Cleared on March 6th, 2024 (SEGA Genesis Challenge: 51/160)
When it comes to side-scroller shooters on the SEGA Genesis, I've played worse, but I've played so much better. It would seem that for every positive I have about the game, something negative comes in to mitigate it which is why it's rather disappointing since I was thinking it would be a 6/10.
The game does look really cool. From the boxart, I thought B.O.B. was an anthropomorphic insect, but turned out to be a robot. But I do suppose the eyes give it that dynamic cartoonish expressions you would expect from a 90s game, and B.O.B. has that attitude who makes quips during world intermission cutscenes and makes a comment before going into a level. The issue I have is that it comes in one of maybe 4 or 5 comments which repeat multiple times like he's some kind of broken record or something. "Get a load of this place!". Maybe I just really hate catchphrases and people saying the same things over and over and over and over... and anyway, the ending did get a chuckle out of me.
The gameplay is a run and gun shooter where you venture through tight corridors and shoot enemies your way. You start out with a standard blaster and a fist which you can switch between in the pause menu. However, as you progress, you can also get a spread shot, a flamethrower, a homing missile, a shock blaster, and a shock wave. Each of which can be useful since ammo is limited here. The standard blaster is the worst in the game which is fair since it is the starter weapon to encourage you to find stronger weapons, but I'm not a fan of the homing missile since while it can be good if positioned correctly, because it only move in six directions, it may not even correctly hit the target you want to hit. Also, I don't really like how you can only aim forward and not diagonal or even down while jumping. You can aim upwards, but you have to be standing still to do that. The controls are also clunky which, to be fair, B.O.B. is a robot which might have been a design choice, but it does make precise platforming very difficult.
Another thing I want to address are the gadgets which include things like Springs which you start out with, and as you go along the level, you can get a helicopter hat, umbrella, and shield. Some of them are required to progress throughout the levels, but the problem is that some of them are finite in their ammunition, so if you screw up, you're actually stuck, and you got to start the whole level all over again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if the helicopter and spring in particular wasn't so difficult to work with when paired with the controls. But you're probably thinking that maybe I should've been patient and take it slow and steady, and yeah, you're right, I could have... if the levels didn't have a timer!
This is another major flaw with the game. You have a set amount of time to actually get to the end which ranges from 3-5 minutes. Sometimes higher or lower than that, and if you reach 0 on the timer, your health drains to 0 and then you die. If the controls were smooth and built with fast movement in mind, I would've thought of it as a good thing to add to the challenge, but the fact that I'm working with robot controls is absurd.
But easily the worst thing about this game is the screen crunch. If you look at game footage, you'll notice the sprites are really big which creates more detail in it along with the environment. It should've worked to its advantage given the art direction, but it ends up zooming in perhaps too close and as a result, you have trouble seeing enemies when they're coming and also obstacles which has led to several cheap deaths from traps that drain your health and also, when you fall, you not only take a small fraction of damage, you're also stunned and you can get stunned in traps, and that can take a very massive chunk of your health if it somehow doesn't kill you. A bit of a tip, though, is that you can break out of the stun if you have a gadget on hand as using it can cancel the stun. While I wouldn't mind that as a decision to encourage gadget use, the screen crunch really hinders the game and I strongly suspect that it has to do with the game being graphically intensive that it causes slowdown at points in my playthrough. I heard it's worse on the SNES version, though.
Ironically, the best part of the game are the boss fights and while they aren't exactly remarkable and even frustrating at points, they are way better than the majority of the Sega Genesis boss fight line-ups that I've seen so far. Each of them have a sense of challenge, patterns, and strategies that you can pick up on. It's too bad the final boss didn't get its own music, and in fact, the soundtrack for the game as a whole is kinda mediocre especially because you're hearing the same set of music... over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and...
To me, the game feels like a prelude to Ratchet and Clank. Both of them have that sharp and witty sense of humor in a sci-fi setting where you use a bunch of weapons to battle your enemies and gadgets to progress. It could've been just a coincidence since I don't think anyone would have such an average shooter on their minds, but at least the game's potential had long since been realized.
When it comes to side-scroller shooters on the SEGA Genesis, I've played worse, but I've played so much better. It would seem that for every positive I have about the game, something negative comes in to mitigate it which is why it's rather disappointing since I was thinking it would be a 6/10.
The game does look really cool. From the boxart, I thought B.O.B. was an anthropomorphic insect, but turned out to be a robot. But I do suppose the eyes give it that dynamic cartoonish expressions you would expect from a 90s game, and B.O.B. has that attitude who makes quips during world intermission cutscenes and makes a comment before going into a level. The issue I have is that it comes in one of maybe 4 or 5 comments which repeat multiple times like he's some kind of broken record or something. "Get a load of this place!". Maybe I just really hate catchphrases and people saying the same things over and over and over and over... and anyway, the ending did get a chuckle out of me.
The gameplay is a run and gun shooter where you venture through tight corridors and shoot enemies your way. You start out with a standard blaster and a fist which you can switch between in the pause menu. However, as you progress, you can also get a spread shot, a flamethrower, a homing missile, a shock blaster, and a shock wave. Each of which can be useful since ammo is limited here. The standard blaster is the worst in the game which is fair since it is the starter weapon to encourage you to find stronger weapons, but I'm not a fan of the homing missile since while it can be good if positioned correctly, because it only move in six directions, it may not even correctly hit the target you want to hit. Also, I don't really like how you can only aim forward and not diagonal or even down while jumping. You can aim upwards, but you have to be standing still to do that. The controls are also clunky which, to be fair, B.O.B. is a robot which might have been a design choice, but it does make precise platforming very difficult.
Another thing I want to address are the gadgets which include things like Springs which you start out with, and as you go along the level, you can get a helicopter hat, umbrella, and shield. Some of them are required to progress throughout the levels, but the problem is that some of them are finite in their ammunition, so if you screw up, you're actually stuck, and you got to start the whole level all over again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if the helicopter and spring in particular wasn't so difficult to work with when paired with the controls. But you're probably thinking that maybe I should've been patient and take it slow and steady, and yeah, you're right, I could have... if the levels didn't have a timer!
This is another major flaw with the game. You have a set amount of time to actually get to the end which ranges from 3-5 minutes. Sometimes higher or lower than that, and if you reach 0 on the timer, your health drains to 0 and then you die. If the controls were smooth and built with fast movement in mind, I would've thought of it as a good thing to add to the challenge, but the fact that I'm working with robot controls is absurd.
But easily the worst thing about this game is the screen crunch. If you look at game footage, you'll notice the sprites are really big which creates more detail in it along with the environment. It should've worked to its advantage given the art direction, but it ends up zooming in perhaps too close and as a result, you have trouble seeing enemies when they're coming and also obstacles which has led to several cheap deaths from traps that drain your health and also, when you fall, you not only take a small fraction of damage, you're also stunned and you can get stunned in traps, and that can take a very massive chunk of your health if it somehow doesn't kill you. A bit of a tip, though, is that you can break out of the stun if you have a gadget on hand as using it can cancel the stun. While I wouldn't mind that as a decision to encourage gadget use, the screen crunch really hinders the game and I strongly suspect that it has to do with the game being graphically intensive that it causes slowdown at points in my playthrough. I heard it's worse on the SNES version, though.
Ironically, the best part of the game are the boss fights and while they aren't exactly remarkable and even frustrating at points, they are way better than the majority of the Sega Genesis boss fight line-ups that I've seen so far. Each of them have a sense of challenge, patterns, and strategies that you can pick up on. It's too bad the final boss didn't get its own music, and in fact, the soundtrack for the game as a whole is kinda mediocre especially because you're hearing the same set of music... over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and...
To me, the game feels like a prelude to Ratchet and Clank. Both of them have that sharp and witty sense of humor in a sci-fi setting where you use a bunch of weapons to battle your enemies and gadgets to progress. It could've been just a coincidence since I don't think anyone would have such an average shooter on their minds, but at least the game's potential had long since been realized.