when these games start falling apart pretty easily. Stage 5 with the battleship is by far the hardest shit in the game with it's insta-lasers across the screen and asking the player to move through a bottleneck as five turrets rain down suppress-fire, it's hard and also somehow just feels amateur-ish. The stage 5 boss I didn't even know you could blow it's arms off because there was no indication I was dealing damage, so I was constantly dying thinking the game was asking me to do some horrifically dodgey movement to hit the weakpoint on that son of a bitch. A special shoutout to the dick monster final boss with it's fucking arms flying all over the place at seemingly random leading to unavoidable deaths.
A shame, it started pretty good. Still think the ship is cute though, wouldn't mind hanging out with it.
Unfortunately it does that shit where starting after the midway point it dials the difficulty up from 6 to like 22, and as always that's when these games start falling apart pretty easily. Stage 5 with the battleship is by far the hardest shit in the game with it's insta-lasers across the screen and asking the player to move through a bottleneck as five turrets rain down suppress-fire, it's hard and also somehow just feels amateur-ish. The stage 5 boss I didn't even know you could blow it's arms off because there was no indication I was dealing damage, so I was constantly dying thinking the game was asking me to do some horrifically dodgey movement to hit the weakpoint on that son of a bitch. A special shoutout to the dick monster final boss with it's fucking arms flying all over the place at seemingly random leading to unavoidable deaths.
A shame, it started pretty good. Still think the ship is cute though, wouldn't mind hanging out with it.