fe17
1992
(This is the 70th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
The FPS genre and id Software is like the Soulslike genre and From Software. It's like the roguelike genre and Rogue. Wolfenstein 3D would kickstart a whole genre of video games that would try to replicate its (and Doom's) success over years to come from this point forward using the exact same style that was pioneered right here, with Hovertank and Catacomb 3D acting as test subjects preceeding it.
With Wolfenstein 3D, id Software improved upon their 3D engine and built a full-scale video game with multiple episodes, a small yet complete story and fast-paced shooting action that ended up being revolutionary, though not perfect. In today's review I'm going to go over my thoughts, which are both positive and negative, but mainly it's a celebration of an achievement that is pretty much the reason for why I decided to do this challenge in the first place.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
You are BJ Blazkowicz, an American spy of Polish descent infiltrating the Nazi base looking for plans for the Operation "Eisenfaust" (blueprint for building a "perfect" army) and ultimately destroying the Nazi regime. You are captured and imprisoned at Castle Wolfenstein at the start of the game and have to shoot your way out and ultimately make your way to Hitler's bunker and take him out in what makes the first of two trilogies. After releasing the first trilogy, id Software took a few months to create another trilogy working as a prequel to the first one. From a story perspective, you will be satisfied after playing the first trilogy though.
The story is explained in the manual and at the end of each of the three episodes of a trilogy. There isn't much else to it. BJ can be seen holding a minigun on the cover for the game, screaming as he stands over a dead Nazi soldier. You can also see his face throughout the game, as his eyes glean left and right to give an impression that he is actively checking the corridors for enemies. Finally, you see him jump into the exit of an Episode and shout in jubilation whilst doing so. I love BJ Blazkowicz from my time playing Wolfenstein The New Order, but he is a killing machine exclusively in this game, with no heart nor desires other than mowing down Nazis.
Hitler is the final boss, as mentioned, and is in a robotic suit when you finally meet him. When you kill him, he says "Eva, auf Wiedersehen", which is one of many things bosses and all enemies shout in this game. I didn't understand some of it even though I'm German, for example I have no idea what the normal soldiers are saying when they spot you, but having these characters express certain things or simply speak German is a pretty big deal at the time and definitely adds to the shock value that this game provided during its release.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
This game is a first-person shooter. It revolutionized the entire genre and is called the "grandfather of FPS games". Before this, you had Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D from id Software, which used prototypes of the eventual Wolfenstein 3D engine and were short tech demo-type games that id made as part of their contract with Softdisk, but Wolfenstein was going to be their first big attempt at making a full-scale video game of this type.
PC's were not equipped to play graphically 'demanding' games from a first-person perspective at this time, so developers didn't attempt something like this. John Carmack, the programmer of the engine ended up figuring out though how to make this game run well by both making wall tiles all identically large to reduce the complexity of what the PC would have to display and by only making the PC calculate visible surfaces at a time instead of a whole map.
It was John Romero who then came up with the idea to make this a "loud" and "cool" fast-paced action game, and there you have it.
The end result is what we call today the world's first boomer shooter with handguns. You strafe around maze-like levels to kill enemies like Nazi soldiers of different types, hounddogs, bats and zombies, you look for keys to unlock your way out of the floor you're on, and you make your way up continously through three total Nazi dungeons with 9 floors each to ultimately kill Hitler. The end result is indeed a fun Arcade-like shooter that ... is not as bloody and gruesome as parents from 1992 would make you believe. Open a door and a Nazi will stand there. Shoot him and a bit of blood will come out. Even if you shoot all of them on a given floor, barely a few percent of the entirety of that floor will be covered with them and their blood. The floors themselves don't look brutal, gruesome or scary either. I guess it's called being desensitized by what we have seen since? But it could also be that it's genuinely funny to look back and think that this was such a horrific thing to expose gamers to when movies would depict a billion times more horrific scenes annually. It would be useful to note here that games were not seen as art by not only many individual humans inofficially, but also officially by, for example, the German legislation.
Back to the gameplay. After a couple hours, does it get repetitive? Sure. There are only four weapons in this game that I ever found, and the mini- and handguns pretty much become useless once you find the submachine gun, because all weapons share ammunition, so the single-fire handgun is slower than the SMG and the mini-gun wastes too many bullets needlessly unless you have a group of 3+ enemies standing next to each other, which doesn't happen all that often.
The worst part about this game from a gameplay perspective for me was the secret-finding. This game has secret doors just like Catacomb 3D had, but in that game, you would just shoot magic projectiles and it would cover a few tiles and you would figure out quicker if random tile #879 had a secret behind it. In this game, secrets are also hidden behind random secret tiles. Unfortunately, since this could be any tile and you need to push SPACE into it instead of shooting, this means you are constantly projected to that horrific buzzing sound that plays when pressing SPACE. It's somewhat tolerable when you press it separately for each tile, but progress this way is slow. Best thing to do is hold SPACE and strafe along an entire wall, but here is where you get that terrible sound penetrating your ears constantly, and it is literally so bad that I had to stop at one point because of a headache I got from it. I enjoy secrets in games like this, but not when finding them means subjecting yourself to these horrors.
The worst part is that for the boss fights, you are pretty much forced to figure out where the secret doors are. This is OK once you initially find them, but until you do, you just keep pressing SPACE everywhere until something opens up. These doors have weapons, ammo and health packs in them, which you will need, because once you die to a boss once, you only spawn with a handgun and 8 rounds of ammo, which means that without these secret doors, you simply cannot beat a boss.
Overall, I had a fun few hours with this game minus the headache. I can tell how this game was seen as revolutionary, and with only half a year of development no less, so I'm looking forward to the improvements id Software will come up with for Doom, which released in 1993.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10
Voice acting exists, as already described. Enemies shout stuff at you when they spot you and when you kill them. Sound quality is of course not great, so even as a German I couldn't decipher all of what was said, but it's a nice way to add immersion and alert players of enemies being in the same room as you, so I overall found this to be a plus for the experience.
Sound design ranges from horrific for the sound of unsuccessfully trying to open doors or strafin around, to pretty good for the sound of guns and doors opening and closing.
The soundtrack I found to be kind of disappointing. It reminds me more of the subtle background music of Catacomb 3D rather than the metal, fast-paced sounds of 1993's Doom for example. At least placing the tone somewhere in between I would have enjoyed more. While I don't think the soundtrack suits the game very well, as its own thing I think there are some solid tracks here, but it's not a soundtrack I'd care to listen to again necessarily.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10
Graphics look better than for Catacomb 3D, that's for sure. Wall tiles have some actual textures to them instead of being solid single colors. Decoration was added, like posters, plants, tables and more. There is more enemy variety and the spritework is slightly improved. This was all possible thanks to a switch from 16 color EGA to 256 color VGA compared to Catacomb 3D.
That said, these are still rudimentary 3D graphics in a game that sacrifices graphical presentation by design to allow for the PC's of the time to actually handle the gameplay, so suffice it to say, this is not going to win awards for looks.
I did appreciate a few minor things though, like the way you could see enemies get hit by your shot and die way off in the distance as small sprites, or how the portrait of BJ would keep starting to the sides and how he would get bloodied up the lower your health would go.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
You stroll around in Castle Wolfenstein filled with Nazis that shout things at you in German. On top of that, you are playing this in first-person. Does it get any more immersive than this in 1992? The portrait of BJ staring to the sides, the posters and Nazi emblems hung up on the walls and the animations of enemies getting hit and dying all are minor things that add to the atmosphere in this game as well.
CONTENT | 7/10
This game gives you access to four weapons, it has 7 types of enemies in the original trilogy, it has two trilogies (six episodes) with 9 floors on each, and four difficulty levels to test your prowess on. Pretty good. Though the fast pace doesn't match as well as you'd like with the rather low amount of enemies you will find on each floor (especially compared to Doom) and therefore repetitiveness can kick in after the first trilogy.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
The maze-like design of every floor is a clever way of extending the time it takes for players to go through them, but I found some to be overly confusingly laid out at times. I also found that on many floors, there weren't as many enemies as I would have liked to see, so I thought that there were too many breaks inbetween the shooting. There is also one major thing I disliked, which is boss encounters. You encounter one and pretty much immediately die on your first attempt. On your second, you realize that you have no weapons and ammo to really work with anymore, since you lose everything at death, which means you are forced to run around the room to find secret areas to restock. I don't like the idea of restricting the player to a few lives either.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
This game managed to achieve something on a scale that no other game that tried to do something in first-person view ever could achieve: Make a fast-paced FPS game that was fun to play and actually ran well. It's revolutionized a genre, something only a couple dozen games over history could say, so it deserves the high praise it gets for innovation (especially since this game will kickstart a slew of FPS games that will find themselves on my challenge spreadsheet over the coming years).
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
You can try to beat your high score, try to up the difficulty and try to find more of the secrets and treasures in the game to go for 100% completion. You could go for 4 or 5 out of 5 here if you were to include all those fanmade levels you can play as well.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 66/100
This game is a big part of video game history for its innovation. Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake are played to this day, both old and new iterations, and id Software took arguably their biggest step right here. The game is still fun for a couple hours, but didn't age quite as well in parts and still leaves a lot of potential left to be explored in 1993's Doom, which I'm already looking forward to.
The FPS genre and id Software is like the Soulslike genre and From Software. It's like the roguelike genre and Rogue. Wolfenstein 3D would kickstart a whole genre of video games that would try to replicate its (and Doom's) success over years to come from this point forward using the exact same style that was pioneered right here, with Hovertank and Catacomb 3D acting as test subjects preceeding it.
With Wolfenstein 3D, id Software improved upon their 3D engine and built a full-scale video game with multiple episodes, a small yet complete story and fast-paced shooting action that ended up being revolutionary, though not perfect. In today's review I'm going to go over my thoughts, which are both positive and negative, but mainly it's a celebration of an achievement that is pretty much the reason for why I decided to do this challenge in the first place.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
You are BJ Blazkowicz, an American spy of Polish descent infiltrating the Nazi base looking for plans for the Operation "Eisenfaust" (blueprint for building a "perfect" army) and ultimately destroying the Nazi regime. You are captured and imprisoned at Castle Wolfenstein at the start of the game and have to shoot your way out and ultimately make your way to Hitler's bunker and take him out in what makes the first of two trilogies. After releasing the first trilogy, id Software took a few months to create another trilogy working as a prequel to the first one. From a story perspective, you will be satisfied after playing the first trilogy though.
The story is explained in the manual and at the end of each of the three episodes of a trilogy. There isn't much else to it. BJ can be seen holding a minigun on the cover for the game, screaming as he stands over a dead Nazi soldier. You can also see his face throughout the game, as his eyes glean left and right to give an impression that he is actively checking the corridors for enemies. Finally, you see him jump into the exit of an Episode and shout in jubilation whilst doing so. I love BJ Blazkowicz from my time playing Wolfenstein The New Order, but he is a killing machine exclusively in this game, with no heart nor desires other than mowing down Nazis.
Hitler is the final boss, as mentioned, and is in a robotic suit when you finally meet him. When you kill him, he says "Eva, auf Wiedersehen", which is one of many things bosses and all enemies shout in this game. I didn't understand some of it even though I'm German, for example I have no idea what the normal soldiers are saying when they spot you, but having these characters express certain things or simply speak German is a pretty big deal at the time and definitely adds to the shock value that this game provided during its release.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
This game is a first-person shooter. It revolutionized the entire genre and is called the "grandfather of FPS games". Before this, you had Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D from id Software, which used prototypes of the eventual Wolfenstein 3D engine and were short tech demo-type games that id made as part of their contract with Softdisk, but Wolfenstein was going to be their first big attempt at making a full-scale video game of this type.
PC's were not equipped to play graphically 'demanding' games from a first-person perspective at this time, so developers didn't attempt something like this. John Carmack, the programmer of the engine ended up figuring out though how to make this game run well by both making wall tiles all identically large to reduce the complexity of what the PC would have to display and by only making the PC calculate visible surfaces at a time instead of a whole map.
It was John Romero who then came up with the idea to make this a "loud" and "cool" fast-paced action game, and there you have it.
The end result is what we call today the world's first boomer shooter with handguns. You strafe around maze-like levels to kill enemies like Nazi soldiers of different types, hounddogs, bats and zombies, you look for keys to unlock your way out of the floor you're on, and you make your way up continously through three total Nazi dungeons with 9 floors each to ultimately kill Hitler. The end result is indeed a fun Arcade-like shooter that ... is not as bloody and gruesome as parents from 1992 would make you believe. Open a door and a Nazi will stand there. Shoot him and a bit of blood will come out. Even if you shoot all of them on a given floor, barely a few percent of the entirety of that floor will be covered with them and their blood. The floors themselves don't look brutal, gruesome or scary either. I guess it's called being desensitized by what we have seen since? But it could also be that it's genuinely funny to look back and think that this was such a horrific thing to expose gamers to when movies would depict a billion times more horrific scenes annually. It would be useful to note here that games were not seen as art by not only many individual humans inofficially, but also officially by, for example, the German legislation.
Back to the gameplay. After a couple hours, does it get repetitive? Sure. There are only four weapons in this game that I ever found, and the mini- and handguns pretty much become useless once you find the submachine gun, because all weapons share ammunition, so the single-fire handgun is slower than the SMG and the mini-gun wastes too many bullets needlessly unless you have a group of 3+ enemies standing next to each other, which doesn't happen all that often.
The worst part about this game from a gameplay perspective for me was the secret-finding. This game has secret doors just like Catacomb 3D had, but in that game, you would just shoot magic projectiles and it would cover a few tiles and you would figure out quicker if random tile #879 had a secret behind it. In this game, secrets are also hidden behind random secret tiles. Unfortunately, since this could be any tile and you need to push SPACE into it instead of shooting, this means you are constantly projected to that horrific buzzing sound that plays when pressing SPACE. It's somewhat tolerable when you press it separately for each tile, but progress this way is slow. Best thing to do is hold SPACE and strafe along an entire wall, but here is where you get that terrible sound penetrating your ears constantly, and it is literally so bad that I had to stop at one point because of a headache I got from it. I enjoy secrets in games like this, but not when finding them means subjecting yourself to these horrors.
The worst part is that for the boss fights, you are pretty much forced to figure out where the secret doors are. This is OK once you initially find them, but until you do, you just keep pressing SPACE everywhere until something opens up. These doors have weapons, ammo and health packs in them, which you will need, because once you die to a boss once, you only spawn with a handgun and 8 rounds of ammo, which means that without these secret doors, you simply cannot beat a boss.
Overall, I had a fun few hours with this game minus the headache. I can tell how this game was seen as revolutionary, and with only half a year of development no less, so I'm looking forward to the improvements id Software will come up with for Doom, which released in 1993.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10
Voice acting exists, as already described. Enemies shout stuff at you when they spot you and when you kill them. Sound quality is of course not great, so even as a German I couldn't decipher all of what was said, but it's a nice way to add immersion and alert players of enemies being in the same room as you, so I overall found this to be a plus for the experience.
Sound design ranges from horrific for the sound of unsuccessfully trying to open doors or strafin around, to pretty good for the sound of guns and doors opening and closing.
The soundtrack I found to be kind of disappointing. It reminds me more of the subtle background music of Catacomb 3D rather than the metal, fast-paced sounds of 1993's Doom for example. At least placing the tone somewhere in between I would have enjoyed more. While I don't think the soundtrack suits the game very well, as its own thing I think there are some solid tracks here, but it's not a soundtrack I'd care to listen to again necessarily.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10
Graphics look better than for Catacomb 3D, that's for sure. Wall tiles have some actual textures to them instead of being solid single colors. Decoration was added, like posters, plants, tables and more. There is more enemy variety and the spritework is slightly improved. This was all possible thanks to a switch from 16 color EGA to 256 color VGA compared to Catacomb 3D.
That said, these are still rudimentary 3D graphics in a game that sacrifices graphical presentation by design to allow for the PC's of the time to actually handle the gameplay, so suffice it to say, this is not going to win awards for looks.
I did appreciate a few minor things though, like the way you could see enemies get hit by your shot and die way off in the distance as small sprites, or how the portrait of BJ would keep starting to the sides and how he would get bloodied up the lower your health would go.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
You stroll around in Castle Wolfenstein filled with Nazis that shout things at you in German. On top of that, you are playing this in first-person. Does it get any more immersive than this in 1992? The portrait of BJ staring to the sides, the posters and Nazi emblems hung up on the walls and the animations of enemies getting hit and dying all are minor things that add to the atmosphere in this game as well.
CONTENT | 7/10
This game gives you access to four weapons, it has 7 types of enemies in the original trilogy, it has two trilogies (six episodes) with 9 floors on each, and four difficulty levels to test your prowess on. Pretty good. Though the fast pace doesn't match as well as you'd like with the rather low amount of enemies you will find on each floor (especially compared to Doom) and therefore repetitiveness can kick in after the first trilogy.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
The maze-like design of every floor is a clever way of extending the time it takes for players to go through them, but I found some to be overly confusingly laid out at times. I also found that on many floors, there weren't as many enemies as I would have liked to see, so I thought that there were too many breaks inbetween the shooting. There is also one major thing I disliked, which is boss encounters. You encounter one and pretty much immediately die on your first attempt. On your second, you realize that you have no weapons and ammo to really work with anymore, since you lose everything at death, which means you are forced to run around the room to find secret areas to restock. I don't like the idea of restricting the player to a few lives either.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
This game managed to achieve something on a scale that no other game that tried to do something in first-person view ever could achieve: Make a fast-paced FPS game that was fun to play and actually ran well. It's revolutionized a genre, something only a couple dozen games over history could say, so it deserves the high praise it gets for innovation (especially since this game will kickstart a slew of FPS games that will find themselves on my challenge spreadsheet over the coming years).
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
You can try to beat your high score, try to up the difficulty and try to find more of the secrets and treasures in the game to go for 100% completion. You could go for 4 or 5 out of 5 here if you were to include all those fanmade levels you can play as well.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 66/100
This game is a big part of video game history for its innovation. Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake are played to this day, both old and new iterations, and id Software took arguably their biggest step right here. The game is still fun for a couple hours, but didn't age quite as well in parts and still leaves a lot of potential left to be explored in 1993's Doom, which I'm already looking forward to.
I have now played 5 Spider-Man games starting in 1990 as part of this challenge I'm doing. The previous 4 are among the worst rated games I've played in my life, 2 of which I'd consider worst and second worst as part of this challenge for sure. Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six is another absolutely horrendous crap taken on everyone's favorite wall-crawler, and I am now one game away from having my own Sinister Six of shit Spider-Man video games of the early 90s. Awesome!
This game is another one by Bits Studios, which is slowly but surely turning into my most disliked development studio (I didn't even consider disliking one before this day) and I'm not at all surprised that they went out of business in 2008. It doesn't help that the publishers behind this are Acclaim Entertainment, who were behind two of the other 4 Spider-Man games I've played. They literally got the licensing rights just to slap his name on a video game cartridge, make no effort whatsoever to have the games even feel like Spider-Man games, and just profit from all those kids who love Spidey from the comics and are blinded by his appearance on both cover and title. These games were literal cash-grabs, and while I give this no thought again until the next, likely terrible, Spider-Man game I'll play (because I'll play them all damnit!), I just want to use this opportunity to say that Acclaim Entertainment can RIP where the P does not stand for peace, as they went bankrupt in 2004.
Now with that rant out of the way, let's get into why Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six, which released in October 1992, is another brutally bad Spider-Man game. First off, let's go over the same points of criticism I can give you for all Bits Studios / LJN / Acclaim Entertainment Spider-Man games. Spidey looks like he is suffering from a disc prolapse in all of these games due to his weird hunched forward posture. His movement is odd at best, he controls like crap and he controls like crap. Oh I mentioned that twice? How did that happen?
The game, at least on the NES (the Game Gear version looks very slightly better), looks terrible. Bright green and bright red dominate the first stage, blinding red was used for one later stage for no good reason, sprites look bad, environments look (1) bland at best and (2) unrealistically designed and half the time, you have no idea if you are jumping on top of a platform that you can actually stand on or if it is supposed to be part of the background.
The soundtrack, which has some OK tracks, is the highlight of this game and that's not supposed to be a compliment. The lowlight on the other hand is the aforementioned controls. You can jump up. You can jump up higher if you hold down the jump button. You can also move while in air, at least that's something, but only in the direction that you're facing. That's somewhat more realistic, but stupid for a video game. You can sommersault forward as well, you can climb up walls and chains and you can shoot webs, if you have enough web fluid. Most of the time, you don't, like in some of the other Spider-Man games, and I ask once again, why make a Spider-Man game where you barely ever have any web fluid?
Spider-Man can do web-swinging here as well, but the controls here are so bad. You have to press B to jump, hold it and then press A to release the web and try to connect it to something. All this does though is let you swing left to right. You won't get up to a higher platform this way, limiting its use significantly. Letting go also doesn't carry you forward thanks to momentum, but instead drops you straight down. There were multiple occasions where I fell to a lower platform, and I literally could not bring myself back up by jumping or using the web. I suspect there are literal game-breaking pits that you can not fall into, if you ever want to get back up, but I suspect I won't find my answer to that officially because I doubt anyone cares enough about this game to share that anywhere on the internet, and I'm not gonna spend more than the 5 minutes I did unsuccessfully trying to get out.
Then there is the combat. You press A and do a punch. You double tap A and the punch animation gets cancelled for a jump-kick. This catapults you forward as well, so when you are near an enemy and frantically press A twice, you do the jump-kick instead of punching, which not only carries you past the enemy, but also happens above most enemies head, so you can't even touch them. Punches don't connect half the time unless you press it from the exact correct angle, and if you do connect, enemies blow up into a thousand pieces. That's right, Spider-Man kills in this game, and he does so non-stop. Try to find another studio that gives as few fucks about Spider-Man as Bits Studios, I dare you.
The story is explained in two sentences. Dr. Octopus wants to rule the world, so he calls on the Sinister Six, Electro, Mysterio, Hobgoblin, the Sandman, Vulture and himself. No one can stand in their way apparently, only Spider-Man. Done. Unlike the Game Boy games, especially the first one that was not developed by Bits Studios but rather by Rare, this game has 0 charm in its presentation. There are no cutscenes, no witty dialogue between Spidey and the villains, nothing. You finish a level, a simple image is showing the next boss with a sentence like "Sandman appears with a fist of fury" and off you go to the next level. It's just bad and shows how little Bits Studios cared when making this.
Finally, I want to touch upon the boss fights. My god. I didn't beat the game because the controls were doing my head in, but the first boss fight itself should tell you all you need to know about how much thought went into them. You fight Electro, but you actually don't. What I mean by that is that you stand there while Electro is simply chilling at the bottom of the screen and out of reach. Sometimes he decides to pay you a visit and come up, at which point you need to fight both him and the controls to somehow successfully jump-kick him, and while I did eventually just beat him on my first attempt, I can't say I have experienced boss fights that were much worse before. I suppose what the devs wanted to accomplish was for Electro to be out of range and shoot his lightning bolts at you, but it ends up looking like the game is bugged and he is flying around somewhere where he shouldn't. It doesn't help that he is literally under the platforms in a 2D game, which just would make no sense, but it doesn't matter because this all just sucked from start to finish.
To conclude, if you like to torture yourself with terrible Spider-Man games that aren't even bad in a funny sense, give these 1990 to 1992 Spider-Man games a try, but something tells me 1993 won't deliver different quality here. Oh wait, there is another game in 1992 already, Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge... Why am I doing this to myself again?
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 1/10
- Story is explained briefly in the manual and opening in-game screen
- Stages start with the boss introducing himself in one short, uninspired sentence
- Spider-Man kills dozens of enemies in this game and has no dialogue, rendering him a soulless guy in a red suit
GAMEPLAY | 4/20
- Controls are horrendous
- You rarely find web fluid and its uses are very limited
- Boss fights are just sad
- Spider-Man just feels like a name given to a random protagonist
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 4/10
- No voice acting
- Sound design ranges from OK to terrible. The sound of rats is haunting, especially when you are stuck next to them trying to get a handle of these darn controls
- Soundtrack is OK, with at least some tracks that don't make me want to turn the sound off completely
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 2/10
- Graphics are straight up ugly
- Spider-Man looks like an old guy with back problems and all sprites look bad
- Why did they choose to go with super-bright green and red colors? And did their little children draw the backgrounds?
ATMOSPHERE | 2/10
- Locations just feel like random places that have no realistic properties
- The Spider-Man license is also noticeable thanks to the enemies names, the ugly portrayal of Spider-Man and his web-swinging ability
CONTENT | 1/10
- 6 bosses with their own levels with multiple stages
- The game's biggest offense is that it exists in the first place
- None of the content is fun to engage with
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 2/10
- I guess there is some visual variety at places, even if it is hideous
- There are walls placed that you can crawl, crates in mid-air that you can web-swing off of I suppose
- I can literally not come up with another quarter-compliment
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 1/10
- This is the worst kind of your typical NES platformer
- I imagine this is what gaming would look like if Nintendo didn't save the industry
- This game is so conceptually bad that they didn't even bother to make use of the Spider-Man licence
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
- Zero replay value
PLAYABILITY | 3/5
- The controls make this nearly unplayable at times
- I literally could not get out of certain holes because I couldn't jump far enough and the web-swinging ability just did not allow me to reach a higher platform
OVERALL | 21/100
Congratulations to Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six, which just became the worst-rated game of this challenge, beating out a Spider-Man game, which had previously beaten a different Spider-Man game. Man, the video game industry did a number on this guy. Actually, it mainly was LJN / Acclaim Entertainment published games that did the deed.
(This is the 75th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
This game is another one by Bits Studios, which is slowly but surely turning into my most disliked development studio (I didn't even consider disliking one before this day) and I'm not at all surprised that they went out of business in 2008. It doesn't help that the publishers behind this are Acclaim Entertainment, who were behind two of the other 4 Spider-Man games I've played. They literally got the licensing rights just to slap his name on a video game cartridge, make no effort whatsoever to have the games even feel like Spider-Man games, and just profit from all those kids who love Spidey from the comics and are blinded by his appearance on both cover and title. These games were literal cash-grabs, and while I give this no thought again until the next, likely terrible, Spider-Man game I'll play (because I'll play them all damnit!), I just want to use this opportunity to say that Acclaim Entertainment can RIP where the P does not stand for peace, as they went bankrupt in 2004.
Now with that rant out of the way, let's get into why Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six, which released in October 1992, is another brutally bad Spider-Man game. First off, let's go over the same points of criticism I can give you for all Bits Studios / LJN / Acclaim Entertainment Spider-Man games. Spidey looks like he is suffering from a disc prolapse in all of these games due to his weird hunched forward posture. His movement is odd at best, he controls like crap and he controls like crap. Oh I mentioned that twice? How did that happen?
The game, at least on the NES (the Game Gear version looks very slightly better), looks terrible. Bright green and bright red dominate the first stage, blinding red was used for one later stage for no good reason, sprites look bad, environments look (1) bland at best and (2) unrealistically designed and half the time, you have no idea if you are jumping on top of a platform that you can actually stand on or if it is supposed to be part of the background.
The soundtrack, which has some OK tracks, is the highlight of this game and that's not supposed to be a compliment. The lowlight on the other hand is the aforementioned controls. You can jump up. You can jump up higher if you hold down the jump button. You can also move while in air, at least that's something, but only in the direction that you're facing. That's somewhat more realistic, but stupid for a video game. You can sommersault forward as well, you can climb up walls and chains and you can shoot webs, if you have enough web fluid. Most of the time, you don't, like in some of the other Spider-Man games, and I ask once again, why make a Spider-Man game where you barely ever have any web fluid?
Spider-Man can do web-swinging here as well, but the controls here are so bad. You have to press B to jump, hold it and then press A to release the web and try to connect it to something. All this does though is let you swing left to right. You won't get up to a higher platform this way, limiting its use significantly. Letting go also doesn't carry you forward thanks to momentum, but instead drops you straight down. There were multiple occasions where I fell to a lower platform, and I literally could not bring myself back up by jumping or using the web. I suspect there are literal game-breaking pits that you can not fall into, if you ever want to get back up, but I suspect I won't find my answer to that officially because I doubt anyone cares enough about this game to share that anywhere on the internet, and I'm not gonna spend more than the 5 minutes I did unsuccessfully trying to get out.
Then there is the combat. You press A and do a punch. You double tap A and the punch animation gets cancelled for a jump-kick. This catapults you forward as well, so when you are near an enemy and frantically press A twice, you do the jump-kick instead of punching, which not only carries you past the enemy, but also happens above most enemies head, so you can't even touch them. Punches don't connect half the time unless you press it from the exact correct angle, and if you do connect, enemies blow up into a thousand pieces. That's right, Spider-Man kills in this game, and he does so non-stop. Try to find another studio that gives as few fucks about Spider-Man as Bits Studios, I dare you.
The story is explained in two sentences. Dr. Octopus wants to rule the world, so he calls on the Sinister Six, Electro, Mysterio, Hobgoblin, the Sandman, Vulture and himself. No one can stand in their way apparently, only Spider-Man. Done. Unlike the Game Boy games, especially the first one that was not developed by Bits Studios but rather by Rare, this game has 0 charm in its presentation. There are no cutscenes, no witty dialogue between Spidey and the villains, nothing. You finish a level, a simple image is showing the next boss with a sentence like "Sandman appears with a fist of fury" and off you go to the next level. It's just bad and shows how little Bits Studios cared when making this.
Finally, I want to touch upon the boss fights. My god. I didn't beat the game because the controls were doing my head in, but the first boss fight itself should tell you all you need to know about how much thought went into them. You fight Electro, but you actually don't. What I mean by that is that you stand there while Electro is simply chilling at the bottom of the screen and out of reach. Sometimes he decides to pay you a visit and come up, at which point you need to fight both him and the controls to somehow successfully jump-kick him, and while I did eventually just beat him on my first attempt, I can't say I have experienced boss fights that were much worse before. I suppose what the devs wanted to accomplish was for Electro to be out of range and shoot his lightning bolts at you, but it ends up looking like the game is bugged and he is flying around somewhere where he shouldn't. It doesn't help that he is literally under the platforms in a 2D game, which just would make no sense, but it doesn't matter because this all just sucked from start to finish.
To conclude, if you like to torture yourself with terrible Spider-Man games that aren't even bad in a funny sense, give these 1990 to 1992 Spider-Man games a try, but something tells me 1993 won't deliver different quality here. Oh wait, there is another game in 1992 already, Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge... Why am I doing this to myself again?
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 1/10
- Story is explained briefly in the manual and opening in-game screen
- Stages start with the boss introducing himself in one short, uninspired sentence
- Spider-Man kills dozens of enemies in this game and has no dialogue, rendering him a soulless guy in a red suit
GAMEPLAY | 4/20
- Controls are horrendous
- You rarely find web fluid and its uses are very limited
- Boss fights are just sad
- Spider-Man just feels like a name given to a random protagonist
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 4/10
- No voice acting
- Sound design ranges from OK to terrible. The sound of rats is haunting, especially when you are stuck next to them trying to get a handle of these darn controls
- Soundtrack is OK, with at least some tracks that don't make me want to turn the sound off completely
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 2/10
- Graphics are straight up ugly
- Spider-Man looks like an old guy with back problems and all sprites look bad
- Why did they choose to go with super-bright green and red colors? And did their little children draw the backgrounds?
ATMOSPHERE | 2/10
- Locations just feel like random places that have no realistic properties
- The Spider-Man license is also noticeable thanks to the enemies names, the ugly portrayal of Spider-Man and his web-swinging ability
CONTENT | 1/10
- 6 bosses with their own levels with multiple stages
- The game's biggest offense is that it exists in the first place
- None of the content is fun to engage with
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 2/10
- I guess there is some visual variety at places, even if it is hideous
- There are walls placed that you can crawl, crates in mid-air that you can web-swing off of I suppose
- I can literally not come up with another quarter-compliment
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 1/10
- This is the worst kind of your typical NES platformer
- I imagine this is what gaming would look like if Nintendo didn't save the industry
- This game is so conceptually bad that they didn't even bother to make use of the Spider-Man licence
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
- Zero replay value
PLAYABILITY | 3/5
- The controls make this nearly unplayable at times
- I literally could not get out of certain holes because I couldn't jump far enough and the web-swinging ability just did not allow me to reach a higher platform
OVERALL | 21/100
Congratulations to Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six, which just became the worst-rated game of this challenge, beating out a Spider-Man game, which had previously beaten a different Spider-Man game. Man, the video game industry did a number on this guy. Actually, it mainly was LJN / Acclaim Entertainment published games that did the deed.
(This is the 75th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
1992
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is the sequel to, surprise surprise, Sonic the Hedgehog, both of which released on the Sega Genesis. This sequel released just 1 1/2 years later and with only 9 months of development time, but it not only helped Sega claim a lot of market share held by Nintendo at the time, but it also solidified Sonic as the iconic video game mascot we know today and as Sega's answer to Nintendo's Mario.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was developed by Sega Technical Institute released on November 21, 1992 for the Sega Genesis and, at the time, was the first Japanese game ever to have a simultaneous worldwide launch and popularized this concept at the time. It also become the fastest-selling game at the time, breaking video game records. It's also interesting to note that Sega wasn't quite sold on Sonic like you might think, which is interesting because one thing I felt while playing this game was "this feels more like the big deal that I expected Sonic the Hedgehog 1 to be".
The game does what a sequel should do. It realizes (most) of what ailed the original and improves upon it without taking anything away from everything else that made the original what it is. Now, I can't say I loved the original game, which I played just a few months back for the first time ever, but it was enjoyable and the 'speed' gimmick for Sonic certainly made the game stand out.
With Sonic 2, I have more positive, but somewhat mixed feelings still. It absolutely is one of the standout games of 1992 and deservedly called a classic and one of the greatest games of all time. Its gameplay is timeless in the sense that it is still very easy to pick up and play the game today. My complaint mainly is that I still didn't get quite as comfortable with Sonic's gimmick as I might have had I been introduced to him in my childhood.
My biggest complaint with the original for example was that way too often, speeding through a level was disrupted by countless obstacles, and you'd need to constantly jog back to gain momentum to run up a steep slope. The developers apparently recognized this and added a skill that allows Sonic to gain momentum for a second with a dash-like bump to his speed, which definitely helped a lot. Still, to activate it, you need to step back a bit to not be on an inclining area of the platform, then you need to stand still for a second, then press 'down' and then press the appropriate button to charge up the dash.
My other issue is that the obstacles could have been made much less frustrating. When you run up a slope and fall on top of any enemy, you are the one that takes damages and lose all your rings. Why? Because flying up in the air and falling on top of an enemy (or a power-up) is not registered as a 'jump'. To actually be able to hit them, you need to actually press the 'jump' button, which seems to me like it's the same thing and would have helped make the game a smoother experience. On the other hand, the game was called 'easy' at the time in its current state as well, and it certainly isn't the most difficult game I've played, so allowing for hits to be recognized without pressing 'jump' might have made things too easy. Though, with that being the case, you can see what my issue is with these game's design. It's not necessarily an objective flaw, just a subjective opinion on how it feels to play the game.
That said, this was certainly still plenty of fun. The soundtrack is as good as the first game, the levels are even more varied (the Casino zone is especially memorable) and there are more challenges to spice up the gameplay, like the underwater levels, trap platforms that you can fall through and the "half-pipe courses" that were added as a bonus stage to collect the Chaos Emeralds which turn Sonic into Super Sonic.
I really liked the design of most zones, though some felt a bit too busy. Some also include certain tubes that suck you up and shoot you around the level for a while, which takes control out of your hands and makes you wait for a bit, which quickly gets repetitive after a few Game Overs. But each level introduces its own challenges and themes, and there are many branching paths you can take to mix up each playthrough, which shows the high production values in this game compared to almost all competitors in the genre.
This game is also the debut of Tails, who has a very cute design but, unless you change it in the hidden "Options" menu, for some reason runs around with you even in 1P mode and just seems out of place.
Overall, I think most people will have a fun couple hours with this game at least and it has aged pretty well. I think even today, you'll get more or less the same out of it as people from 30 years ago did, especially if you're a kid, which isn't something that can be said about many games of this time period. Personally, I can't say these initial Sonic games suit what makes a video game a lot of fun for me because I find that the factor of 'speed' runs opposite to the countless obstacles that make you stop and play it more slowly, but I still had fun with it.
(This is the 79th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was developed by Sega Technical Institute released on November 21, 1992 for the Sega Genesis and, at the time, was the first Japanese game ever to have a simultaneous worldwide launch and popularized this concept at the time. It also become the fastest-selling game at the time, breaking video game records. It's also interesting to note that Sega wasn't quite sold on Sonic like you might think, which is interesting because one thing I felt while playing this game was "this feels more like the big deal that I expected Sonic the Hedgehog 1 to be".
The game does what a sequel should do. It realizes (most) of what ailed the original and improves upon it without taking anything away from everything else that made the original what it is. Now, I can't say I loved the original game, which I played just a few months back for the first time ever, but it was enjoyable and the 'speed' gimmick for Sonic certainly made the game stand out.
With Sonic 2, I have more positive, but somewhat mixed feelings still. It absolutely is one of the standout games of 1992 and deservedly called a classic and one of the greatest games of all time. Its gameplay is timeless in the sense that it is still very easy to pick up and play the game today. My complaint mainly is that I still didn't get quite as comfortable with Sonic's gimmick as I might have had I been introduced to him in my childhood.
My biggest complaint with the original for example was that way too often, speeding through a level was disrupted by countless obstacles, and you'd need to constantly jog back to gain momentum to run up a steep slope. The developers apparently recognized this and added a skill that allows Sonic to gain momentum for a second with a dash-like bump to his speed, which definitely helped a lot. Still, to activate it, you need to step back a bit to not be on an inclining area of the platform, then you need to stand still for a second, then press 'down' and then press the appropriate button to charge up the dash.
My other issue is that the obstacles could have been made much less frustrating. When you run up a slope and fall on top of any enemy, you are the one that takes damages and lose all your rings. Why? Because flying up in the air and falling on top of an enemy (or a power-up) is not registered as a 'jump'. To actually be able to hit them, you need to actually press the 'jump' button, which seems to me like it's the same thing and would have helped make the game a smoother experience. On the other hand, the game was called 'easy' at the time in its current state as well, and it certainly isn't the most difficult game I've played, so allowing for hits to be recognized without pressing 'jump' might have made things too easy. Though, with that being the case, you can see what my issue is with these game's design. It's not necessarily an objective flaw, just a subjective opinion on how it feels to play the game.
That said, this was certainly still plenty of fun. The soundtrack is as good as the first game, the levels are even more varied (the Casino zone is especially memorable) and there are more challenges to spice up the gameplay, like the underwater levels, trap platforms that you can fall through and the "half-pipe courses" that were added as a bonus stage to collect the Chaos Emeralds which turn Sonic into Super Sonic.
I really liked the design of most zones, though some felt a bit too busy. Some also include certain tubes that suck you up and shoot you around the level for a while, which takes control out of your hands and makes you wait for a bit, which quickly gets repetitive after a few Game Overs. But each level introduces its own challenges and themes, and there are many branching paths you can take to mix up each playthrough, which shows the high production values in this game compared to almost all competitors in the genre.
This game is also the debut of Tails, who has a very cute design but, unless you change it in the hidden "Options" menu, for some reason runs around with you even in 1P mode and just seems out of place.
Overall, I think most people will have a fun couple hours with this game at least and it has aged pretty well. I think even today, you'll get more or less the same out of it as people from 30 years ago did, especially if you're a kid, which isn't something that can be said about many games of this time period. Personally, I can't say these initial Sonic games suit what makes a video game a lot of fun for me because I find that the factor of 'speed' runs opposite to the countless obstacles that make you stop and play it more slowly, but I still had fun with it.
(This is the 79th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
1992
I enjoyed the first Streets of Rage, and pretty much the same is true for its sequel, Streets of Rage 2, which released on December 20, 1992 for the Sega Genesis and later for the Game Gear and Master System. Developed by Sega, Streets of Rage 2 is pretty much the same game with a few minor and one major change.
First, instead of 3, you now have access to 4 characters to choose from, each with their different stats. Second, instead of everyone having the same special attack, each now has an individual one. However, this time, using a special attack drains your health, adding a quite significant penalty to using it. Third, there is an Easy mode in this game that is ACTUALLY easy. I managed to beat the game on my first time through using one continue on the final stage, and that's mainly thanks to the fact that Sega cooled it with the ridiculous bosses that felt like they were designed to swallow coins on Arcade machines due to their unfair difficulty. In Streets of Rage 2, unfair enemies are still a thing - especially on harder difficulties - but it's not on the same ridiculous level to the point that you won't manage to beat the game within 10 hours.
The soundtrack here is another great one and the levels are varied and good looking. The game looks prettier than the original, with bigger and better looking sprites and more detailed backgrounds. This creates the right atmosphere for this game where, once again, the whole city turns into chaos due to an evil syndicate taking over. This time it is Mr. X, who you face in a pretty cool final stage.
In terms of its gameplay, it has a fun loop but becomes pretty repetitive after a while. There is no dodge button, no guard button or anything of the sort, which means there is little you can do in terms of defending yourself in gameplay. The trick to being successful in this game is to time the enemy attack patterns and strike at the right time, at least that's what I would assume. Since that is much easier said than done, a lot of the game for me was spent either breezing through all normal enemies or getting into a slug-fest with one of the tougher enemies, where I would usually lose one life and try to out-damage the enemy. There aren't a lot of combos you can do either, so overall, I can't say I enjoyed pressing the same button over and over again for the entirety of the couple hours I've spent with the game.
All in all, it's a solid beat 'em up game I can recommend if you're a fan of the genre, but I didn't have as good a time with it as I would have hoped.
(This is the 80th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
First, instead of 3, you now have access to 4 characters to choose from, each with their different stats. Second, instead of everyone having the same special attack, each now has an individual one. However, this time, using a special attack drains your health, adding a quite significant penalty to using it. Third, there is an Easy mode in this game that is ACTUALLY easy. I managed to beat the game on my first time through using one continue on the final stage, and that's mainly thanks to the fact that Sega cooled it with the ridiculous bosses that felt like they were designed to swallow coins on Arcade machines due to their unfair difficulty. In Streets of Rage 2, unfair enemies are still a thing - especially on harder difficulties - but it's not on the same ridiculous level to the point that you won't manage to beat the game within 10 hours.
The soundtrack here is another great one and the levels are varied and good looking. The game looks prettier than the original, with bigger and better looking sprites and more detailed backgrounds. This creates the right atmosphere for this game where, once again, the whole city turns into chaos due to an evil syndicate taking over. This time it is Mr. X, who you face in a pretty cool final stage.
In terms of its gameplay, it has a fun loop but becomes pretty repetitive after a while. There is no dodge button, no guard button or anything of the sort, which means there is little you can do in terms of defending yourself in gameplay. The trick to being successful in this game is to time the enemy attack patterns and strike at the right time, at least that's what I would assume. Since that is much easier said than done, a lot of the game for me was spent either breezing through all normal enemies or getting into a slug-fest with one of the tougher enemies, where I would usually lose one life and try to out-damage the enemy. There aren't a lot of combos you can do either, so overall, I can't say I enjoyed pressing the same button over and over again for the entirety of the couple hours I've spent with the game.
All in all, it's a solid beat 'em up game I can recommend if you're a fan of the genre, but I didn't have as good a time with it as I would have hoped.
(This is the 80th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
1993
(This is the 84th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Less than a year after the Game Boy and overall debut of Kirby with Kirby's Dream Land, Nintendo released Kirby's Adventure on the SNES on March 23, 1993. Oh wait, what? It's an NES game? 2 1/2 years into the SNES' existence? Interesting.
What started as a request to simply port over Kirby's Dream Land to the system turned into something much grander when director Masahiro Sakurai chose to take advantage of the increased storage capacity available on the NES. Why it released on the NES instead of the SNES, I don't know. Some suggest that more people having the NES played a big role, and that it makes the game more accessible to children that way, though I can't comment on that.
They did do it however, and did take over some features of the Game Boy game while adding plenty more. Kirby, just like in Kirby's Dream Land, can inhale enemies and spit them back out, and Kirby can inhale air to fly. The game also remains on the easier side, though criticism about the game's lack of difficulty has been heard by making the game a bit tougher, which I can attest to, having played Kirby's Dream Land just a month or so ago before this. What has changed is that Kirby is now, for the first time, presented in color, and I think it's a fun fact that Shigeru Miyamoto initially thought Kirby would be yellow when Kirby still was only known to people in his monochrome form. What has also changed is that this game is significantly longer than Kirby's debut showing. A first-time playthrough will easily take an average player close to 6-8 hours, if not 10+, if you're on the less skilled side. That's partly because some sections can be a bit more difficult, partly because of a few annoyances with the game's controls we will get to in a bit and partly because the game is pretty long, with 41 levels over 7 worlds. Kirby's Dream Land sported only 5 levels.
The most notable other addition in this game is the "copy abilities" feature. To put it plainly, Kirby has two ways to kill enemies, when he inhales them. Either spit them back out or swallow them. Having come off a recent playthrough of Shin Megami Tensei 1, I can't say I've seen such brutality in that game and Kirby scares me ever since.
In all seriousness though, what swallowing enemies does is give Kirby the enemy's ability, which is a really fun feature. This allows Kirby to, for example, spit fire, wield a sword, roll up into a ball and roll through the map, take an icey form to produce ice cubes or even swallow lethargic enemies to take up their power of ... taking a nap and not doing anything for a couple seconds. I can imagine how limitless the possibilites are with such a feature and having not played any other Kirby game besides the first two, I'm excited to find out. In this game in particular, there appear to be 25 abilites Kirby can copy, though I found that most of the time you have access to about 10 of these in particular. There are multiple enemies carrying these abilities spread through each level, with them getting more and more diverse as you progress through stages, and usually you can pick and choose the ability you like best and progress through almost all areas using those. Sometimes, certain enemies are specifically placed in certain locations where their ability would prove to be most useful, like a wheel enemy near a slide. I found two locations that I don't think I could have progressed without using the enemy's ability placed nearby, but I think otherwise it's optional which one's you choose.
Apart from this feature, what is most impressive about Kirby's Adventure is that they were able to cram it all on the NES. Visually and in terms of gameplay it is one of the most impressive games on the system for sure (and the last NES game I will play as part of this challenge I'm doing, so it's nice to end the NES era on a very positive note). However, this does come with one caveat, which is performance. As retro gamers are well aware, whenever there are too many sprites or too many effects on the screen, the game experiences slowdown, and it happens often enough in this game to become annoying. There is a workaround though, which is playing the Nintendo 3DS version, which fixed all these performance issues. One other possible side-effect is the issues you will experience with the controls. I am not sure if this happened because of the slowdown or not, though I'm pretty sure it's part of the game's design that once you inhale, you are locked from turning Kirby around for a good second, which is an eternity, especially during boss fights. Input seems to also not respond immediately at times, so a lot of boss fights would just become way harder than they should have been because I would fight the controls for most of them. Similarly, whenever you jump down too far, an animation of Kirby falling on his face plays and you once again can't control him for a second, which allows enemies to easily get a hit in while you recover. For a game such as this, this was an odd thing to include, and I can't say I see that sort of jumping penalty a lot, perhaps ever, in these types of platforming games.
The boss fights are enjoyable enough apart from this. Some boss fights one will remember, if you've played Kirby's Dream Land, such as the tree called "Whispy" and, of course, King Dedede, who both use the same attack patterns pretty much. Boss fights happen at the end of each world, but there are several mini bosses in the 5 or 6 levels per world that you have to go through. End of world boss fights definitely feel like a bigger deal though, and are significantly tougher. I wouldn't call them hard at all, I also wouldn't call some of them pieces of cake, mainly because of the aforementioned performance and control issues.
The levels themselves are incredibly varied visually and again, I was just so impressed with how good this game looked on the NES. I'd say it's one of the best looking games on the system for sure. Apart from the main levels, there is an overworld for each world where you can also enter minigames and other small areas, such as one's that offer you a selection of enemies whose abilities you can then take into the main level, which is useful if you died and are left without an ability before a boss fight for example. The art style of the entire game is very appealing, especially to kids, but also to everyone else, as it just presentes itself as a laid back, relaxed, casual experience. Each new world is also introduced through a short little thematically fitting clip of Kirby in that world, which is pretty nice. Finally, I enjoyed the soundtrack but I wouldn't say it's among my favorites on the NES due to the lack of memorable tracks. Vegetable Valley 1 and Butter Building are worth highlighting. My favorite sound-related thing in the entire game has got to be the Mike ability, which you can use three times to damage everyone on the screen by having Kirby scream into a microphone. The scream was cute in Kirby's Dream Land already, but here they've added to it by making the third scream have a bit more oomph and Kirby leaning the mic forward like a rockstar when he screams into it, which was just adorable and got a chuckle out of me.
OVERALL | 73/100
Kirby's Adventure is definitely still worth playing today, and best enjoyed using the 3DS version due to the performance issues that are fixed on there. I would call this one of the best games on the NES for sure, so I'd recommend it to any and all platformer and retro fans. The "Copy Abilities" system was pretty fun and added replay value thanks to the amount of them available, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Nintendo builds on it, though I'm not sure if it's next mainline title, Kirby's Dream Land 2, can replicate it on this level due to being a Game Boy game.
Less than a year after the Game Boy and overall debut of Kirby with Kirby's Dream Land, Nintendo released Kirby's Adventure on the SNES on March 23, 1993. Oh wait, what? It's an NES game? 2 1/2 years into the SNES' existence? Interesting.
What started as a request to simply port over Kirby's Dream Land to the system turned into something much grander when director Masahiro Sakurai chose to take advantage of the increased storage capacity available on the NES. Why it released on the NES instead of the SNES, I don't know. Some suggest that more people having the NES played a big role, and that it makes the game more accessible to children that way, though I can't comment on that.
They did do it however, and did take over some features of the Game Boy game while adding plenty more. Kirby, just like in Kirby's Dream Land, can inhale enemies and spit them back out, and Kirby can inhale air to fly. The game also remains on the easier side, though criticism about the game's lack of difficulty has been heard by making the game a bit tougher, which I can attest to, having played Kirby's Dream Land just a month or so ago before this. What has changed is that Kirby is now, for the first time, presented in color, and I think it's a fun fact that Shigeru Miyamoto initially thought Kirby would be yellow when Kirby still was only known to people in his monochrome form. What has also changed is that this game is significantly longer than Kirby's debut showing. A first-time playthrough will easily take an average player close to 6-8 hours, if not 10+, if you're on the less skilled side. That's partly because some sections can be a bit more difficult, partly because of a few annoyances with the game's controls we will get to in a bit and partly because the game is pretty long, with 41 levels over 7 worlds. Kirby's Dream Land sported only 5 levels.
The most notable other addition in this game is the "copy abilities" feature. To put it plainly, Kirby has two ways to kill enemies, when he inhales them. Either spit them back out or swallow them. Having come off a recent playthrough of Shin Megami Tensei 1, I can't say I've seen such brutality in that game and Kirby scares me ever since.
In all seriousness though, what swallowing enemies does is give Kirby the enemy's ability, which is a really fun feature. This allows Kirby to, for example, spit fire, wield a sword, roll up into a ball and roll through the map, take an icey form to produce ice cubes or even swallow lethargic enemies to take up their power of ... taking a nap and not doing anything for a couple seconds. I can imagine how limitless the possibilites are with such a feature and having not played any other Kirby game besides the first two, I'm excited to find out. In this game in particular, there appear to be 25 abilites Kirby can copy, though I found that most of the time you have access to about 10 of these in particular. There are multiple enemies carrying these abilities spread through each level, with them getting more and more diverse as you progress through stages, and usually you can pick and choose the ability you like best and progress through almost all areas using those. Sometimes, certain enemies are specifically placed in certain locations where their ability would prove to be most useful, like a wheel enemy near a slide. I found two locations that I don't think I could have progressed without using the enemy's ability placed nearby, but I think otherwise it's optional which one's you choose.
Apart from this feature, what is most impressive about Kirby's Adventure is that they were able to cram it all on the NES. Visually and in terms of gameplay it is one of the most impressive games on the system for sure (and the last NES game I will play as part of this challenge I'm doing, so it's nice to end the NES era on a very positive note). However, this does come with one caveat, which is performance. As retro gamers are well aware, whenever there are too many sprites or too many effects on the screen, the game experiences slowdown, and it happens often enough in this game to become annoying. There is a workaround though, which is playing the Nintendo 3DS version, which fixed all these performance issues. One other possible side-effect is the issues you will experience with the controls. I am not sure if this happened because of the slowdown or not, though I'm pretty sure it's part of the game's design that once you inhale, you are locked from turning Kirby around for a good second, which is an eternity, especially during boss fights. Input seems to also not respond immediately at times, so a lot of boss fights would just become way harder than they should have been because I would fight the controls for most of them. Similarly, whenever you jump down too far, an animation of Kirby falling on his face plays and you once again can't control him for a second, which allows enemies to easily get a hit in while you recover. For a game such as this, this was an odd thing to include, and I can't say I see that sort of jumping penalty a lot, perhaps ever, in these types of platforming games.
The boss fights are enjoyable enough apart from this. Some boss fights one will remember, if you've played Kirby's Dream Land, such as the tree called "Whispy" and, of course, King Dedede, who both use the same attack patterns pretty much. Boss fights happen at the end of each world, but there are several mini bosses in the 5 or 6 levels per world that you have to go through. End of world boss fights definitely feel like a bigger deal though, and are significantly tougher. I wouldn't call them hard at all, I also wouldn't call some of them pieces of cake, mainly because of the aforementioned performance and control issues.
The levels themselves are incredibly varied visually and again, I was just so impressed with how good this game looked on the NES. I'd say it's one of the best looking games on the system for sure. Apart from the main levels, there is an overworld for each world where you can also enter minigames and other small areas, such as one's that offer you a selection of enemies whose abilities you can then take into the main level, which is useful if you died and are left without an ability before a boss fight for example. The art style of the entire game is very appealing, especially to kids, but also to everyone else, as it just presentes itself as a laid back, relaxed, casual experience. Each new world is also introduced through a short little thematically fitting clip of Kirby in that world, which is pretty nice. Finally, I enjoyed the soundtrack but I wouldn't say it's among my favorites on the NES due to the lack of memorable tracks. Vegetable Valley 1 and Butter Building are worth highlighting. My favorite sound-related thing in the entire game has got to be the Mike ability, which you can use three times to damage everyone on the screen by having Kirby scream into a microphone. The scream was cute in Kirby's Dream Land already, but here they've added to it by making the third scream have a bit more oomph and Kirby leaning the mic forward like a rockstar when he screams into it, which was just adorable and got a chuckle out of me.
OVERALL | 73/100
Kirby's Adventure is definitely still worth playing today, and best enjoyed using the 3DS version due to the performance issues that are fixed on there. I would call this one of the best games on the NES for sure, so I'd recommend it to any and all platformer and retro fans. The "Copy Abilities" system was pretty fun and added replay value thanks to the amount of them available, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Nintendo builds on it, though I'm not sure if it's next mainline title, Kirby's Dream Land 2, can replicate it on this level due to being a Game Boy game.
(This is the 85th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
In this challenge I'm doing, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past or 'Zelda 3' is still my 2nd favorite game I've played up to this point. Knowing that its sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, was released on the Game Boy, I didn't have too high expectations because I've come to realize that most games on the Game Boy have not aged well due to the handheld's capabilities. Looking at Super Mario Land 2, I expected this to be one of the better games on the system though, and after having played it for a good while, I can confirm as much. It's absolutely one of the best games on the system. Unfortunately, I didn't have as much fun with this game as I would have liked, and it mainly has to do with the slow pace of it at all, mainly due to one issue.
Story-wise, Link's Awakening starts off as a follow-up to A Link to the Past in that Link travels by ship to other places and, on his return home to Hyrule months later, has his ship destroyed by a storm and washes ashore on a place that is not actually Hyrule, which makes this game the first Zelda game to not play in Hyrule. The island he is on is called "Koholint Island", and he is taken home by a girl called Marin, who tends to him until he wakes up. When he wakes up, Link can talk to Marin's father, Tarin, who looks suspiciously like Mario (and also likes mushrooms) to recover his shield. He makes his way to the beach to recover his sword, where an owl tells him that he needs to wake the Wind Fish, which is in an egg crowning the large mountain of this island. Only this way can Link escape the island. To do this, Link needs to collect 8 instruments out of 8 dungeons.
It's a pretty neat setup for this game and it's nice to see it be different from the typical save Hyrule from Ganon plot, which is by no means bad, but from there, the game plays exactly like A Link to the Past, but on the Game Boy. This is luckily also not a bad thing, as the concept put forth by A Link to the Past is rightfully praised all over. It is, however, on the Game Boy, so it just plays like a smaller version with fewer features. In addition, I want to say it is designed for children in terms of its difficulty, but one constant issue that "pops up" (pun intended) makes me think this was designed for 6-year olds, though even 6-year olds are unlikely to need this much help on this front.
What I am referring to are "message pop-ups" that constantly, and I mean constantly, interrupt your gameplay, to the point it drove me to near-madness and made me end my playthrough, as it just made the game straight-up unenjoyable. The way these games are set up is in a Metroidvania-style where you lack all abilities at the start and therefore can't enter certain areas until you find suitable items elsewhere. For example, pots and stones can not be carried unless you equip a "Power Bracelet". This presents the two main issues I had with this game. First, there are many items in this game (just like in 'A Link to the Past') but here, instead of having them be passive skills, you need to constantly manually equip the items you need at a given moment, with two items equippable at the same time. You need to switch a lot, which slows the game down too much for me and has led to many annoying deaths over the time I played. Second, which is the worst part, EVERY time you accidentally run into any item that you cannot interact with, a message screen pops up telling you that you cannot do that. I KNOW. And it's not like the message goes away once you have the Power Bracelet. No, every time you don't have it equipped, you get the message again. Why? For whom? You also get the same message about the same items you pick up in each dungeon explaining their functions. It takes so much time to constantly have to wait to skip through them and just felt so odd throughout.
Perhaps my fixation on these pop-ups was exacerbated by the fact that I found the puzzles in this game to be less clever (and more annoying because of the constant item-swapping) and "whimsical character wants an item to trade" as puzzle-solving multiple times didn't really translate to enjoyable content to me at some point. I think overall, it just felt like the worse version of A Link to the Past that it is and it couldn't really excite me enough to see through the story, which hadn't really moved along at all at the time I stopped playing apart from the Owl constantly sending me to different dungeons to collect instruments. It definitely didn't help that all of this was happening on my computer screen instead of on a handheld like initially intended, but I'm also not a kid anymore, haven't played this game back in the day and after thousands of games, both by and not by Nintendo, that copied Zelda's charm, as well as the monochrome graphics, I just couldn't really get excited about most of what I was seeing and playing.
OVERALL | 66/100
To call The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening a competent game would be my way of saying that it is not a bad game at all, and if you love Zelda games, you will really enjoy this one as well (though I'd opt for the remake at this point). But calling it competent is also my way of saying that the game did little 'wrong', however the things it did do wrong (message pop-ups, item switching) hampered my enjoyment of the game a lot. It doesn't help that this game follows the same rigid collect a certain number of things to beat the game like seemingly all first-party Nintendo Game Boy games (which I presume is due to the limitations of the Game Boy), so even though it had the Zelda coding on it, I couldn't help but feel unimpressed from an enjoyment-perspective. From a technical perspective, it is undoubtedly impressive how much the devs were able to get out of the Game Boy with this game.
In this challenge I'm doing, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past or 'Zelda 3' is still my 2nd favorite game I've played up to this point. Knowing that its sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, was released on the Game Boy, I didn't have too high expectations because I've come to realize that most games on the Game Boy have not aged well due to the handheld's capabilities. Looking at Super Mario Land 2, I expected this to be one of the better games on the system though, and after having played it for a good while, I can confirm as much. It's absolutely one of the best games on the system. Unfortunately, I didn't have as much fun with this game as I would have liked, and it mainly has to do with the slow pace of it at all, mainly due to one issue.
Story-wise, Link's Awakening starts off as a follow-up to A Link to the Past in that Link travels by ship to other places and, on his return home to Hyrule months later, has his ship destroyed by a storm and washes ashore on a place that is not actually Hyrule, which makes this game the first Zelda game to not play in Hyrule. The island he is on is called "Koholint Island", and he is taken home by a girl called Marin, who tends to him until he wakes up. When he wakes up, Link can talk to Marin's father, Tarin, who looks suspiciously like Mario (and also likes mushrooms) to recover his shield. He makes his way to the beach to recover his sword, where an owl tells him that he needs to wake the Wind Fish, which is in an egg crowning the large mountain of this island. Only this way can Link escape the island. To do this, Link needs to collect 8 instruments out of 8 dungeons.
It's a pretty neat setup for this game and it's nice to see it be different from the typical save Hyrule from Ganon plot, which is by no means bad, but from there, the game plays exactly like A Link to the Past, but on the Game Boy. This is luckily also not a bad thing, as the concept put forth by A Link to the Past is rightfully praised all over. It is, however, on the Game Boy, so it just plays like a smaller version with fewer features. In addition, I want to say it is designed for children in terms of its difficulty, but one constant issue that "pops up" (pun intended) makes me think this was designed for 6-year olds, though even 6-year olds are unlikely to need this much help on this front.
What I am referring to are "message pop-ups" that constantly, and I mean constantly, interrupt your gameplay, to the point it drove me to near-madness and made me end my playthrough, as it just made the game straight-up unenjoyable. The way these games are set up is in a Metroidvania-style where you lack all abilities at the start and therefore can't enter certain areas until you find suitable items elsewhere. For example, pots and stones can not be carried unless you equip a "Power Bracelet". This presents the two main issues I had with this game. First, there are many items in this game (just like in 'A Link to the Past') but here, instead of having them be passive skills, you need to constantly manually equip the items you need at a given moment, with two items equippable at the same time. You need to switch a lot, which slows the game down too much for me and has led to many annoying deaths over the time I played. Second, which is the worst part, EVERY time you accidentally run into any item that you cannot interact with, a message screen pops up telling you that you cannot do that. I KNOW. And it's not like the message goes away once you have the Power Bracelet. No, every time you don't have it equipped, you get the message again. Why? For whom? You also get the same message about the same items you pick up in each dungeon explaining their functions. It takes so much time to constantly have to wait to skip through them and just felt so odd throughout.
Perhaps my fixation on these pop-ups was exacerbated by the fact that I found the puzzles in this game to be less clever (and more annoying because of the constant item-swapping) and "whimsical character wants an item to trade" as puzzle-solving multiple times didn't really translate to enjoyable content to me at some point. I think overall, it just felt like the worse version of A Link to the Past that it is and it couldn't really excite me enough to see through the story, which hadn't really moved along at all at the time I stopped playing apart from the Owl constantly sending me to different dungeons to collect instruments. It definitely didn't help that all of this was happening on my computer screen instead of on a handheld like initially intended, but I'm also not a kid anymore, haven't played this game back in the day and after thousands of games, both by and not by Nintendo, that copied Zelda's charm, as well as the monochrome graphics, I just couldn't really get excited about most of what I was seeing and playing.
OVERALL | 66/100
To call The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening a competent game would be my way of saying that it is not a bad game at all, and if you love Zelda games, you will really enjoy this one as well (though I'd opt for the remake at this point). But calling it competent is also my way of saying that the game did little 'wrong', however the things it did do wrong (message pop-ups, item switching) hampered my enjoyment of the game a lot. It doesn't help that this game follows the same rigid collect a certain number of things to beat the game like seemingly all first-party Nintendo Game Boy games (which I presume is due to the limitations of the Game Boy), so even though it had the Zelda coding on it, I couldn't help but feel unimpressed from an enjoyment-perspective. From a technical perspective, it is undoubtedly impressive how much the devs were able to get out of the Game Boy with this game.
(This is the 86th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
As is tradition with early 90s Spider-Man video games, Spider-Man 3: Invasion of Spider-Slayers is among the worst games I have ever played, and it possibly tops the list. As per usual, this was developed by Bits Studios and published by Acclaim Entertainment (or LJN at the time), possibly the worst grouping of developer + publisher of its time that actually made professionally developed video games. Spider-Man 3 released for the Game Boy and is the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which, up to this point, I would have called the worst game I've ever played, especially within this challenge I'm doing. That game, and I'll use any opportunity I can to bring it up, got a 98% from Consoles +, a French video game magazine. Spider-Man 3's Consoles + review score is unknown, but it got a 6.1 Moby Rating, which is on the poorer side on the site.
The first level of this game is all you really need to know about. With each iteration in this Game Boy trilogy, the fudges given have gone down more and more, and it's apparent in many ways. The first game was developed by Rare and was awful in most aspects but at least had competent level design and started each level with witty dialogue between Spider-Man and the stage's boss, which gave it some charm. The second game, made by Bits Studios, didn't have this dialogue anymore and was even worse in all other aspects. Its level design was also just dull and lacked any sort of creativity and passion. This third game went down yet another level that I didn't think was possible. Instead of having some sort of love put into an opening 'cutscene' where Spidey reads that he is being framed, like in the second game, this third game just starts with Spider-Man saying that he will take a walk in the park. Then a white image with black text says that you should defeat 20 muggers. That's it. Then you walk around awkwardly from left to right looking for these men.
1) Spider-Man looks and walks as awkwardly as in all of the other 6 Spider-Man games I've played
2) Spider-Man controls as horrificly as in all of the other 6 Spider-Man games I've played
3) The level looks as bland as toast
4) There are nearly no assets on this whole level. The tiny space is only separated by a random wall placed in around the middle part of the level, which you can jump over to get to an area that looks and works exactly the same
5) There is a singular depiction of a man walking around the park endlessly. The challenge on this level is to figure out whether the guy is innocent or a "mugger". You wait for 2 seconds for the man to pull something out of his jacket. If it's a newspaper, he's innocent. If it's a gun, well, you do what Spider-Man does. Kick him in the nuts once and watch him vanish into thin air.
6) If you're too close to the man, your kick just goes through him. You have to stand a specific distance away from the man to kick him, or you'll miss.
7) KIDS ON SKATEBOARDS roam the area and run into you, unless you jump over them. Pressing the jump button comes with input lag, meaning it takes an extra second or two to actually do the jump, meaning you need to time it pretty early. Even then, it's likely you'll touch the back of the head of the kid and still take damage.
8) SPIDERS FALL DOWN OUT OF THIN AIR and damage you, if they fall on top of you
9) THIS IS THE DUMBEST SHIT I'VE PLAYED IN MY LIFE.
It's not even creatively bad. It's the same type of bad platformer that you saw in the thousands in the late 80s and early 90s, it's just among the least competent that was made by an actual professional development studio and backed by a professional publisher, LJN, who, as you might know, have had and still have a terrible reputation. I now know why. People complain about Zelda 2, Castlevania 2, The Zelda CD-I games, ET and that N64 Batman game, and for good reason, but man, I wish I could be playing any of those games instead of these never-ending Spider-Man games that all are of the same ilk and just get worse.
TLDR: Shit.
As is tradition with early 90s Spider-Man video games, Spider-Man 3: Invasion of Spider-Slayers is among the worst games I have ever played, and it possibly tops the list. As per usual, this was developed by Bits Studios and published by Acclaim Entertainment (or LJN at the time), possibly the worst grouping of developer + publisher of its time that actually made professionally developed video games. Spider-Man 3 released for the Game Boy and is the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which, up to this point, I would have called the worst game I've ever played, especially within this challenge I'm doing. That game, and I'll use any opportunity I can to bring it up, got a 98% from Consoles +, a French video game magazine. Spider-Man 3's Consoles + review score is unknown, but it got a 6.1 Moby Rating, which is on the poorer side on the site.
The first level of this game is all you really need to know about. With each iteration in this Game Boy trilogy, the fudges given have gone down more and more, and it's apparent in many ways. The first game was developed by Rare and was awful in most aspects but at least had competent level design and started each level with witty dialogue between Spider-Man and the stage's boss, which gave it some charm. The second game, made by Bits Studios, didn't have this dialogue anymore and was even worse in all other aspects. Its level design was also just dull and lacked any sort of creativity and passion. This third game went down yet another level that I didn't think was possible. Instead of having some sort of love put into an opening 'cutscene' where Spidey reads that he is being framed, like in the second game, this third game just starts with Spider-Man saying that he will take a walk in the park. Then a white image with black text says that you should defeat 20 muggers. That's it. Then you walk around awkwardly from left to right looking for these men.
1) Spider-Man looks and walks as awkwardly as in all of the other 6 Spider-Man games I've played
2) Spider-Man controls as horrificly as in all of the other 6 Spider-Man games I've played
3) The level looks as bland as toast
4) There are nearly no assets on this whole level. The tiny space is only separated by a random wall placed in around the middle part of the level, which you can jump over to get to an area that looks and works exactly the same
5) There is a singular depiction of a man walking around the park endlessly. The challenge on this level is to figure out whether the guy is innocent or a "mugger". You wait for 2 seconds for the man to pull something out of his jacket. If it's a newspaper, he's innocent. If it's a gun, well, you do what Spider-Man does. Kick him in the nuts once and watch him vanish into thin air.
6) If you're too close to the man, your kick just goes through him. You have to stand a specific distance away from the man to kick him, or you'll miss.
7) KIDS ON SKATEBOARDS roam the area and run into you, unless you jump over them. Pressing the jump button comes with input lag, meaning it takes an extra second or two to actually do the jump, meaning you need to time it pretty early. Even then, it's likely you'll touch the back of the head of the kid and still take damage.
8) SPIDERS FALL DOWN OUT OF THIN AIR and damage you, if they fall on top of you
9) THIS IS THE DUMBEST SHIT I'VE PLAYED IN MY LIFE.
It's not even creatively bad. It's the same type of bad platformer that you saw in the thousands in the late 80s and early 90s, it's just among the least competent that was made by an actual professional development studio and backed by a professional publisher, LJN, who, as you might know, have had and still have a terrible reputation. I now know why. People complain about Zelda 2, Castlevania 2, The Zelda CD-I games, ET and that N64 Batman game, and for good reason, but man, I wish I could be playing any of those games instead of these never-ending Spider-Man games that all are of the same ilk and just get worse.
TLDR: Shit.
2016
Man, beating this was more pure determination than actually enjoying myself, at least on the final stage 9-10, which took me 2 hours to beat (mainly because it's hard, but also because I overlooked one specific thing I'll mention in a bit).
Clustertruck is a platformer developed by Landfall Games and released on September 27, 2016 for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch. Landfall Games are also behind Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, so suffice it to say, they've done alright for themselves. The game goes for 14.79€ without a sale, a price point I wouldn't recommend this game at. I played it through Amazon thanks to their monthly free game offerings through Amazon Prime.
Clustertruck is a Truck-themed platformer in which you jump from moving truck to truck and try to reach the finish line without ever touching the ground or anything else that isn't part of a truck. The main campaign has 9 worlds featuring different themes (steampunk, sci-fi, HELL) with 10 levels each, and they progressively get harder with a few unusually difficult levels sprinkled throughout. I've gotten to the final stage 9-10 in about 3 hours, and apart from about a handful of levels, none took me longer than 10 or so tries individually.
The game lets you restart pretty much instantly, which is great in allowing the game to flow pretty well and not interrupt gameplay at any time. When jumping from truck to truck, the abilities you have are, well, "jumping", sprinting to gain speed before jumping and the ability to move directions mid-air. As you finish levels, you collect points, which you can use in an Ability shop to unlock more advanced abilities to help make things easier. I believe each level can be beaten without an extra ability, but you'd be mad to do so without at least the first ability the game offers you, which is the "Dash" ability. There are many more which are presented to you on two sides, and you get to choose one ability to equip from each side. I didn't know you could equip more than one, so for most of the game, I stuck with Dash only.
Going with just this one ability was more than enough to go through 89 levels, and while you will be frustrated during this time, it rarely will be because a stage appears to be impossible. I'm by no means a skilled gamer and I somewhat smoothly made my way through them. Where it gets ridiculously hard though is on the final level, where you truly understand how many weaknesses the game has in its controls. Usually, the game asks you to just sprint and jump from truck to truck and reach an end point, but on this stage, the game asks you to do traditional platforming in that you climb up a flight of 'stairs' aka trucks. Unfortunately, the game does not have smooth enough controls and should really not be doing this. When you jump, it often is hard to control how far you move to each side, as sometimes you'll just move too far even though you barely move the stick, or even though you move backwards, the game will push you forward as if a truck hit you in the back. The game in general is incredibly sensitive to movement and, again, irratic in output as well, so you'll die a lot just because you're fighting the controls, not the challenges in the levels. You can not touch ground nor walls, so you have to be very careful in your input.
So due to this, I spent two hours on the final stage in sheer pain, until I looked through the shop again and bought an ability that slows down time. This made one specific part of this stage actually possible, and not too long after, I finally beat the game. I'd suggest picking that, if you decide to play this.
One final note I want to make is on the game's presentation. Visually, the game is pretty bland, with little detail in the environments. It gets better as you advance through the worlds and they get different themes, but apart from the final level, 'bland' is all I will remember from this game visually. The soundtrack has hints of vanilla as well with a lot of tracks that sound like your average mobile game platforming tracks and two or three that have some good parts in them. Overall though, I wouldn't really want to listen to it again.
So, all in all, would I recommend you to play this? As a pallette cleanser or just a fun little game for an hour or two with friends, sure, I think there is some fun to be had with the game's physics. Would I recommend you to go all 'thickheaded idiot' at this game just to get that satisfaction of beating it like I did? Not really, I think there are better games to waste 5 hours of your life on.
Clustertruck is a platformer developed by Landfall Games and released on September 27, 2016 for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch. Landfall Games are also behind Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, so suffice it to say, they've done alright for themselves. The game goes for 14.79€ without a sale, a price point I wouldn't recommend this game at. I played it through Amazon thanks to their monthly free game offerings through Amazon Prime.
Clustertruck is a Truck-themed platformer in which you jump from moving truck to truck and try to reach the finish line without ever touching the ground or anything else that isn't part of a truck. The main campaign has 9 worlds featuring different themes (steampunk, sci-fi, HELL) with 10 levels each, and they progressively get harder with a few unusually difficult levels sprinkled throughout. I've gotten to the final stage 9-10 in about 3 hours, and apart from about a handful of levels, none took me longer than 10 or so tries individually.
The game lets you restart pretty much instantly, which is great in allowing the game to flow pretty well and not interrupt gameplay at any time. When jumping from truck to truck, the abilities you have are, well, "jumping", sprinting to gain speed before jumping and the ability to move directions mid-air. As you finish levels, you collect points, which you can use in an Ability shop to unlock more advanced abilities to help make things easier. I believe each level can be beaten without an extra ability, but you'd be mad to do so without at least the first ability the game offers you, which is the "Dash" ability. There are many more which are presented to you on two sides, and you get to choose one ability to equip from each side. I didn't know you could equip more than one, so for most of the game, I stuck with Dash only.
Going with just this one ability was more than enough to go through 89 levels, and while you will be frustrated during this time, it rarely will be because a stage appears to be impossible. I'm by no means a skilled gamer and I somewhat smoothly made my way through them. Where it gets ridiculously hard though is on the final level, where you truly understand how many weaknesses the game has in its controls. Usually, the game asks you to just sprint and jump from truck to truck and reach an end point, but on this stage, the game asks you to do traditional platforming in that you climb up a flight of 'stairs' aka trucks. Unfortunately, the game does not have smooth enough controls and should really not be doing this. When you jump, it often is hard to control how far you move to each side, as sometimes you'll just move too far even though you barely move the stick, or even though you move backwards, the game will push you forward as if a truck hit you in the back. The game in general is incredibly sensitive to movement and, again, irratic in output as well, so you'll die a lot just because you're fighting the controls, not the challenges in the levels. You can not touch ground nor walls, so you have to be very careful in your input.
So due to this, I spent two hours on the final stage in sheer pain, until I looked through the shop again and bought an ability that slows down time. This made one specific part of this stage actually possible, and not too long after, I finally beat the game. I'd suggest picking that, if you decide to play this.
One final note I want to make is on the game's presentation. Visually, the game is pretty bland, with little detail in the environments. It gets better as you advance through the worlds and they get different themes, but apart from the final level, 'bland' is all I will remember from this game visually. The soundtrack has hints of vanilla as well with a lot of tracks that sound like your average mobile game platforming tracks and two or three that have some good parts in them. Overall though, I wouldn't really want to listen to it again.
So, all in all, would I recommend you to play this? As a pallette cleanser or just a fun little game for an hour or two with friends, sure, I think there is some fun to be had with the game's physics. Would I recommend you to go all 'thickheaded idiot' at this game just to get that satisfaction of beating it like I did? Not really, I think there are better games to waste 5 hours of your life on.
1993
(This is the 88th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
After going my entire life without having played a singular Sonic title, I have now played Sonic the Hedgehog 1, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and now have even beaten my first ever Sonic game, Sonic CD. Sonic CD initially released on September 23, 1993 for the, you guessed it (I think), Sega CD. It got ported over to Windows and later to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but it is also available in its original form through the Sonic Gems Collection for the Game Cube and PlayStation 2 (which is where I played this) and in remastered shape as part of the Sonic Origins compilation that released in 2022.
Sonic CD was developed to showcase the capabilities of the Sega CD add-on for the Sega Genesis. Sonic CD would end up being the best-selling game for the add-on, selling over 1.5 million copies. It was supposed to be an enhanced port of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but developed into its own thing over time, giving us the debut of Metal Sonic and Amy Rose, as well as the "time warp" feature.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
A short story in the manual explains the setting for this game. Sonic has a conversation with a "Princess Sally", a character I never heard of and one that apparently never appears in any Sonic game, but is rather introduced in comic books and animated series starting in 1993. She asks Sonic where he is going. Sonic would goo to Never Lake to visit 'the Little Planet'. "The one with the special stones that alter time", Sally says. Sonic mentions how the Little Planet appears of Never Lake on the last month of every year, so Sonic will check it out.
When they arrive there, something is off, as tall trees and bright flowers are replaced with nothingness. As they try to understand what is going on, Princess Sally is kidnapped by Dr. Robotnik and his newest creation, 'Metal Sonic'. Dr. Robotnik is looking to capture all time stones to manipulate time and take over the world and as per usual, it's Sonic's job to stop him.
So, in this game, there are two endings, a good and a bad ending. Each level you visit has three zones and the first two zones can be altered by going to its past and future to destroy 'transporters'. Depending on whether you do this or not, the third zone will either be a "good future" or a "bad future", which is indicated by a change in the song and in scenery, with good futures set in thriving nature and bad futures set in a metallic, dystopian style. If you turn all 3rd zones into good futures, you unlock the good ending. Otherwise, you get the bad ending, like me.
There isn't much 'story' in this game beyond this, but I was surprised with the amount of effort that went into making three distinct versions of each zone of a level and giving us two separate endings as a result. The story is not told through words at any point, but the scenery and the change of tone in the soundtrack do tell a story of their own which represents the actions you take, or don't, which is pretty nice.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Sonic CD plays pretty much the same as Sonic 1 and 2, though due to the small features added in 2, I'd say it plays like the middle-version between the two based on the features it has. There isn't really much I can say here that I haven't already said about the first two Sonic games. If you have played those already, you will know exactly what to expect. If you haven't, you probably know how Sonic games look like anyway. As always, you run through levels with three distinct zones, fight a boss on the 3rd zone and try to reach the finish line in large levels with many open and secret areas to access to make progress.
The unique aspect of this game is the Time Warp feature. You can travel to the Past and Future of a zone to destroy certain transporters to create a Good Future in each level's Zone 3 to unlock the Good Ending at the end. This is done by running through a sign saying "Past" or "Future" and then holding a certain speed will running to initiate a "warp". This is certainly a unique feature and while I didn't get Good Futures in most levels, this offers a nice additional challenge for everyone looking to do as much as possible on each zone.
Another way to get Good Futures on every third zone is to collect all "Time Stones", which replace Chaos Emeralds in this game. This means there is no Super Sonic in this game. I haven't been good enough to ever get him in Sonic 1 and 2, so it's not a big loss for me personally, but worth pointing out. To get all Time Stones, you need to finish levels with more than 50 rings each, which lets you enter a special stage where you have to destroy six UFOs within a certain time limit.
While I enjoyed all of this for the most part, I have the same issues with this game that I had with Sonic 1 and 2, and probably on an even bigger scale here. This game focuses more on exploration within given levels than the other two Sonic games on the Genesis, which means it has a bigger focus on having you slow down and look for different paths on each zone. While exploring paths is optional, this does translate over to each level as a whole, as they are pretty massive in this game and can get pretty complex. This plays into one of my complaints with these Sonic games that I mentioned previously.
Sonic has super-speed as his special ability. Unfortunately, a lot of the times this ability plays like its more of a tease, as there are a lot of obstacles that stop you from gaining top speed for more than a couple seconds. While this makes sense from a game design perspective to add challenge to these games, I feel like Sonic's speed offers more disadvantage than fun to me due to this. Whenever I'm on a straight path, I'm thinking I'll take off and get some top speed going, only to have an enemy pop into screen out of nowhere and making it impossible for me to avoid it in time, which leads me into a 2-second animation of hitting the enemy and losing all my rings. Same goes for gaining speed to fly into the air, which too many times leads to me landing on a platform with an enemy on it, which I fall on top of to lose my rings again. Simultaneously, these games have a lot of areas that force you to pick up momentum near a slope to get up there, which takes a couple seconds each time, there are non-stop obstacles which you run into that stop you dead in your track and there isn't a lot of platforming challenge for me here other than exploring and trying to avoid damaging situations that your speeds puts you into. This leads me to take it slower sometimes, which makes me want to play a Mario game instead.
I understand I'm possibly odd for having this type of criticism, but I think it has more to do with me not being the biggest fan of how these Sonic games are designed rather than me thinking that it is actually objectively bad design. Though I do have to say, running at Sonic's speeds to have enemies appear that give you 0.2 seconds to react is not something that I think is that good.
That said, I do appreciate how large the levels are and how, no matter where you go, there is (almost) always a way forward to the finish line. And finally, while I have some subjective complaints, I can conclude this by saying that if you enjoy Sonic's 2D platforming gameplay, you will enjoy Sonic CD in that aspect as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Well do I have stuff to explain here. Sonic CD is in a pretty unusual spot because it does not have one, but two soundtrakcs. The first soundtrack is used in Japan and PAL regions, while the second is exclusively to NA. Why? I don't know if there is an official reason, but I think it is assumed that the American marketing team at Sega thought that American gamers wouldn't react well to the original soundtrack, which is why they composed their own.
Funnily enough, there are many people who heavily dislike the NA version of the soundtrack and who love the JP version. Not just retrospectively, but even at and around the time of its release. I didn't know about the two separate soundtracks, so I only originally rated this game based on the American soundtrack.
Listening to it, I was pretty surprised at its tone. Instead of the usual up-beat sounds of the other Sonic games, this one sounded a lot more ominous and like it wanted to accentuate the danger that Dr. Robotnik was presenting. It sounded more mature I suppose, or at least as if it was intended for more mature audiences than you would think played this game in the majority. For the most part, I didn't actually mind this. There are plenty of tracks here that are enjoyable to listen to and create a pretty nice atmosphere you can actually chill to. Then there are downright scary ones that I can't believe made it into the game, like the Game Over track and especially the track used for boss fights. I can't imagine being a ten year old back in 1993 playing this for the first time.
After playing this game, I listened to the OST again on YouTube like I always do, and while reading the comments discovered that there was a Japanese version as well. Listening to it, you can immediately tell how much more upbeat it is. Each track is different to the US version, I don't think there are any that were re-used, and the tone of the boss fight most notably is very different. Do I think each track in the Japanese version is better? Actually, I don't. While the lows of the US soundtrack are truly god awful, it's still a good soundtrack overall, and I don't mind that the composers went for more atmosphere than funk at times. I think I prefere the Japanese version overall however.
At the end of the day, I think it's cool that there are two full soundtracks that Sonic fans got with one game, though if you are one of the kids who got traumatized back in the day, you probably feel differently.
There are some pretty iconic themes here as well, such as Sonic Boom and the Japanese Special Stage Theme. Finally, since I haven't mentioned it yet, the Past, Present and Future versions of each zone have their own tracks, which means the total length of both OSTs is absurdly long for this game.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Sonic CD is not a huge graphical jump over Sonic the Hedgehog 2 despite being released for the Sega CD add-on, which I would have expected to offer a little bit more visually. That said, Sonic CD is one of the better looking games for its time regardless.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
Atmospherically, the game suits a Sonic game quite well based on its visuals. What this game does differently though is lean away from the upbeat Sonic style at times to give you a more dystopian glance at the Sonic universe through its bad futures. This is still done in a sort-of funky way through Japan's soundtrack, but you're placed into a downright horrific horror moment through the US soundtrack at times.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game doesn't take too long to beat. It has 7 levels and pretty easy boss fights. Each level is pretty massive though, so you can pad your playtime easily by exploring them more thoroughly. On top of that, looking for those transporters in past and future parts of the zones will add a lot of playtime on top of that, and these versions of the zones also offer different environments on top of that, so the sheer amount of content in this game is pretty wild for a video game from 1993.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
As mentioned, levels are divided into 3 zones and the first two zones are designed three times for the past, present and future, which means there is absurd amounts of work that went into them here. On top of that, levels are truly massive, with tons of paths to explore that will make multiple playthroughs feel fresher than is usual for platformers and even for the first 16-bit Sonic games. Levels are also themed distinctly as always, though I wasn't blown away by any theme here like I was in Sonic 2 and some designs were also copied over from that game. Also, does every first level in a Sonic game start in a green environment? Just noticed that.
Levels being massive is great, but visually, the sheer amount of stuff going on in each visually is just overwhelming sometimes and makes for a messy presentation at times. It's also easy to get lost later on, which I thought was an odd wrinkle to put into a game like this.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
The Sonic team did a great job of keeping this Sonic game feel fresh despite the fact that it's another 2D platforming adventure. The Time Warp mechanic is not only unique to Sonic, but a unique mechanic in general, which I enjoyed to dabble with and which offer a lot of optional ways to tackle this game for each player.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
A ton of replay value here because of the 3 versions per zone that you can explore to your heart's content, because of the Time Stones you can collect optionally and because of two different endings. I don't count the two separate soundtracks in my ranking but for those interested, you can play the game's JP/PAL and NA versions as well to get a different feel each time while playing through the otherwise same levels.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times, though there can be some slowdown here and there depending on which version you play.
OVERALL | 74/100
I've heard mixed opinions about this game online, but I think this is my favorite Sonic game out of the three that released on the Genesis / Sega CD so far. The Time Warp mechanic definitely spices things up, the moment you meet Metal Sonic was pretty scary and memorable, the soundtrack defied expectations for both good and bad reasons and levels are massive, which made for a pretty good Sonic game overall in my opinion.
After going my entire life without having played a singular Sonic title, I have now played Sonic the Hedgehog 1, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and now have even beaten my first ever Sonic game, Sonic CD. Sonic CD initially released on September 23, 1993 for the, you guessed it (I think), Sega CD. It got ported over to Windows and later to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but it is also available in its original form through the Sonic Gems Collection for the Game Cube and PlayStation 2 (which is where I played this) and in remastered shape as part of the Sonic Origins compilation that released in 2022.
Sonic CD was developed to showcase the capabilities of the Sega CD add-on for the Sega Genesis. Sonic CD would end up being the best-selling game for the add-on, selling over 1.5 million copies. It was supposed to be an enhanced port of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but developed into its own thing over time, giving us the debut of Metal Sonic and Amy Rose, as well as the "time warp" feature.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
A short story in the manual explains the setting for this game. Sonic has a conversation with a "Princess Sally", a character I never heard of and one that apparently never appears in any Sonic game, but is rather introduced in comic books and animated series starting in 1993. She asks Sonic where he is going. Sonic would goo to Never Lake to visit 'the Little Planet'. "The one with the special stones that alter time", Sally says. Sonic mentions how the Little Planet appears of Never Lake on the last month of every year, so Sonic will check it out.
When they arrive there, something is off, as tall trees and bright flowers are replaced with nothingness. As they try to understand what is going on, Princess Sally is kidnapped by Dr. Robotnik and his newest creation, 'Metal Sonic'. Dr. Robotnik is looking to capture all time stones to manipulate time and take over the world and as per usual, it's Sonic's job to stop him.
So, in this game, there are two endings, a good and a bad ending. Each level you visit has three zones and the first two zones can be altered by going to its past and future to destroy 'transporters'. Depending on whether you do this or not, the third zone will either be a "good future" or a "bad future", which is indicated by a change in the song and in scenery, with good futures set in thriving nature and bad futures set in a metallic, dystopian style. If you turn all 3rd zones into good futures, you unlock the good ending. Otherwise, you get the bad ending, like me.
There isn't much 'story' in this game beyond this, but I was surprised with the amount of effort that went into making three distinct versions of each zone of a level and giving us two separate endings as a result. The story is not told through words at any point, but the scenery and the change of tone in the soundtrack do tell a story of their own which represents the actions you take, or don't, which is pretty nice.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Sonic CD plays pretty much the same as Sonic 1 and 2, though due to the small features added in 2, I'd say it plays like the middle-version between the two based on the features it has. There isn't really much I can say here that I haven't already said about the first two Sonic games. If you have played those already, you will know exactly what to expect. If you haven't, you probably know how Sonic games look like anyway. As always, you run through levels with three distinct zones, fight a boss on the 3rd zone and try to reach the finish line in large levels with many open and secret areas to access to make progress.
The unique aspect of this game is the Time Warp feature. You can travel to the Past and Future of a zone to destroy certain transporters to create a Good Future in each level's Zone 3 to unlock the Good Ending at the end. This is done by running through a sign saying "Past" or "Future" and then holding a certain speed will running to initiate a "warp". This is certainly a unique feature and while I didn't get Good Futures in most levels, this offers a nice additional challenge for everyone looking to do as much as possible on each zone.
Another way to get Good Futures on every third zone is to collect all "Time Stones", which replace Chaos Emeralds in this game. This means there is no Super Sonic in this game. I haven't been good enough to ever get him in Sonic 1 and 2, so it's not a big loss for me personally, but worth pointing out. To get all Time Stones, you need to finish levels with more than 50 rings each, which lets you enter a special stage where you have to destroy six UFOs within a certain time limit.
While I enjoyed all of this for the most part, I have the same issues with this game that I had with Sonic 1 and 2, and probably on an even bigger scale here. This game focuses more on exploration within given levels than the other two Sonic games on the Genesis, which means it has a bigger focus on having you slow down and look for different paths on each zone. While exploring paths is optional, this does translate over to each level as a whole, as they are pretty massive in this game and can get pretty complex. This plays into one of my complaints with these Sonic games that I mentioned previously.
Sonic has super-speed as his special ability. Unfortunately, a lot of the times this ability plays like its more of a tease, as there are a lot of obstacles that stop you from gaining top speed for more than a couple seconds. While this makes sense from a game design perspective to add challenge to these games, I feel like Sonic's speed offers more disadvantage than fun to me due to this. Whenever I'm on a straight path, I'm thinking I'll take off and get some top speed going, only to have an enemy pop into screen out of nowhere and making it impossible for me to avoid it in time, which leads me into a 2-second animation of hitting the enemy and losing all my rings. Same goes for gaining speed to fly into the air, which too many times leads to me landing on a platform with an enemy on it, which I fall on top of to lose my rings again. Simultaneously, these games have a lot of areas that force you to pick up momentum near a slope to get up there, which takes a couple seconds each time, there are non-stop obstacles which you run into that stop you dead in your track and there isn't a lot of platforming challenge for me here other than exploring and trying to avoid damaging situations that your speeds puts you into. This leads me to take it slower sometimes, which makes me want to play a Mario game instead.
I understand I'm possibly odd for having this type of criticism, but I think it has more to do with me not being the biggest fan of how these Sonic games are designed rather than me thinking that it is actually objectively bad design. Though I do have to say, running at Sonic's speeds to have enemies appear that give you 0.2 seconds to react is not something that I think is that good.
That said, I do appreciate how large the levels are and how, no matter where you go, there is (almost) always a way forward to the finish line. And finally, while I have some subjective complaints, I can conclude this by saying that if you enjoy Sonic's 2D platforming gameplay, you will enjoy Sonic CD in that aspect as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Well do I have stuff to explain here. Sonic CD is in a pretty unusual spot because it does not have one, but two soundtrakcs. The first soundtrack is used in Japan and PAL regions, while the second is exclusively to NA. Why? I don't know if there is an official reason, but I think it is assumed that the American marketing team at Sega thought that American gamers wouldn't react well to the original soundtrack, which is why they composed their own.
Funnily enough, there are many people who heavily dislike the NA version of the soundtrack and who love the JP version. Not just retrospectively, but even at and around the time of its release. I didn't know about the two separate soundtracks, so I only originally rated this game based on the American soundtrack.
Listening to it, I was pretty surprised at its tone. Instead of the usual up-beat sounds of the other Sonic games, this one sounded a lot more ominous and like it wanted to accentuate the danger that Dr. Robotnik was presenting. It sounded more mature I suppose, or at least as if it was intended for more mature audiences than you would think played this game in the majority. For the most part, I didn't actually mind this. There are plenty of tracks here that are enjoyable to listen to and create a pretty nice atmosphere you can actually chill to. Then there are downright scary ones that I can't believe made it into the game, like the Game Over track and especially the track used for boss fights. I can't imagine being a ten year old back in 1993 playing this for the first time.
After playing this game, I listened to the OST again on YouTube like I always do, and while reading the comments discovered that there was a Japanese version as well. Listening to it, you can immediately tell how much more upbeat it is. Each track is different to the US version, I don't think there are any that were re-used, and the tone of the boss fight most notably is very different. Do I think each track in the Japanese version is better? Actually, I don't. While the lows of the US soundtrack are truly god awful, it's still a good soundtrack overall, and I don't mind that the composers went for more atmosphere than funk at times. I think I prefere the Japanese version overall however.
At the end of the day, I think it's cool that there are two full soundtracks that Sonic fans got with one game, though if you are one of the kids who got traumatized back in the day, you probably feel differently.
There are some pretty iconic themes here as well, such as Sonic Boom and the Japanese Special Stage Theme. Finally, since I haven't mentioned it yet, the Past, Present and Future versions of each zone have their own tracks, which means the total length of both OSTs is absurdly long for this game.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Sonic CD is not a huge graphical jump over Sonic the Hedgehog 2 despite being released for the Sega CD add-on, which I would have expected to offer a little bit more visually. That said, Sonic CD is one of the better looking games for its time regardless.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
Atmospherically, the game suits a Sonic game quite well based on its visuals. What this game does differently though is lean away from the upbeat Sonic style at times to give you a more dystopian glance at the Sonic universe through its bad futures. This is still done in a sort-of funky way through Japan's soundtrack, but you're placed into a downright horrific horror moment through the US soundtrack at times.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game doesn't take too long to beat. It has 7 levels and pretty easy boss fights. Each level is pretty massive though, so you can pad your playtime easily by exploring them more thoroughly. On top of that, looking for those transporters in past and future parts of the zones will add a lot of playtime on top of that, and these versions of the zones also offer different environments on top of that, so the sheer amount of content in this game is pretty wild for a video game from 1993.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
As mentioned, levels are divided into 3 zones and the first two zones are designed three times for the past, present and future, which means there is absurd amounts of work that went into them here. On top of that, levels are truly massive, with tons of paths to explore that will make multiple playthroughs feel fresher than is usual for platformers and even for the first 16-bit Sonic games. Levels are also themed distinctly as always, though I wasn't blown away by any theme here like I was in Sonic 2 and some designs were also copied over from that game. Also, does every first level in a Sonic game start in a green environment? Just noticed that.
Levels being massive is great, but visually, the sheer amount of stuff going on in each visually is just overwhelming sometimes and makes for a messy presentation at times. It's also easy to get lost later on, which I thought was an odd wrinkle to put into a game like this.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
The Sonic team did a great job of keeping this Sonic game feel fresh despite the fact that it's another 2D platforming adventure. The Time Warp mechanic is not only unique to Sonic, but a unique mechanic in general, which I enjoyed to dabble with and which offer a lot of optional ways to tackle this game for each player.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
A ton of replay value here because of the 3 versions per zone that you can explore to your heart's content, because of the Time Stones you can collect optionally and because of two different endings. I don't count the two separate soundtracks in my ranking but for those interested, you can play the game's JP/PAL and NA versions as well to get a different feel each time while playing through the otherwise same levels.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times, though there can be some slowdown here and there depending on which version you play.
OVERALL | 74/100
I've heard mixed opinions about this game online, but I think this is my favorite Sonic game out of the three that released on the Genesis / Sega CD so far. The Time Warp mechanic definitely spices things up, the moment you meet Metal Sonic was pretty scary and memorable, the soundtrack defied expectations for both good and bad reasons and levels are massive, which made for a pretty good Sonic game overall in my opinion.
(This is the 92nd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
My experience with the Castlevania series is still very limited. I checked out Castlevania III from 1989, but jumped off it pretty quickly due to what I perceived to be a ridiculously high and unfair difficulty. Then I played Super Castlevania IV from 1991, which still is one of my favorite games from this challenge and a great game in general. In hindsight, having learned a bit more about classic Castlevania since, I understand why fans of the 8 and 16-bit Castlevania games have some issues with Super Castlevania IV, but from an 'outsiders perspective', it is a great game, even if it isn't the 'best Castlevania experience'.
To this day, I thought that that was for the best, and that I probably wouldn't have enjoyed the game if it were another classic Castlevania experience, at least based on my experience playing Castlevania III. Luckily, that fear has proven to be overblown after I recently played and beat Castlevania: Bloodlines, which is your typical Castlevania experience. It released on March 17 1994 exlusively for the Sega Genesis and would be just one of two Castlevania games to ever grace a Sega system alongside Symphony of the Night in 1997. Despite this, I'd say Castlevania Bloodlines is among the best games the Sega Genesis ever produced.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
There is the usual amount of story in this Castlevania game that you would expect. The manual does a great job of providing you with the information on the setting, though an in-game cutscene explains it as well.
It tells the often-told tale of the Belmonts fighting Count Dracula in Transylvania. It also adds that a certain Quincy Morris finished Count Dracula off in 1897, but was fatally wounded during the battle as well. His son, John Morris, and John's friend Eric Lecarde witnessed the fight and would go on to become vampire killers themselves as they grew older. Those skills would be put to the test in this game, as "Elizabeth Bartley", a 'regal countess' who was found guilty of killing a man in 1421 by biting him in the neck, was brought back to life and looks to bring back Dracula as well.
As the game starts, you pick one of the two characters to fight with, after which a great shot is shown of them looking at Dracula's castle from the entrance. Here is where the game begins. From then on, there is little story that is being told. Environmental storytelling is the main thing you will get here, as well as the typical final shot of Dracula's mansion collapsing. The introduction of these two new characters is also nice. John Morris is equipped with the typical whip, while Eric has a spear.
GAMEPLAY | 16/20
This game is your typical Castlevania experience. In a 2D environment, you move through levels equipped with a weapon, either the whip or the spear depending on the character you pick at the start, and try to defeat all the enemies and environmental challenges until you reach the boss of a stage. As per usual, this game requires the player to time their movement and strikes well in order to hit the enemy while also avoiding hits yourself. Unlike Super Castlevania, you can't strike in 8 directions anymore, your horizontal attacks are solely supplemented by diagonal attacks upwards only if you jump this time, giving this a more traditional gameplay feel and challenge.
Where the game shines in my opinion, even compared to Castlevania III which I personally didn't enjoy, is that it gets a great balance between difficutly and fairness. This is not designed like a 8-bit rental game, where aritifical difficulty was used to entice players to purchase the game themselves. The game has a higher than normal difficulty here as well, even on Easy, but nearly every challenge in this game has no BS in it and can be beaten simply by playing and learning the game.
There are four power-ups you can use in this game, which is I believe lower than the typical amount, and all of them feel useful here. There is the boomerang, which can be thrown from a pretty safe distance but only moves forward, not up or down. There is the battle axe, which can be thrown in an arc. There is the sacred water, which produces an effect that shoots through nearly the entire level if used as a special attack, making it the most powerful. It expires pretty fast though, while the other power-ups can be thrown as often as the crystals you collected allow (here used as 'ammo', like hearts in other Castlevania games).
Boss fights are great here, as well as the mini-boss fights throughout the stages. Each of them feels different and offers a unique challenge, which never felt like a daunting task like many other games of the early 90s made me feel like. The bosses have specific attack patterns which can change once you have dealt enough damage, and all of them can be dodged fairly reliably once you figure it out. The only boss that gave me real trouble was the last one, but even that one is definitely doable, it may just take a dozen or so tries.
Overall, this was one of the more enjoyable games to simply play because it flows so well, and while there are those thousand deaths you experience because of gravity (featuring enemies that push you off platforms), they rarely feel infuriating because almost all of the time, you actually feel like you can easily avoid it.
There are Easy and Normal difficulties to choose from at the start. I beat it on Easy, but I got pretty far on Normal as well, where enemies mainly appear more often and some are a bit more aggressive. I've read that this game is considered to be one of the more difficult Castlevania games, but I surprisingly think it's not that horrible, unless it's being compared to more modern Castlevania games, which I have not played yet. You have limited Continues and lives in this game, which is a big part of the issue I imagine. I played with those, but you can give yourself 4 additional lives per continue by using a cheat you can find on GameFAQs.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
No voice acting. Once again, Castlevania Bloodlines gives us a banger Castlevania soundtrack. Probably the part I most looked forward to with this game was to listen to the soundtrack after Super Castlevania IV's soundtrack become one of my favorites ever. It helped that that game reused beloved tracks from the other Castlevania games, and the same is true here for Castlevania Bloodlines, but it brings plenty of original tracks forward that I would gladly relisten to outside of the game (I'm doing that as I am writing this) and has a great soundtrack overall. I wouldn't say it's quite on the level of Super Castlevania IV but I'm confident it will be among my favorites of 94 regardless.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
One of the more impressive games on the Genesis visually. You travel across Europe in this game, and that comes through not just because the game tells you that you are in Italy or Germany but because the environments are so varied. Add to this that there is the typical gothic and medieval Castlevania style here and it just works really well. Backgrounds are detailed and just bring this all together well to create the perfect backdrop for a vampiric adventure. On top of this, the sprite work is really good. For many bosses, you can clearly see how each of their limbs work independently from each other and this effect works really well once they take damage and lose their arms and the weapons they were holding until they ultimately collapse. A great graphical showing for its time.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
Castlevania games have such a great atmosphere. During this time of video gaming where 95% of games would go for light-hearted tones, games like Shin Megami Tensei, Metroid and Castlevania truly are a treat for someone who likes more mature tones. Castlevania Bloodlines creates an atmosphere equally gloomy and haunting as the rest of the series, and the trip through Europe that you take in this game just adds to it really well.
CONTENT | 8/10
You might fault this game for being a bit on the shorter side, and for re-using those few final bosses for a boss-rush at the end instead of creating more unique ones, as well as the more limited number of different enemies present here, but I thought the length was pretty good from today's perspective and overall the quality of the content that is available is pretty high. Three difficulty modes and two characters to choose from which create branching paths offer plenty of time sink material in this game as well.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
Castlevania Bloodlines does a fantastic job with its levels, both because the challenges within them are, despite their difficulty, quite fair and because the challenges themselves are very varied. No stage feels alike and offers something new to overcome all the time, while regularly fitting really well with the setting the game provides. There is the stage for example where you need to climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa while it moves from side to side, or the final stage where a distortion is created which displaces the upper and lower portions of the stage and make traversal really challenging in a unique way.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
It's your typical Castlevania experience, and while I wouldn't say that it has grown stale at this point at all (though I'm looking at it from a 2023 perspective after having played just two of the games), the game also doesn't really innovate a ton here. What it does do though is provide a great Castlevania experience with great visuals, unique bosses and level design and the introduction of two new characters, one of which uses a pretty unusual weapon for a Castlevania game, the spear, which ends up opening new routes due to its special skill of letting Eric jump upwards. So while it's not an innovative concept, Konami did a great job of making it feel fresh and like its own thing that is equal to all other beloved Castlevania games in my opinion.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
You can beat this game with two characters and use their unique abilities to take two different routes and face different bosses and environments. This gives it plenty of replay value after beating it for the first time. Once you beat it (or if you use a cheat), you can go through the game again on Expert difficulty as well.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 78/100
Castlevania: Bloodlines is a great entry into the Castlevania franchise. It succeeds in its gameplay, level design, atmosphere and soundtrack, just like all the best Castlevania games seem to do, and it does so without presenting an unfair challenge for the majority of the game and while requiring the player to overcome obstacles that feel consistently different enough to make each stage feel unique and keep the gameplay interesting. I recommend it to every platformer and retro gaming fan, though the difficulty may be off-putting to players who aren't accustomed to retro games, and there is pretty much no story to speak of here, like in most platformers of its time.
My experience with the Castlevania series is still very limited. I checked out Castlevania III from 1989, but jumped off it pretty quickly due to what I perceived to be a ridiculously high and unfair difficulty. Then I played Super Castlevania IV from 1991, which still is one of my favorite games from this challenge and a great game in general. In hindsight, having learned a bit more about classic Castlevania since, I understand why fans of the 8 and 16-bit Castlevania games have some issues with Super Castlevania IV, but from an 'outsiders perspective', it is a great game, even if it isn't the 'best Castlevania experience'.
To this day, I thought that that was for the best, and that I probably wouldn't have enjoyed the game if it were another classic Castlevania experience, at least based on my experience playing Castlevania III. Luckily, that fear has proven to be overblown after I recently played and beat Castlevania: Bloodlines, which is your typical Castlevania experience. It released on March 17 1994 exlusively for the Sega Genesis and would be just one of two Castlevania games to ever grace a Sega system alongside Symphony of the Night in 1997. Despite this, I'd say Castlevania Bloodlines is among the best games the Sega Genesis ever produced.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
There is the usual amount of story in this Castlevania game that you would expect. The manual does a great job of providing you with the information on the setting, though an in-game cutscene explains it as well.
It tells the often-told tale of the Belmonts fighting Count Dracula in Transylvania. It also adds that a certain Quincy Morris finished Count Dracula off in 1897, but was fatally wounded during the battle as well. His son, John Morris, and John's friend Eric Lecarde witnessed the fight and would go on to become vampire killers themselves as they grew older. Those skills would be put to the test in this game, as "Elizabeth Bartley", a 'regal countess' who was found guilty of killing a man in 1421 by biting him in the neck, was brought back to life and looks to bring back Dracula as well.
As the game starts, you pick one of the two characters to fight with, after which a great shot is shown of them looking at Dracula's castle from the entrance. Here is where the game begins. From then on, there is little story that is being told. Environmental storytelling is the main thing you will get here, as well as the typical final shot of Dracula's mansion collapsing. The introduction of these two new characters is also nice. John Morris is equipped with the typical whip, while Eric has a spear.
GAMEPLAY | 16/20
This game is your typical Castlevania experience. In a 2D environment, you move through levels equipped with a weapon, either the whip or the spear depending on the character you pick at the start, and try to defeat all the enemies and environmental challenges until you reach the boss of a stage. As per usual, this game requires the player to time their movement and strikes well in order to hit the enemy while also avoiding hits yourself. Unlike Super Castlevania, you can't strike in 8 directions anymore, your horizontal attacks are solely supplemented by diagonal attacks upwards only if you jump this time, giving this a more traditional gameplay feel and challenge.
Where the game shines in my opinion, even compared to Castlevania III which I personally didn't enjoy, is that it gets a great balance between difficutly and fairness. This is not designed like a 8-bit rental game, where aritifical difficulty was used to entice players to purchase the game themselves. The game has a higher than normal difficulty here as well, even on Easy, but nearly every challenge in this game has no BS in it and can be beaten simply by playing and learning the game.
There are four power-ups you can use in this game, which is I believe lower than the typical amount, and all of them feel useful here. There is the boomerang, which can be thrown from a pretty safe distance but only moves forward, not up or down. There is the battle axe, which can be thrown in an arc. There is the sacred water, which produces an effect that shoots through nearly the entire level if used as a special attack, making it the most powerful. It expires pretty fast though, while the other power-ups can be thrown as often as the crystals you collected allow (here used as 'ammo', like hearts in other Castlevania games).
Boss fights are great here, as well as the mini-boss fights throughout the stages. Each of them feels different and offers a unique challenge, which never felt like a daunting task like many other games of the early 90s made me feel like. The bosses have specific attack patterns which can change once you have dealt enough damage, and all of them can be dodged fairly reliably once you figure it out. The only boss that gave me real trouble was the last one, but even that one is definitely doable, it may just take a dozen or so tries.
Overall, this was one of the more enjoyable games to simply play because it flows so well, and while there are those thousand deaths you experience because of gravity (featuring enemies that push you off platforms), they rarely feel infuriating because almost all of the time, you actually feel like you can easily avoid it.
There are Easy and Normal difficulties to choose from at the start. I beat it on Easy, but I got pretty far on Normal as well, where enemies mainly appear more often and some are a bit more aggressive. I've read that this game is considered to be one of the more difficult Castlevania games, but I surprisingly think it's not that horrible, unless it's being compared to more modern Castlevania games, which I have not played yet. You have limited Continues and lives in this game, which is a big part of the issue I imagine. I played with those, but you can give yourself 4 additional lives per continue by using a cheat you can find on GameFAQs.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
No voice acting. Once again, Castlevania Bloodlines gives us a banger Castlevania soundtrack. Probably the part I most looked forward to with this game was to listen to the soundtrack after Super Castlevania IV's soundtrack become one of my favorites ever. It helped that that game reused beloved tracks from the other Castlevania games, and the same is true here for Castlevania Bloodlines, but it brings plenty of original tracks forward that I would gladly relisten to outside of the game (I'm doing that as I am writing this) and has a great soundtrack overall. I wouldn't say it's quite on the level of Super Castlevania IV but I'm confident it will be among my favorites of 94 regardless.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
One of the more impressive games on the Genesis visually. You travel across Europe in this game, and that comes through not just because the game tells you that you are in Italy or Germany but because the environments are so varied. Add to this that there is the typical gothic and medieval Castlevania style here and it just works really well. Backgrounds are detailed and just bring this all together well to create the perfect backdrop for a vampiric adventure. On top of this, the sprite work is really good. For many bosses, you can clearly see how each of their limbs work independently from each other and this effect works really well once they take damage and lose their arms and the weapons they were holding until they ultimately collapse. A great graphical showing for its time.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
Castlevania games have such a great atmosphere. During this time of video gaming where 95% of games would go for light-hearted tones, games like Shin Megami Tensei, Metroid and Castlevania truly are a treat for someone who likes more mature tones. Castlevania Bloodlines creates an atmosphere equally gloomy and haunting as the rest of the series, and the trip through Europe that you take in this game just adds to it really well.
CONTENT | 8/10
You might fault this game for being a bit on the shorter side, and for re-using those few final bosses for a boss-rush at the end instead of creating more unique ones, as well as the more limited number of different enemies present here, but I thought the length was pretty good from today's perspective and overall the quality of the content that is available is pretty high. Three difficulty modes and two characters to choose from which create branching paths offer plenty of time sink material in this game as well.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
Castlevania Bloodlines does a fantastic job with its levels, both because the challenges within them are, despite their difficulty, quite fair and because the challenges themselves are very varied. No stage feels alike and offers something new to overcome all the time, while regularly fitting really well with the setting the game provides. There is the stage for example where you need to climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa while it moves from side to side, or the final stage where a distortion is created which displaces the upper and lower portions of the stage and make traversal really challenging in a unique way.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
It's your typical Castlevania experience, and while I wouldn't say that it has grown stale at this point at all (though I'm looking at it from a 2023 perspective after having played just two of the games), the game also doesn't really innovate a ton here. What it does do though is provide a great Castlevania experience with great visuals, unique bosses and level design and the introduction of two new characters, one of which uses a pretty unusual weapon for a Castlevania game, the spear, which ends up opening new routes due to its special skill of letting Eric jump upwards. So while it's not an innovative concept, Konami did a great job of making it feel fresh and like its own thing that is equal to all other beloved Castlevania games in my opinion.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
You can beat this game with two characters and use their unique abilities to take two different routes and face different bosses and environments. This gives it plenty of replay value after beating it for the first time. Once you beat it (or if you use a cheat), you can go through the game again on Expert difficulty as well.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 78/100
Castlevania: Bloodlines is a great entry into the Castlevania franchise. It succeeds in its gameplay, level design, atmosphere and soundtrack, just like all the best Castlevania games seem to do, and it does so without presenting an unfair challenge for the majority of the game and while requiring the player to overcome obstacles that feel consistently different enough to make each stage feel unique and keep the gameplay interesting. I recommend it to every platformer and retro gaming fan, though the difficulty may be off-putting to players who aren't accustomed to retro games, and there is pretty much no story to speak of here, like in most platformers of its time.
1992
As for a lot of gamers, I am a big fan of Hideo Kojima's work. Not just because I find it of high quality and a lot of fun to engage with, but because these days, he is among few AAA game directors who truly try to make unique video games. Not those "focus-grouped to death" copies of each other with a different coat of paint to appear as mainstream as possible, but once in a lifetime experiences where he doesn't care whether it is universally praised or not. See Death Stranding for example, a game literally about making deliveries from Point A to B. Go into it deeper and you will find a way more profound experience with a lot of commentary on modern society (scarily apt during the pandemic that started a year after its release as well), and personally I found the gameplay to be a lot of fun as well.
Just as Hideo Kojima's work over the past couple decades is unique to the AAA video game industry to this day, his work in 1988 with SNATCHER is unique to this day's Hideo Kojima. It's not an Action blockbuster like the Metal Gear Solid or Death Stranding games, but it's rather a game in a genre of games Hideo Kojima enjoyed during his own formative years, the visual novel / crime mystery genre that was somewhat popular in Japan at the time.
Snatcher released initially on November 26, 1988 for the PC-8801 and the MSX2, two Japanese personal computers. It then released in a "remade" version on October 23, 1992 for the PC-Engine (exclusively for the Japanese version of the TurboGrafx-16) before it finally got an English release in December 15, 1994 for the Sega CD, which is the excuse I used to add it to my playlist for the challenge I am currently doing. To be honest, I have no idea how it came about to release this game in the West after not having done so in the 6 years prior, especially since the spritual successor 'Policenauts', which also released in 1994, did not get a Western release. But, thankfully, it happened, and with voice acting to boot. These games have a cult following these days and after having finished Snatcher, you can count me in among those who would be happy to see Hideo Kojima do another game of this type as some sort of side project during these modern times.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
If you decide to play Snatcher, you will probably do so to mainly experience its story. If that is not your expectation going in, I'm sure it will quickly become what will hold your attention, as the gameplay is rather typical for a visual novel. It's mainly clicking at prompts and listening to dialogue.
So with that being the case, delivering an interesting story full of interesting characters, plot twists and tense moments is quite important for this game to be worth playing. Luckily, the game delivers on all fronts thanks to its cyberpunk setting filled with a lot of well thoughtout, interesting lore, its compelling premise and its cast of characters.
50 years ago, the explosion of a biological weapon in a research facility near Moscow called "Lucifer-Alpha" killed over half of the world's population in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In the present, a new city on an artificial island in Eastern Asia was made and is called "Neo Kobe City", a melting pot of cultures due to large number of immigrants from China, the USA, Eastern and Western Europe and even more areas of the world. Mankind faces a new dilemma due to the appearance of humanoid robots that are called "Snatchers", because they 'snatch' a person (kill and dispose of them) and take up their spot. They can't be detected due to the fact that they breathe, bleed and sweat like any human and even wear artifical skin to look exactly like the person they are copying. They mainly snatch VIP types however, which presumably means that their appearance goes beyond "AI gone rogue".
You play Gillian Seed, who, along with your wife, is an amnesiac and just got assigned to the JUNKERs, a special anti-Snatcher task force (Japanese Undercover Neuro Kinetic Elimination Ranger). Your assignment is to be a runner, an in-field operative taking on the highest of risks by facing these Snatchers head on and eliminating them. To do this, you are assigned a Navigator, a robot that assists you on the field. Navigators get their personalities formed somewhat after the Junker they are assigned to, so yours. Your navigator is called "Metal Gear Mk. II", designed after the "Metal Gear menace from the 20th century", so yes, this seems to play in an alternate future of the Metal Gear universe.
This game is a visual novel, so gameplay looks like this. The first screen you see is that of the Junker HQ reception. A panel of prompts appears at the bottom half of the screen. You can "Look" at things, "Investigate" things, "Talk" and "Ask" if a person is in the room with you and also look at your "Possessions" to "look" and "investigate" them as well. Looking at things and investigating things is different in that investigating them is more analytical. You are often meant to look and investigate things multiple times, as each time reveals new information and thoughts. Some of these options are optionable if you want to get immersed more deeply with your surroundings, and some you are meant to use to trigger a moment that lets you progress, such as uncovering a new clue. As someone who likes to get immersed as much as possible, I have used every single option as many times as I could (at least I think), which not only does what I just told you, but also triggered a few "hidden" moments that I found quite entertaining. In one part of the city for example, Gillian attempts to "pick up women" and if you do so multiple times, one woman turns out to be a Snatcher, which triggers a "Game Over?" screen before it is revealed that Gillian was just daydreaming.
Gillian Seed in general is a pretty odd fellow, though he is more of a poster-boy for how Kojima seemingly wanted the game's atmosphere to be more humane to balance out the fact that Snatchers dominate everything else in this game. Gillian is an amnesiac as mentioned and has a wife called "Jamie", though they don't remember each other. He likes to use humor whenever possible to lower the tension that the entire case and his occupation represents, though balances that out with a get shit done attitude when the situation requires it. The non-serious part of his personality would have felt a bit too "in your face" however, if he wasn't assisted by Metal Gear Mk. 2, who steals the show in this game in my opinion. Both the voice acting and the personality of Metal Gear is perfection, as Metal Gear uses his analytical makeup to save Gillian's butt countless times on the field, but also roasts him every chance he gets when they get a break from the Snatcher-hunting they do. For a guy like Gillian who I can only describe as a "creep" for most parts of the game, I think it was a great idea to have him be accompanied by someone like Metal Gear who keeps him in line as much as possible. I say "creep" because there are 3 female side characters and several other female NPCs in this game, and I don't think there was a single one Gillian didn't make a pass at. For one, you can "look" at any character several times, and doing so once illicits a "she looks great" type response from Gilliant, while doing so more than once prompts the women to say that they feel uncomfortable, which doesn't stop Gillian from making way more straightforward remarks about their apperance. Now don't get me wrong, this type of behavior doesn't usually weird me out and I can see it for what it is, which is entertainment. But with Gillian, it's different. For one, he has a wife, which you can call in this game to tell her how much you want to get to know and to love her again. This creates a very weird situation where Gillian talks to Jamie on the phone, only to flirt with several women over the next hour alone. Second, one of the women includes the 18-year old daughter of a fallen co-worker, who is 14 in Japan's version of the game, so that Gillian doesn't know boundaries whatsoever is pretty off-putting. Otherwise though, his attempts at flirtation are mainly meant to be humorous, and it works since he gets shot down constantly (and gets ridiculed by Metal Gear for it), but on his own he doesn't make a great main character because his personality is mainly doing this shtick.
Apart from Metal Gear, who is the best character in the game for me, there are several individuals who have this mysterious aura around them, like there is more to them than you'd think. Harry the engineer is one of these types, but it extends to the Chief of the JUNKER operation, a bounty hunter named Random Hajile, your wife Jamie, an informer you talk to several times, and Gibson, the only other JUNKER who currently works as a runner alongside you.
With that, I want to get to the main story. I don't want to spoil anything, and in general I think the big story beats flow at a great pace and introduce a lot of twists and memorable moments. However, there is one flaw to the premise of the story that I found to be pretty odd. Actually, there were several over the first couple of hours, but it is worth noting that the plot cleared up plenty of questions I had and actually answered them in a quite satisfactory manner. This one issue that remains though is that this JUNKER operation seems pathetically tiny considering that the "Snatcher menace" presents a huge issue to all of mankind. ALL OF MANKIND. Meanwhile, here you are in the secret JUNKER operation tasked with stopping it and all you have is 5 (five) measly people working there, including just two actual runners. What? Even if Snatchers would snatch up everyday folk, this would be unrealistic, but when VIPs are exclusively involved, you'd think more monetary efforts would be made to make sure the menace was eradicated asap. The game does have an answer to this worry later on at least somewhat I suppose, but I still think that is too unrealistic to have two guys do all the work.
That said, if you enjoy a good mystery story, if you enjoy visual novels and if you like the cyberpunk aesthetic, I think you will enjoy the story that this game tells. It's well executed, I never felt like the game dragged with filler moments and the plot twists were well executed. The pre-1992 version had only 2 acts, but while this version comes with an additional third, which turns this game from one with a cliffhanger ending to one with a complete story. Knowing this, the third act did feel slightly out of place, as the majority of it involves listening to dialogue instead of much player input when it comes to investigation or the like, but the act does end things on a satisfactory note, so I'm glad it's there to give the player a full story to enjoy, though it does leave some room for a sequel.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
This is a visual novel, though not exactly like most modern ones. Instead of listening to a story and just clicking the A/X button to read the next lines, you select options to look at and investigate, so you are constantly involved with what the next set of lines of dialogue will focus on, keeping you more engaged. But of course, gameplay is a low priority in this game overall.
There is only one part about this game that has true gameplay, which is the game's light gun sections. In a 3x3 grid akin to a game of whack-a-mole, enemies appear in one of the 9 spots and you need to quickly react and aim and shoot at the part of the grid that they are on. This is a pretty small part of the game and I found it to be appear just the perfect number of times over the course of the game. I didn't fail once, but I've read that some found these parts to be kind of difficult. There is a rush of enemies in one late-game section of this, which might give you some trouble, if you are slower on the buttons, but I'm not nearly the fastest and got by with plenty of health remaining.
With visual novels, I find that the quality of the story makes the gameplay more or less tolerable, and since I found the story to be so good, I enjoyed taking my time with this one. This involved choosing every option to investigate multiple times, even to just trigger some optional dialogue from the characters.
You don't just choose options however. First, to find clues and progress, you often need to choose specific options multiple times. The order you would usually choose is to look at something and then to investigate. Sometimes though, you look, investigate and then have to look again to trigger an event, which was a weird way to do things, so be wary of this. That said, asking the player to be thorough is not a bad thing on its own, as reading through all the lines that are available adds to the overall context that the player gets.
One final part of the gameplay here are the puzzles. Often, you need to input answers, such as the password to talk to an informant, the name of a person, the really contrived "Oleen" puzzle and more. If a puzzle gives you any trouble, the game guides you to the answer pretty nicely, so don't worry about not figuring them out.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
This game has voice acting!!! An anomaly for games that I play as part of this retro challenge I'm doing. Of course, it's less unique for Sega CD titles, but still a very new thing for video games at the time. Due to this, I was expecting terrible performances, but the majority of characters are genuinely well voiced. These of course do not compare to today's quality, but for 1994, they don't take away from the experience. Some voices I thought didn't really have much emotion in them, such as the voice of Katrina, while the voice actress for Metal Gear did a fantastic job in my opinion. It's a good performance from the cast overall, with some high and low points.
The soundtrack of this game has a very unique sound to it in my opinion, and I mean that in a positive way. This is a cyberpunk / cyber noir themed game, and while I couldn't have told you what that sounded like beforehand, I think the game nails that atmosphere really well. The track that plays when shit hits the fan really gets you off your seat and ready to investigate the crap out of the place you're in, while I have no doubt that I will remember some tracks (like the Junker HQ one) years and years down the line. Liked it a lot overall.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
Snatcher has a great cyberpunk aesthetic. Whether its the neon-lit Neo Kobe City, the run-down slums in the otherwise high-tech environment or the presentation of the Snatchers, it has a great visual style, timeless you could even say. The game features some pretty gory sections (decapacitated humans, dead animals), so if you don't like that sort of stuff, stay away. For me, it added a lot to the legitimacy of the Snatcher threat and was not used too much as to be tactless. The presentation of the screens in this game looks pretty good in this remade version of the game, though they are simple-looking for the most part, as the majority of screens had little to no actual movement in them but rather remained still. This didn't take away from the cinematics however, which were well done despite the visual limitations the game had to work with.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Incredibly atmospheric. Cyber noir is presenting "technology as a destructive and dystopian force that threatens every aspect of our reality", and that fits the game's theme perfectly. It's a story about humanity's lack of trust in one another and how it is one of our biggest flaws, and it carries that from its beginning all the way to the end. Heck, due to suffering from amnesia, Gillian is partly defined by this, though he hardly is the only one here. The game portrays this theme well several times throughout the game. The cyberpunk part of the cyber noir theme is also well represented here, with the contrast of high tech and the rich parts of Neo Kobe City being compared to the slums ridden with poverty. There are even minor things here, like a group of women taking their artificially enhanced pets to the vet, like a parrot with instant memorization, a dog that barely makes any sound and ... a pigeon? The deep lore that you can read up on on the computer at Junker HQ also is worth going through to familiarize yourself with Neo Kobe City.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game took me about 10 hours to beat, though you can easily beat it a couple hours sooner, if you skip some of the optional stuff. For example, reading through all the lore on the computer at Junker HQ took me over half an hour and is completely optional. There is a lot of good stuff here, and little feels as filler.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
This is a pretty well-paced adventure throughout, with a good mix of investigating, action, comedy and romance, though the last part never really felt right to me due to what I talked about in the Story part of this review. My only issue was that progression was somehow hidden behind a combination of Look / Investigate / Look that felt unnecessary, and some of the puzzles felt really contrived. That said, this is a pretty focused game and does its job well in terms of the design of its structure.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
This is not a new concept, as Hideo Kojima used similar Japanese crime adventures as inspiration for this game. It is unique in that I haven't played it in the 4+ years worth of games I've played as part of this challenge, it is a visual novel, which is a rare breed for its time, especially in the West and it tells a good story that aged pretty well. And I guess it's also worth pointing out that the game does enough to keep the player engaged without making this game feel like a book and without making the limited light gun sequences to feel annoying.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
This is a very linear adventure. If you are going through all options like me, which doesn't take a lot of effort, you will see everything in one go, besides some minor dialogue results at times perhaps. But other than that, one playthrough will give you pretty much everything here.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 78/100
A visual novel that is worthy of being played. If you are a fan of Kojima's work, this is a must play, if you are a fan of visual novels or adventure games, this is well worth a playthrough and if you enjoy good stories in video games, this is in the upper tiers, especially for its time.
(This is the 94th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Just as Hideo Kojima's work over the past couple decades is unique to the AAA video game industry to this day, his work in 1988 with SNATCHER is unique to this day's Hideo Kojima. It's not an Action blockbuster like the Metal Gear Solid or Death Stranding games, but it's rather a game in a genre of games Hideo Kojima enjoyed during his own formative years, the visual novel / crime mystery genre that was somewhat popular in Japan at the time.
Snatcher released initially on November 26, 1988 for the PC-8801 and the MSX2, two Japanese personal computers. It then released in a "remade" version on October 23, 1992 for the PC-Engine (exclusively for the Japanese version of the TurboGrafx-16) before it finally got an English release in December 15, 1994 for the Sega CD, which is the excuse I used to add it to my playlist for the challenge I am currently doing. To be honest, I have no idea how it came about to release this game in the West after not having done so in the 6 years prior, especially since the spritual successor 'Policenauts', which also released in 1994, did not get a Western release. But, thankfully, it happened, and with voice acting to boot. These games have a cult following these days and after having finished Snatcher, you can count me in among those who would be happy to see Hideo Kojima do another game of this type as some sort of side project during these modern times.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
If you decide to play Snatcher, you will probably do so to mainly experience its story. If that is not your expectation going in, I'm sure it will quickly become what will hold your attention, as the gameplay is rather typical for a visual novel. It's mainly clicking at prompts and listening to dialogue.
So with that being the case, delivering an interesting story full of interesting characters, plot twists and tense moments is quite important for this game to be worth playing. Luckily, the game delivers on all fronts thanks to its cyberpunk setting filled with a lot of well thoughtout, interesting lore, its compelling premise and its cast of characters.
50 years ago, the explosion of a biological weapon in a research facility near Moscow called "Lucifer-Alpha" killed over half of the world's population in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In the present, a new city on an artificial island in Eastern Asia was made and is called "Neo Kobe City", a melting pot of cultures due to large number of immigrants from China, the USA, Eastern and Western Europe and even more areas of the world. Mankind faces a new dilemma due to the appearance of humanoid robots that are called "Snatchers", because they 'snatch' a person (kill and dispose of them) and take up their spot. They can't be detected due to the fact that they breathe, bleed and sweat like any human and even wear artifical skin to look exactly like the person they are copying. They mainly snatch VIP types however, which presumably means that their appearance goes beyond "AI gone rogue".
You play Gillian Seed, who, along with your wife, is an amnesiac and just got assigned to the JUNKERs, a special anti-Snatcher task force (Japanese Undercover Neuro Kinetic Elimination Ranger). Your assignment is to be a runner, an in-field operative taking on the highest of risks by facing these Snatchers head on and eliminating them. To do this, you are assigned a Navigator, a robot that assists you on the field. Navigators get their personalities formed somewhat after the Junker they are assigned to, so yours. Your navigator is called "Metal Gear Mk. II", designed after the "Metal Gear menace from the 20th century", so yes, this seems to play in an alternate future of the Metal Gear universe.
This game is a visual novel, so gameplay looks like this. The first screen you see is that of the Junker HQ reception. A panel of prompts appears at the bottom half of the screen. You can "Look" at things, "Investigate" things, "Talk" and "Ask" if a person is in the room with you and also look at your "Possessions" to "look" and "investigate" them as well. Looking at things and investigating things is different in that investigating them is more analytical. You are often meant to look and investigate things multiple times, as each time reveals new information and thoughts. Some of these options are optionable if you want to get immersed more deeply with your surroundings, and some you are meant to use to trigger a moment that lets you progress, such as uncovering a new clue. As someone who likes to get immersed as much as possible, I have used every single option as many times as I could (at least I think), which not only does what I just told you, but also triggered a few "hidden" moments that I found quite entertaining. In one part of the city for example, Gillian attempts to "pick up women" and if you do so multiple times, one woman turns out to be a Snatcher, which triggers a "Game Over?" screen before it is revealed that Gillian was just daydreaming.
Gillian Seed in general is a pretty odd fellow, though he is more of a poster-boy for how Kojima seemingly wanted the game's atmosphere to be more humane to balance out the fact that Snatchers dominate everything else in this game. Gillian is an amnesiac as mentioned and has a wife called "Jamie", though they don't remember each other. He likes to use humor whenever possible to lower the tension that the entire case and his occupation represents, though balances that out with a get shit done attitude when the situation requires it. The non-serious part of his personality would have felt a bit too "in your face" however, if he wasn't assisted by Metal Gear Mk. 2, who steals the show in this game in my opinion. Both the voice acting and the personality of Metal Gear is perfection, as Metal Gear uses his analytical makeup to save Gillian's butt countless times on the field, but also roasts him every chance he gets when they get a break from the Snatcher-hunting they do. For a guy like Gillian who I can only describe as a "creep" for most parts of the game, I think it was a great idea to have him be accompanied by someone like Metal Gear who keeps him in line as much as possible. I say "creep" because there are 3 female side characters and several other female NPCs in this game, and I don't think there was a single one Gillian didn't make a pass at. For one, you can "look" at any character several times, and doing so once illicits a "she looks great" type response from Gilliant, while doing so more than once prompts the women to say that they feel uncomfortable, which doesn't stop Gillian from making way more straightforward remarks about their apperance. Now don't get me wrong, this type of behavior doesn't usually weird me out and I can see it for what it is, which is entertainment. But with Gillian, it's different. For one, he has a wife, which you can call in this game to tell her how much you want to get to know and to love her again. This creates a very weird situation where Gillian talks to Jamie on the phone, only to flirt with several women over the next hour alone. Second, one of the women includes the 18-year old daughter of a fallen co-worker, who is 14 in Japan's version of the game, so that Gillian doesn't know boundaries whatsoever is pretty off-putting. Otherwise though, his attempts at flirtation are mainly meant to be humorous, and it works since he gets shot down constantly (and gets ridiculed by Metal Gear for it), but on his own he doesn't make a great main character because his personality is mainly doing this shtick.
Apart from Metal Gear, who is the best character in the game for me, there are several individuals who have this mysterious aura around them, like there is more to them than you'd think. Harry the engineer is one of these types, but it extends to the Chief of the JUNKER operation, a bounty hunter named Random Hajile, your wife Jamie, an informer you talk to several times, and Gibson, the only other JUNKER who currently works as a runner alongside you.
With that, I want to get to the main story. I don't want to spoil anything, and in general I think the big story beats flow at a great pace and introduce a lot of twists and memorable moments. However, there is one flaw to the premise of the story that I found to be pretty odd. Actually, there were several over the first couple of hours, but it is worth noting that the plot cleared up plenty of questions I had and actually answered them in a quite satisfactory manner. This one issue that remains though is that this JUNKER operation seems pathetically tiny considering that the "Snatcher menace" presents a huge issue to all of mankind. ALL OF MANKIND. Meanwhile, here you are in the secret JUNKER operation tasked with stopping it and all you have is 5 (five) measly people working there, including just two actual runners. What? Even if Snatchers would snatch up everyday folk, this would be unrealistic, but when VIPs are exclusively involved, you'd think more monetary efforts would be made to make sure the menace was eradicated asap. The game does have an answer to this worry later on at least somewhat I suppose, but I still think that is too unrealistic to have two guys do all the work.
That said, if you enjoy a good mystery story, if you enjoy visual novels and if you like the cyberpunk aesthetic, I think you will enjoy the story that this game tells. It's well executed, I never felt like the game dragged with filler moments and the plot twists were well executed. The pre-1992 version had only 2 acts, but while this version comes with an additional third, which turns this game from one with a cliffhanger ending to one with a complete story. Knowing this, the third act did feel slightly out of place, as the majority of it involves listening to dialogue instead of much player input when it comes to investigation or the like, but the act does end things on a satisfactory note, so I'm glad it's there to give the player a full story to enjoy, though it does leave some room for a sequel.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
This is a visual novel, though not exactly like most modern ones. Instead of listening to a story and just clicking the A/X button to read the next lines, you select options to look at and investigate, so you are constantly involved with what the next set of lines of dialogue will focus on, keeping you more engaged. But of course, gameplay is a low priority in this game overall.
There is only one part about this game that has true gameplay, which is the game's light gun sections. In a 3x3 grid akin to a game of whack-a-mole, enemies appear in one of the 9 spots and you need to quickly react and aim and shoot at the part of the grid that they are on. This is a pretty small part of the game and I found it to be appear just the perfect number of times over the course of the game. I didn't fail once, but I've read that some found these parts to be kind of difficult. There is a rush of enemies in one late-game section of this, which might give you some trouble, if you are slower on the buttons, but I'm not nearly the fastest and got by with plenty of health remaining.
With visual novels, I find that the quality of the story makes the gameplay more or less tolerable, and since I found the story to be so good, I enjoyed taking my time with this one. This involved choosing every option to investigate multiple times, even to just trigger some optional dialogue from the characters.
You don't just choose options however. First, to find clues and progress, you often need to choose specific options multiple times. The order you would usually choose is to look at something and then to investigate. Sometimes though, you look, investigate and then have to look again to trigger an event, which was a weird way to do things, so be wary of this. That said, asking the player to be thorough is not a bad thing on its own, as reading through all the lines that are available adds to the overall context that the player gets.
One final part of the gameplay here are the puzzles. Often, you need to input answers, such as the password to talk to an informant, the name of a person, the really contrived "Oleen" puzzle and more. If a puzzle gives you any trouble, the game guides you to the answer pretty nicely, so don't worry about not figuring them out.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
This game has voice acting!!! An anomaly for games that I play as part of this retro challenge I'm doing. Of course, it's less unique for Sega CD titles, but still a very new thing for video games at the time. Due to this, I was expecting terrible performances, but the majority of characters are genuinely well voiced. These of course do not compare to today's quality, but for 1994, they don't take away from the experience. Some voices I thought didn't really have much emotion in them, such as the voice of Katrina, while the voice actress for Metal Gear did a fantastic job in my opinion. It's a good performance from the cast overall, with some high and low points.
The soundtrack of this game has a very unique sound to it in my opinion, and I mean that in a positive way. This is a cyberpunk / cyber noir themed game, and while I couldn't have told you what that sounded like beforehand, I think the game nails that atmosphere really well. The track that plays when shit hits the fan really gets you off your seat and ready to investigate the crap out of the place you're in, while I have no doubt that I will remember some tracks (like the Junker HQ one) years and years down the line. Liked it a lot overall.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
Snatcher has a great cyberpunk aesthetic. Whether its the neon-lit Neo Kobe City, the run-down slums in the otherwise high-tech environment or the presentation of the Snatchers, it has a great visual style, timeless you could even say. The game features some pretty gory sections (decapacitated humans, dead animals), so if you don't like that sort of stuff, stay away. For me, it added a lot to the legitimacy of the Snatcher threat and was not used too much as to be tactless. The presentation of the screens in this game looks pretty good in this remade version of the game, though they are simple-looking for the most part, as the majority of screens had little to no actual movement in them but rather remained still. This didn't take away from the cinematics however, which were well done despite the visual limitations the game had to work with.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Incredibly atmospheric. Cyber noir is presenting "technology as a destructive and dystopian force that threatens every aspect of our reality", and that fits the game's theme perfectly. It's a story about humanity's lack of trust in one another and how it is one of our biggest flaws, and it carries that from its beginning all the way to the end. Heck, due to suffering from amnesia, Gillian is partly defined by this, though he hardly is the only one here. The game portrays this theme well several times throughout the game. The cyberpunk part of the cyber noir theme is also well represented here, with the contrast of high tech and the rich parts of Neo Kobe City being compared to the slums ridden with poverty. There are even minor things here, like a group of women taking their artificially enhanced pets to the vet, like a parrot with instant memorization, a dog that barely makes any sound and ... a pigeon? The deep lore that you can read up on on the computer at Junker HQ also is worth going through to familiarize yourself with Neo Kobe City.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game took me about 10 hours to beat, though you can easily beat it a couple hours sooner, if you skip some of the optional stuff. For example, reading through all the lore on the computer at Junker HQ took me over half an hour and is completely optional. There is a lot of good stuff here, and little feels as filler.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
This is a pretty well-paced adventure throughout, with a good mix of investigating, action, comedy and romance, though the last part never really felt right to me due to what I talked about in the Story part of this review. My only issue was that progression was somehow hidden behind a combination of Look / Investigate / Look that felt unnecessary, and some of the puzzles felt really contrived. That said, this is a pretty focused game and does its job well in terms of the design of its structure.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
This is not a new concept, as Hideo Kojima used similar Japanese crime adventures as inspiration for this game. It is unique in that I haven't played it in the 4+ years worth of games I've played as part of this challenge, it is a visual novel, which is a rare breed for its time, especially in the West and it tells a good story that aged pretty well. And I guess it's also worth pointing out that the game does enough to keep the player engaged without making this game feel like a book and without making the limited light gun sequences to feel annoying.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
This is a very linear adventure. If you are going through all options like me, which doesn't take a lot of effort, you will see everything in one go, besides some minor dialogue results at times perhaps. But other than that, one playthrough will give you pretty much everything here.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 78/100
A visual novel that is worthy of being played. If you are a fan of Kojima's work, this is a must play, if you are a fan of visual novels or adventure games, this is well worth a playthrough and if you enjoy good stories in video games, this is in the upper tiers, especially for its time.
(This is the 94th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
1994
I like to pride myself in the fact that I enjoy almost every type of video game genre. If you asked me what my Top 20 games were, you'd probably get games from 10+ genres. That said, one genre I didn't manage to gel with before for some reason ended up being Metroidvanias. I played quite a few, but the only one I enjoyed was Guacamelee. I do like the Metroidvania-defining progression though. "Finding things to interact with, not being able to do so until I get a specific skill, coming back hours later to use that skill and finally interact with the thing" is a pretty satisfying thing.
I suppose the part that becomes a issue for me would be the maze-like design of levels coupled with that system. Where do I go, what do I do, where even am I, why are save points so far apart? Hollow Knight is probably the most notable Metroidvania I tried and bounced off of multiple times for reasons like this. I did want to go back to that however, and I think playing and beating Super Metroid gave me a lot of extra motivation to check out Hollow Knight and many other Metroidvanias that came out up to this point.
Super Metroid released on March 19, 1994 for the SNES and is the third installment in the very popular Metroid franchise. It's the second game for a home console and the first for a fourth-gen system. I played Metroid II for the Game Boy a few months ago, but only gave it a 52 for multiple reasons, chief among them that the limitations set by the Game Boy meant that many things I enjoyed about Super Metroid simply couldn't translate. But yes, Super Metroid ended up being much, much more enjoyable and is another fantastic release for Nintendo's SNES.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
Super Metroid tells its story through its atmosphere. In terms of pure storytelling, the game doesn't do a whole lot, but it has one moment that the game pulls off pretty well near the end. It also generally continues the story of one of gaming's most recognizable characters, which is worth acknowledging, and it doesn't do anything wrong in that regard, it just doesn't do a whole lot.
To give you the short of it because, frankly, there ain't a long version, Samus Aran brings the Metroid that she left with in Metroid II to the Ceres Space colony to be studied. It is found ou that its energy-producing abilities could be used for good. Ridley, the game's antagonist, steals the Metroid and Samus follows Ridley to the planet Zebes. Here, Samus must once again move through extremely hostile territory.
The ending in this game is interesting in that it feels like a proper conclusion, with no cliffhanger or anything else pointing to the continuation of Samus' story. There also was no Metroid game for the next 8 years, the longest ever gap between releases for Metroid games. This feels weird for a game that is so popular these days, but Super Metroid never was a mega-seller, selling "only" 1.42 million copies by 2003, so maybe that's part of the reason why the 5th gen was skipped. [Reading through some posts online, it appears director Yoshio Sakamoto had other commitments during the gap of 8 years and didn't feel like the N64 would be a suitable system to make a Metroid game that would live up to expectations.]
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
One of the most fun games to play as far as the early 90s go. Controls are smooth, the gameplay loop is fluid and the constant acquisition of abilities as you play means you never really see everything the game has to offer until you're pretty much done with it.
The game is a side-scrolling action-adventure / platformer with a big focus on exploration and constant progression ('Metroidvania'). You start the game out with a basic weapon and the ability to jump. You quickly start gaining new abilities that not only make you more powerful, but also allow you to enter areas that you were previously locked out of. For example, rolling up into a ball lets you enter tiny passages. Gaining the ability to place bombs while in bomb-form lets you jump up to enter tiny passages that are placed higher. Missiles allow you to open stronger doors. It's a timeless system that can both fail and succeed depending on execution. In Super Metroid, it is executed very well.
The only issue I personally had with the gameplay was how it dealt with your health. If you have very low health for example, you can get it back up by either finding a rare location that fills it up for you or by killing enemies, who drop items whenever you need them. The idea is fine, but in practice, I found myself "grinding" by constantly entering and exiting rooms and killing the enemies that spawn to max out my health again. Die and you respawn on your last save point with the health you had at that time. So either that save point is "useless" in that regard, or, if you saved at full health, it literally is a better idea to let yourself get killed than to spend a couple minutes filling up your health manually.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
No voice acting apart from the intro. The soundtrack does a phenomenal job in setting the atmosphere. I'd say the majority of the tracks are very good, but Brinstar (Underground Depths) and the Ridley / Draygon Boss Theme, especially the former, are some of my favorites from the 95 games I've played for this challenge so far.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
The visual quality is pretty good for a game of its time. Locations have varied styles, there are lots of different enemy designs, special effects look nice and the whole vibe the game is going for is excellent.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
One of the most atmospheric games I've played from this time period. The visuals, the soundtrack and the theme of this game just work extremely well together. I didn't play this game when I was young, but I can easily see myself being very scared playing this, because even in my mid 20s today I notice how daunting the atmosphere feels.
CONTENT | 9/10
The only complaints I have in regards to the game's content is that unlike more traditional platformers, where a lot of hours are spent trying to get past a hard challenge through trial and error, Super Metroid adds hours to its playtime by making it somewhat difficult at times to figure out where you should even go. I'll go over this more under "Level/Mission Design", but apart from these complaints, what you get will be 8-12 hours of a fun time that for the majority of it, flows really well and keeps giving you new upgrades and powers to play around with, no challenges to conquer, new areas to explore and new bosses you defeat. It's a fun time.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
Your opinions in regards to the game's level design will vary greatly depending on your frustration tolerance and your understanding of what makes a video game fun. Firstly, it's undeniable that a lot of thought went into the design of the levels and how their setup would work for progression as a whole. In addition, visually and environmentally the levels stand out in that there is a lot of variety in play here. I think there will be much less debate about these points. Where it gets more contentious is when it comes to the basic philosophy of this game and, by extent, the whole Metroidvania genre.
When at first you have 1 route to take, all of a sudden you have 4 more that open up when that first route gives you a new ability. From here, 4 routes may turn into 8 routes, and later, those 8 routes may turn back to just 3 routes, but you have already discovered so many parts of the game that you're not quite sure where those 3 routes were. Playing this game and then taking a break for a week for example will make it nigh impossible to beat because a lot of it is dependent on the player keeping in mind certain areas that they couldn't enter in the past, so that when they get a certain ability later, they know where it will be useful. If you don't do this, get ready to go everywhere trying to figure out what to do, which can sometimes feel more, and sometimes less intuitive.
Ultimately, I personally didn't find this to be a big issue, though I've had to look up a guide once or twice (the solution felt obvious in hindsight). I think it's a formula that won't be for everyone, but in my opinion Super Metroid succeeded in balancing the difficulty, where it may take you a little while to figure out where to go next, but it's rarely ever cryptic, and you will find your way to go, if you just concentrate on the game.
Once you beat it however, and once you understand what needs to be done without having to think about it too much, I could see this being a very fun "comfort game" to come back to, because the gameplay, when it flows and is not disrupted by you trying to find the next path, flows reeeally well and beating the game will probably take an expert 3-4 hours.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
Super Metroid is the first game to truly refine the Metroidvania formula, at least by popular belief. Not only is that a genre that pumps out great games to this day, but based on my own limited experience, I'd say Super Metroid still is among the genre's highlights, though I assume, and hope, that the rest of the Metroid series pulls me in even further. As far as this challenge I'm doing is concerned, I've played almost 5 year's worth of games and have not experienced anything quite like Super Metroid, which is not only a breath of fresh air but also genuinely one of the best games of the first half decade of the 90s.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
If you're into speedrunning, or if you want a quick comfort game to play, Super Metroid I feel like will be just that after you initially beat it. In terms of pure replayability though, Super Metroid doesn't offer a lot. There are some optional power ups you can find here and there, but it's basically one linear playthrough otherwise.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 84/100
If you want to go back to the roots of the Metroidvania genre without it feeling too aged, Super Metroid is a fantastic starting point. Not only is it the game that refined the formula, but it truly aged really well and will provide you with a few afternoon's worth of fun entertainment.
(This is the 95th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
I suppose the part that becomes a issue for me would be the maze-like design of levels coupled with that system. Where do I go, what do I do, where even am I, why are save points so far apart? Hollow Knight is probably the most notable Metroidvania I tried and bounced off of multiple times for reasons like this. I did want to go back to that however, and I think playing and beating Super Metroid gave me a lot of extra motivation to check out Hollow Knight and many other Metroidvanias that came out up to this point.
Super Metroid released on March 19, 1994 for the SNES and is the third installment in the very popular Metroid franchise. It's the second game for a home console and the first for a fourth-gen system. I played Metroid II for the Game Boy a few months ago, but only gave it a 52 for multiple reasons, chief among them that the limitations set by the Game Boy meant that many things I enjoyed about Super Metroid simply couldn't translate. But yes, Super Metroid ended up being much, much more enjoyable and is another fantastic release for Nintendo's SNES.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
Super Metroid tells its story through its atmosphere. In terms of pure storytelling, the game doesn't do a whole lot, but it has one moment that the game pulls off pretty well near the end. It also generally continues the story of one of gaming's most recognizable characters, which is worth acknowledging, and it doesn't do anything wrong in that regard, it just doesn't do a whole lot.
To give you the short of it because, frankly, there ain't a long version, Samus Aran brings the Metroid that she left with in Metroid II to the Ceres Space colony to be studied. It is found ou that its energy-producing abilities could be used for good. Ridley, the game's antagonist, steals the Metroid and Samus follows Ridley to the planet Zebes. Here, Samus must once again move through extremely hostile territory.
The ending in this game is interesting in that it feels like a proper conclusion, with no cliffhanger or anything else pointing to the continuation of Samus' story. There also was no Metroid game for the next 8 years, the longest ever gap between releases for Metroid games. This feels weird for a game that is so popular these days, but Super Metroid never was a mega-seller, selling "only" 1.42 million copies by 2003, so maybe that's part of the reason why the 5th gen was skipped. [Reading through some posts online, it appears director Yoshio Sakamoto had other commitments during the gap of 8 years and didn't feel like the N64 would be a suitable system to make a Metroid game that would live up to expectations.]
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
One of the most fun games to play as far as the early 90s go. Controls are smooth, the gameplay loop is fluid and the constant acquisition of abilities as you play means you never really see everything the game has to offer until you're pretty much done with it.
The game is a side-scrolling action-adventure / platformer with a big focus on exploration and constant progression ('Metroidvania'). You start the game out with a basic weapon and the ability to jump. You quickly start gaining new abilities that not only make you more powerful, but also allow you to enter areas that you were previously locked out of. For example, rolling up into a ball lets you enter tiny passages. Gaining the ability to place bombs while in bomb-form lets you jump up to enter tiny passages that are placed higher. Missiles allow you to open stronger doors. It's a timeless system that can both fail and succeed depending on execution. In Super Metroid, it is executed very well.
The only issue I personally had with the gameplay was how it dealt with your health. If you have very low health for example, you can get it back up by either finding a rare location that fills it up for you or by killing enemies, who drop items whenever you need them. The idea is fine, but in practice, I found myself "grinding" by constantly entering and exiting rooms and killing the enemies that spawn to max out my health again. Die and you respawn on your last save point with the health you had at that time. So either that save point is "useless" in that regard, or, if you saved at full health, it literally is a better idea to let yourself get killed than to spend a couple minutes filling up your health manually.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
No voice acting apart from the intro. The soundtrack does a phenomenal job in setting the atmosphere. I'd say the majority of the tracks are very good, but Brinstar (Underground Depths) and the Ridley / Draygon Boss Theme, especially the former, are some of my favorites from the 95 games I've played for this challenge so far.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
The visual quality is pretty good for a game of its time. Locations have varied styles, there are lots of different enemy designs, special effects look nice and the whole vibe the game is going for is excellent.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
One of the most atmospheric games I've played from this time period. The visuals, the soundtrack and the theme of this game just work extremely well together. I didn't play this game when I was young, but I can easily see myself being very scared playing this, because even in my mid 20s today I notice how daunting the atmosphere feels.
CONTENT | 9/10
The only complaints I have in regards to the game's content is that unlike more traditional platformers, where a lot of hours are spent trying to get past a hard challenge through trial and error, Super Metroid adds hours to its playtime by making it somewhat difficult at times to figure out where you should even go. I'll go over this more under "Level/Mission Design", but apart from these complaints, what you get will be 8-12 hours of a fun time that for the majority of it, flows really well and keeps giving you new upgrades and powers to play around with, no challenges to conquer, new areas to explore and new bosses you defeat. It's a fun time.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
Your opinions in regards to the game's level design will vary greatly depending on your frustration tolerance and your understanding of what makes a video game fun. Firstly, it's undeniable that a lot of thought went into the design of the levels and how their setup would work for progression as a whole. In addition, visually and environmentally the levels stand out in that there is a lot of variety in play here. I think there will be much less debate about these points. Where it gets more contentious is when it comes to the basic philosophy of this game and, by extent, the whole Metroidvania genre.
When at first you have 1 route to take, all of a sudden you have 4 more that open up when that first route gives you a new ability. From here, 4 routes may turn into 8 routes, and later, those 8 routes may turn back to just 3 routes, but you have already discovered so many parts of the game that you're not quite sure where those 3 routes were. Playing this game and then taking a break for a week for example will make it nigh impossible to beat because a lot of it is dependent on the player keeping in mind certain areas that they couldn't enter in the past, so that when they get a certain ability later, they know where it will be useful. If you don't do this, get ready to go everywhere trying to figure out what to do, which can sometimes feel more, and sometimes less intuitive.
Ultimately, I personally didn't find this to be a big issue, though I've had to look up a guide once or twice (the solution felt obvious in hindsight). I think it's a formula that won't be for everyone, but in my opinion Super Metroid succeeded in balancing the difficulty, where it may take you a little while to figure out where to go next, but it's rarely ever cryptic, and you will find your way to go, if you just concentrate on the game.
Once you beat it however, and once you understand what needs to be done without having to think about it too much, I could see this being a very fun "comfort game" to come back to, because the gameplay, when it flows and is not disrupted by you trying to find the next path, flows reeeally well and beating the game will probably take an expert 3-4 hours.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
Super Metroid is the first game to truly refine the Metroidvania formula, at least by popular belief. Not only is that a genre that pumps out great games to this day, but based on my own limited experience, I'd say Super Metroid still is among the genre's highlights, though I assume, and hope, that the rest of the Metroid series pulls me in even further. As far as this challenge I'm doing is concerned, I've played almost 5 year's worth of games and have not experienced anything quite like Super Metroid, which is not only a breath of fresh air but also genuinely one of the best games of the first half decade of the 90s.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
If you're into speedrunning, or if you want a quick comfort game to play, Super Metroid I feel like will be just that after you initially beat it. In terms of pure replayability though, Super Metroid doesn't offer a lot. There are some optional power ups you can find here and there, but it's basically one linear playthrough otherwise.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 84/100
If you want to go back to the roots of the Metroidvania genre without it feeling too aged, Super Metroid is a fantastic starting point. Not only is it the game that refined the formula, but it truly aged really well and will provide you with a few afternoon's worth of fun entertainment.
(This is the 95th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
1998
After putting Metal Gear Solid off for waaaaay too long, I finally sat down and devoured the entire game in just 2 days, putting 11 hours into it overall. Before this, I've spent a year playing about 100 games between 1990 and 1994, so I'd like to think I got a good idea of what gaming looked like at the start of the 32-bit era. Yes, some fantastic and ambitious games came out in the years between 1994 and 1998, where Metal Gear Solid released, but I can confidently say that Metal Gear Solid was and still is a truly special game.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
I'm probably the one millionth individual who is about to give a story synopsis for Metal Gear Solid, so I'll cut it short, because the setting of this game is not as impactful as the countless plot twists, bombastic moments, fantastic cutscenes and diverse, iconic characters in this game.
You play Solid Snake (again, for those of you who played Metal Gear 1 and 2 for the MSX, which I doubt you did, if you still haven't played MGS 1 to this day), and Solid Snake is brought in again for a high-stake covert operation. This time, it takes you to Alaska, and the Shadow Moses Island to be more precise, where a nuclear storage facility is situated. It was captured by a certain Liquid Snake and other members of FOXHOUND. They are holding two important officers hostage there, who both have a password each that Liquid Snake and his gang need to make true on their threats against the US government. These threats? Launching a nuclear strike with the help of a secret war tank with capabilities of launching missiles that was secretly being developed in this facility, called Metal Gear REX. Input the two passwords and it gets activated. Solid Snake is tasked with freeing those two officers, but when he gets to them, they mysteriously die by a heart attack, though not without telling Solid Snake that the bad guys got both of their passwords and are ready to launch. Solid Snake is informed that he needs three card keys to deactivate Metal Gear REX again.
Again, this does not do any justice to how wild it gets. Storytelling in some video games has come far, but in 1998, few games match what Hideo Kojima achieved with Metal Gear Solid, and I'd venture to say that no game achieved it by using such well put together cutscenes as he did with this game. The story becomes convoluted, though that's probably an overexaggeration, if you ask any Metal Gear veteran, who are, I hear, used to much, much "worse" after having played all the other canon Metal Gear entries that would follow.
As with Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake from 1990, Hideo Kojima uses themes linked to real world issues. The nuclear arms race, the vicious circle of war, its affects on the surviving soldiers and our genes and how (and if) they define us as people. There are several moments in this game that really get you thinking, though this might be lost on you if you take the complete opposite of these moments too seriously. Because in something that Kojima become famous for, Metal Gear Solid is filled with silly interactions and immature moments to mix in with the more serious parts of storytelling. The Yakuza series comes to mind as another that mixes these two parts really well together. I've seen some people take offense to some of it but I think that's taking something way more seriously than you should be. Yakuza games have some of the most impactful main stories I've had the pleasure of experiencing in video gaming, and a side quest where you deliver a pizza even though a foreigner wanted to say visa doesn't diminish that one bit. One point I've read about a couple times is that Solid Snake is a dick for flirting with every female character in the game. While I'm unbothered by it for many reasons (they flirt back or flirt first for example), it also helps round out Solid Snake's character and makes his development more impactful as the game goes on. All the other silly moments in this game help create a similar situation for other characters later on, or are just simply there to lower the tension at a few points.
Characters in this game are very diverse and a lot of them have their own times to shine, including some really beautiful moments, especially for some of the bosses that you end up defeating. The death of one particular boss was really touching and the presentation of it was literally perfection. When these defeated people utter their final words, they give you a peak behind the killer, as they tell you how their own messed up fates led them down the path they took. It makes you feel for them, but it also is another form of meta storytelling, as these kinds of people are formed every single day in the world we live in as a result of war. I can imagine how impactful this must have been for all those people playing it close to release, especially those at a younger age who were mainly used to playing games for the gameplay before this. And while the game has some supernatural elements included, it's always nice to see more "grounded" stories in this medium, which feel like more and more of a rarity.
If there is anything I didn't enjoy here, it's probably the fact that Meryl's character is inconsistently written and that there are some awkward parts in the game's writing.
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
Great storytelling with great gameplay is always the best possible mix, and it's present here. As someone who did play Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake before this, I was surprised at how familiar it felt. This game truly is Metal Gear 2 in 3D, so much so that certain boss fights and challenges were used in pretty similar fashion. The differently-colored walls that can be blown up, the shape-shifting key, the mine detector part and several boss fights felt more modernized and had some slightly different challenges tied to them, but Hideo Kojima did re-use some of his ideas for a brighter audience, not to say that it is a bad thing at all.
Metal Gear Solid's gameplay is a lot of fun and it is pretty challenging. It's extremely challenging, if you choose one of the higher difficulties, but even on Easy you will die plenty of times (like me). Enemies have a certain field of vision that you can track on the radar in the top right, and stepping into it alerts them to your position. You avoid them by, well, staying out of the FOV, but also by crawling under tanks, tables and other objects, by disabling security cameras with chaff grenades, by shooting them with a silenced pistol and more. It's a stealth game pretty much, and one with little to no similar games to lean on for influence at that.
There are a lot of optional items to collect as well that can make your life easier in this game. You can find them by exploring or by backtracking to areas and opening up doors that were previously inaccessible to you. You acquire key cards with different security levels to do so. There are some smaller items to grab, like Body Armor, cardboard boxes, night-vision goggles and more, but also some more important items can also be optional pick-ups if you want to make it harder on yourself for whatever reason, such as the suppressor to your pistol, the mine detector, diazepam (removes trembling when you aim with your sniper) and even the gas mask is optional I believe, though I might be mistaken on that.
Generally, there are enough ways to make your way through areas undetected, though I suspect the number of options will increase by a lot in the upcoming sequels. What's most important however is that you always feel challenged, the gameplay maintains a level of tension that keeps it from ever becoming boring and at the same time, punishment for being detected is not instantly fatal depending on your difficulty, so even players who aren't the most skilled should get through this game with not much issue.
An optional part of gameplay, if you want to call it that, is interacting with the Codec. It leads to dialogue, so gameplay is pushing it, but as you are free to move around, you can use the Codec to make dozens upon dozens of optional calls to your contacts to learn more about your mission, the characters and the Metal Gear universe as a whole. Talking to Nastasha for example gives you a lot of information about the nuclear arms race, while talking to Master Miller leads to tips addressed to both Snake and the player himself, such as not staying up too late because your reflexes would be slowest at 3 am in the morning.
Overall, the 10-11 hours flew by thanks to well balanced story and gameplay segments and generally a fun gameplay loop.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
The voice acting is surprisingly great in this. I knew David Hayter nailed it as Snake, but nearly the entire cast did a great job. I think Mei Ling's VA takes the cake though with her reading of "SNAAAAAAAKE". The best voice acted line in gaming history I think. The sound design is not even worth mentioning here because everyone knows how iconic it is, while the soundtrack is equally fantastic. The track that plays at the end of the game gave me goosebumps, but a lot of tracks here are very memorable.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
The graphics judged by modern standards are obviously not great. Judged by 1998 standards, the graphics are solid (heh) but what makes the game stand out is its presentation first and foremost. There are better looking games by 1998 but few that are as well put together in a cinematographic sense. Many beautiful setpieces are present here as well, but it didn't set a new benchmark visually like it did in many other aspects.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
By now, if you've had any experiences with the series, you'll know what a Metal Gear game feels like, and obviously, this game feels like quintessential Metal Gear, a unique type of feeling to this day. It also makes you feel like a stealth operative on a mission thanks to its presentation, but it feels like it could have been expanded upon by putting you in more memorable locations for some of its bigger story beats. There are a couple of those, but mainly the gameplay takes place in warehouses and blue/grayish buildings.
CONTENT | 9/10
Don't get me wrong. I love modern gaming. But from time to time, it's nice to play a game with no collectable distractions. Just one, linear main story and paced in one specific way. That pacing is phenomenal for the majority of the game. There is one annoyance though, which is the backtracking you have to do. It's not a lot of backtracking, don't worry, but it's enough that it made me yawn a couple of times. It's not egregious though, and if there is a silver lining, it's that it sends you back to certain special locations where you defeated bosses, and not seeing them there anymore is a pretty cool, yet sad visual.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
The backtracking is not great, as established. But the level design overall is great otherwise, and there are plenty of unique levels to mix things up. Rarely are you doing the exact same thing twice, and levels are designed in a way that makes sense. They're also not too small that there is just one clear path forward, and not too large that they just end up having a lot of empty space. If there is one improvement I would like, it would probably be that there are more alternative routes through the levels a la Deus Ex for example, so that the player can feel clever as they discover them and so that levels feel more replayable.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
We could debate ad nauseam how influential Metal Gear Solid has been. I'd say it has a unique concept more than it is influential, but I also would say that it is pretty influential. First and foremost, conceptually, this game is fantastic. Really well balanced story/gameplay segments, a cinematic approach to storytelling, a unique style of gameplay (stealth) that was pretty rare at the time and a game that tackles multiple real world themes. The stealth gameplay and cinematic storytelling approach might be the two most influential parts about this game, and I'd say they increased the value video games provide for me, which is all I'm looking for for a 10/10. The latter part might have been overdone in future entries (I'll be the judge of that when I get to playing them), but it's very well balanced here.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
Higher difficulties, finding some hidden items in future playthroughs, engaging in more optional Codec conversations and ... well, I think that's it. Not a lot of replayability here in terms of new stuff to find and do after beating it initially.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 89/100
It's definitely among my absolute favorite games of the 90s, and you could say among my favorites all time as well, as great games don't age in my opinion. I got wowed and moved by the story and characters several times, I laughed, I was in deep thought about some of the real world issues the game brings up and I had a blast with the gameplay. It left me very satisfied with the story conclusion and hyped af for the sequel with that after-credits scene. I think I'll jump right on that after posting this review.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
I'm probably the one millionth individual who is about to give a story synopsis for Metal Gear Solid, so I'll cut it short, because the setting of this game is not as impactful as the countless plot twists, bombastic moments, fantastic cutscenes and diverse, iconic characters in this game.
You play Solid Snake (again, for those of you who played Metal Gear 1 and 2 for the MSX, which I doubt you did, if you still haven't played MGS 1 to this day), and Solid Snake is brought in again for a high-stake covert operation. This time, it takes you to Alaska, and the Shadow Moses Island to be more precise, where a nuclear storage facility is situated. It was captured by a certain Liquid Snake and other members of FOXHOUND. They are holding two important officers hostage there, who both have a password each that Liquid Snake and his gang need to make true on their threats against the US government. These threats? Launching a nuclear strike with the help of a secret war tank with capabilities of launching missiles that was secretly being developed in this facility, called Metal Gear REX. Input the two passwords and it gets activated. Solid Snake is tasked with freeing those two officers, but when he gets to them, they mysteriously die by a heart attack, though not without telling Solid Snake that the bad guys got both of their passwords and are ready to launch. Solid Snake is informed that he needs three card keys to deactivate Metal Gear REX again.
Again, this does not do any justice to how wild it gets. Storytelling in some video games has come far, but in 1998, few games match what Hideo Kojima achieved with Metal Gear Solid, and I'd venture to say that no game achieved it by using such well put together cutscenes as he did with this game. The story becomes convoluted, though that's probably an overexaggeration, if you ask any Metal Gear veteran, who are, I hear, used to much, much "worse" after having played all the other canon Metal Gear entries that would follow.
As with Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake from 1990, Hideo Kojima uses themes linked to real world issues. The nuclear arms race, the vicious circle of war, its affects on the surviving soldiers and our genes and how (and if) they define us as people. There are several moments in this game that really get you thinking, though this might be lost on you if you take the complete opposite of these moments too seriously. Because in something that Kojima become famous for, Metal Gear Solid is filled with silly interactions and immature moments to mix in with the more serious parts of storytelling. The Yakuza series comes to mind as another that mixes these two parts really well together. I've seen some people take offense to some of it but I think that's taking something way more seriously than you should be. Yakuza games have some of the most impactful main stories I've had the pleasure of experiencing in video gaming, and a side quest where you deliver a pizza even though a foreigner wanted to say visa doesn't diminish that one bit. One point I've read about a couple times is that Solid Snake is a dick for flirting with every female character in the game. While I'm unbothered by it for many reasons (they flirt back or flirt first for example), it also helps round out Solid Snake's character and makes his development more impactful as the game goes on. All the other silly moments in this game help create a similar situation for other characters later on, or are just simply there to lower the tension at a few points.
Characters in this game are very diverse and a lot of them have their own times to shine, including some really beautiful moments, especially for some of the bosses that you end up defeating. The death of one particular boss was really touching and the presentation of it was literally perfection. When these defeated people utter their final words, they give you a peak behind the killer, as they tell you how their own messed up fates led them down the path they took. It makes you feel for them, but it also is another form of meta storytelling, as these kinds of people are formed every single day in the world we live in as a result of war. I can imagine how impactful this must have been for all those people playing it close to release, especially those at a younger age who were mainly used to playing games for the gameplay before this. And while the game has some supernatural elements included, it's always nice to see more "grounded" stories in this medium, which feel like more and more of a rarity.
If there is anything I didn't enjoy here, it's probably the fact that Meryl's character is inconsistently written and that there are some awkward parts in the game's writing.
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
Great storytelling with great gameplay is always the best possible mix, and it's present here. As someone who did play Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake before this, I was surprised at how familiar it felt. This game truly is Metal Gear 2 in 3D, so much so that certain boss fights and challenges were used in pretty similar fashion. The differently-colored walls that can be blown up, the shape-shifting key, the mine detector part and several boss fights felt more modernized and had some slightly different challenges tied to them, but Hideo Kojima did re-use some of his ideas for a brighter audience, not to say that it is a bad thing at all.
Metal Gear Solid's gameplay is a lot of fun and it is pretty challenging. It's extremely challenging, if you choose one of the higher difficulties, but even on Easy you will die plenty of times (like me). Enemies have a certain field of vision that you can track on the radar in the top right, and stepping into it alerts them to your position. You avoid them by, well, staying out of the FOV, but also by crawling under tanks, tables and other objects, by disabling security cameras with chaff grenades, by shooting them with a silenced pistol and more. It's a stealth game pretty much, and one with little to no similar games to lean on for influence at that.
There are a lot of optional items to collect as well that can make your life easier in this game. You can find them by exploring or by backtracking to areas and opening up doors that were previously inaccessible to you. You acquire key cards with different security levels to do so. There are some smaller items to grab, like Body Armor, cardboard boxes, night-vision goggles and more, but also some more important items can also be optional pick-ups if you want to make it harder on yourself for whatever reason, such as the suppressor to your pistol, the mine detector, diazepam (removes trembling when you aim with your sniper) and even the gas mask is optional I believe, though I might be mistaken on that.
Generally, there are enough ways to make your way through areas undetected, though I suspect the number of options will increase by a lot in the upcoming sequels. What's most important however is that you always feel challenged, the gameplay maintains a level of tension that keeps it from ever becoming boring and at the same time, punishment for being detected is not instantly fatal depending on your difficulty, so even players who aren't the most skilled should get through this game with not much issue.
An optional part of gameplay, if you want to call it that, is interacting with the Codec. It leads to dialogue, so gameplay is pushing it, but as you are free to move around, you can use the Codec to make dozens upon dozens of optional calls to your contacts to learn more about your mission, the characters and the Metal Gear universe as a whole. Talking to Nastasha for example gives you a lot of information about the nuclear arms race, while talking to Master Miller leads to tips addressed to both Snake and the player himself, such as not staying up too late because your reflexes would be slowest at 3 am in the morning.
Overall, the 10-11 hours flew by thanks to well balanced story and gameplay segments and generally a fun gameplay loop.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
The voice acting is surprisingly great in this. I knew David Hayter nailed it as Snake, but nearly the entire cast did a great job. I think Mei Ling's VA takes the cake though with her reading of "SNAAAAAAAKE". The best voice acted line in gaming history I think. The sound design is not even worth mentioning here because everyone knows how iconic it is, while the soundtrack is equally fantastic. The track that plays at the end of the game gave me goosebumps, but a lot of tracks here are very memorable.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
The graphics judged by modern standards are obviously not great. Judged by 1998 standards, the graphics are solid (heh) but what makes the game stand out is its presentation first and foremost. There are better looking games by 1998 but few that are as well put together in a cinematographic sense. Many beautiful setpieces are present here as well, but it didn't set a new benchmark visually like it did in many other aspects.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
By now, if you've had any experiences with the series, you'll know what a Metal Gear game feels like, and obviously, this game feels like quintessential Metal Gear, a unique type of feeling to this day. It also makes you feel like a stealth operative on a mission thanks to its presentation, but it feels like it could have been expanded upon by putting you in more memorable locations for some of its bigger story beats. There are a couple of those, but mainly the gameplay takes place in warehouses and blue/grayish buildings.
CONTENT | 9/10
Don't get me wrong. I love modern gaming. But from time to time, it's nice to play a game with no collectable distractions. Just one, linear main story and paced in one specific way. That pacing is phenomenal for the majority of the game. There is one annoyance though, which is the backtracking you have to do. It's not a lot of backtracking, don't worry, but it's enough that it made me yawn a couple of times. It's not egregious though, and if there is a silver lining, it's that it sends you back to certain special locations where you defeated bosses, and not seeing them there anymore is a pretty cool, yet sad visual.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
The backtracking is not great, as established. But the level design overall is great otherwise, and there are plenty of unique levels to mix things up. Rarely are you doing the exact same thing twice, and levels are designed in a way that makes sense. They're also not too small that there is just one clear path forward, and not too large that they just end up having a lot of empty space. If there is one improvement I would like, it would probably be that there are more alternative routes through the levels a la Deus Ex for example, so that the player can feel clever as they discover them and so that levels feel more replayable.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
We could debate ad nauseam how influential Metal Gear Solid has been. I'd say it has a unique concept more than it is influential, but I also would say that it is pretty influential. First and foremost, conceptually, this game is fantastic. Really well balanced story/gameplay segments, a cinematic approach to storytelling, a unique style of gameplay (stealth) that was pretty rare at the time and a game that tackles multiple real world themes. The stealth gameplay and cinematic storytelling approach might be the two most influential parts about this game, and I'd say they increased the value video games provide for me, which is all I'm looking for for a 10/10. The latter part might have been overdone in future entries (I'll be the judge of that when I get to playing them), but it's very well balanced here.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
Higher difficulties, finding some hidden items in future playthroughs, engaging in more optional Codec conversations and ... well, I think that's it. Not a lot of replayability here in terms of new stuff to find and do after beating it initially.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 89/100
It's definitely among my absolute favorite games of the 90s, and you could say among my favorites all time as well, as great games don't age in my opinion. I got wowed and moved by the story and characters several times, I laughed, I was in deep thought about some of the real world issues the game brings up and I had a blast with the gameplay. It left me very satisfied with the story conclusion and hyped af for the sequel with that after-credits scene. I think I'll jump right on that after posting this review.
The Elder Scrolls: Arena is iconic not because of its own quality as a game, but because of the series that has its roots here. This is not to say that the game was of no good in its time. Quite the opposite actually. That said, one would be hardpressed to find many arguments to recommend this game to fans of the more modern games of the series, let alone gamers as a whole.
As someone who is a very big fan of Bethesda's work from Fallout 3 to today, and as someone who has always wanted to look at their library before that point as well (Oblivion & Morrowind mainly), I'm pretty happy to have finally taken that step by playing a good chunk of time of the first Elder Scrolls game ever made. I did not beat the game, for many reasons, but I've played enough and read up on the game enough to be able to give you a run down on what this game offers and why you probably wouldn't enjoy this much once the novelty wears off.
The game released initially on March 25, 1994 after a three-month delay on its original 1993 Christmas Day launch date. For various reasons, the game initially only sold roughly 3.000 units, but in what should show you the quality of the game at its time, word of mouth was what ended up pushing The Elder Scrolls: Arena into a success commercially and by the end of 1994 and 1995, critically through the reception of many awards.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10
What I like about playing the first game of any franchise spanning multiple titles vs. starting from the newest one is that you don't feel overwhelmed by the amount of lore in it. Instead, you get to enjoy the ride from the very start, and every bit of info you receive is all there was up to that point. You quickly realize that it's not as daunting as it seemed, though this is not to discount the fact that there certainly is a lot of lore in place even in The Elder Scrolls: Arena.
For starters, a lot of locations, names and dates will instantly be familiar to players of other Elder Scrolls games. The game's setting is Tamriel (a continent located on the planet Nirn). It plays in the Third Era and its 389th year. While this is the beginning date, each time you fast travel elsewhere, a lot of time passes depending on the distance, and you're unlikely to spend less than a couple years in the game before finishing it. Theoretically though, you could fast travel so much that you end up going thousands of years into the future and to the date of more modern Elder Scrolls games, which is a funny thought (at least I think there is no limit).
Jagar Tharn is the main antagonist in this game, betraying Emperor Uriel Septim VII, whose betrayal is witnessed by a mage apprentice called Ria Silmane. She is killed by Jagar Tharn, but takes up an incorporeal form, meaning she can't take a physical form, but reveal herself to the player in their dream. The player starts the game imprisoned (of course) and gets a message from Ria Silmane regarding the events that led to her death, and she tasks you with stopping Jagar Tharn. To do so, you need to get the Staff of Chaos' eight fragments, piece it together and destroy it to kill Jagar Tharn, whose life force is held within it.
It's a very typical story for a game of this time I realize more and more with each game I play, especially RPGs. There is only so much different gameplay that these games can offer, and apparently the only way to tell stories is to tell the player that there are x number of objects/people/locations that they have to collect/visit/destroy in order to win the game. It's not necessarily something I dislike in and of itself, but when the gameplay truly is one dimensional, focusing on just the main story can be quite repetitive and tedious.
Thankfully, this is Bethesda we're talking about, and the main story is only one part of your adventure. Elder Scrolls: Arena doesn't just take place in one province, but in the entire continent of Tamriel. Depending on the race you choose, exiting the first dungeon sends you to your home province. Not only that, but you are also randomly sent to one of dozens of unique villages/towns in each province. From there, you can travel to and explore every single one of them if you so desire, as well as explore the outskirts of these towns if you so wish. While they look same-y after a short while of course, there are differences, including in weather, building structures and placements, textures and types of citizens.
From my understanding, each player gets the same locations in every playthrough, and even every village's inns for example have the same unique names every time. NPCs might even be the same at all times, but then there are many things that are randomly generated. The outskirts for example seem to be procedurally generated and will look differently in each playthrough for specific villages, but I doubt there are many different variants there. Either way, in terms of story and exploration, they don't really have had any role in my playthrough. Dungeons are procedurally generated as well, and not only that, but side quests are too. This means that asking for work can result in you being tasked to bring an NPC item A from NPC B in Location C until the Deadline D, and you will be compensated with X amount of gold for doing so. If we go back to 1994, this is a pretty neat way of constantly giving the player things to do and reasons to enter dungeons and explore other areas. Clearly, it won't result in a lot of exciting, unique moments, but for 1994, this was unique and also probably pretty enjoyable. From a lore standpoint however, these don't offer any value other than maybe sending you to certain towns in, say, Skyrim, many of which are still named the same in the Elder Scrolls V, which I thought was pretty cool.
Bigger side quests exist as well though, especially from a lore standpoint. There are "Artifacts", legendary items of lore, which you can collect. You ask for General rumors, and if you're lucky, get one regarding one of these Artifacts, which you can then find in a dungeon. These are mainly items you can wear, but there is also the "Oghma Infinium", which gives you 50 attribute points to distribute. These Artifacts have descriptions however and some might even be relevant in future Elder Scrolls titles.
That said, the main way you will learn more about the Elder Scrolls universe is through the main story, which is quite disappointing in that regard. Similarly to many Bethesda games, the main story seems a bit like an afterthought, though the side content is not filled with excellent exploration to make up for it here. Ultimately, you will need to be satisfied with the small story you get with the three main characters being Ria Silmane, Jagar Tharn and Uriel Septim VII. Is that worth playing the game for? I don't think so. But if you're expecting very little here, the number of areas and NPCs that exist here and have actual names, jobs and tasks makes for a cool, somewhat immersive setting. The main way of progressing the story adds a lot to this as well, since you have to ask NPCs for information on dungeons to be able to pinpoint their locations. But thanks to the Elder Scrolls series growing since, I think anyone looking for an RPG where you need to use the help of NPCs instead of quest markers should simply play Morrowind.
GAMEPLAY | 9/20
There is no sugarcoating it, the game hasn't aged well. Controls are unintuitive, combat is incredibly unforgiving, you can easily find yourself losing hours of progress by being stuck at the end of a long dungeon, items and their benefits are not explained until you use or wear them, dungeons are repetitive and you either have to grind a ton or cheese the game's systems to get incredibly rich and make combat very easy for yourself.
First, here is what you do as part of the main story. Go to a village. Ask for information on a dungeon. The dungeon name is given to you by Ria Silmane whenever you sleep after finding the previous piece of the Staff of Chaos. You get information on the province where it will be. Go there. Ask around some more, get to person who needs you to find an Elder Scroll, which will reveal the location of the dungeon you're looking for. So go to dungeon to get the item that unlocks the main dungeon. Now go to main dungeon. Find your way to the lowest floor and find the piece. You get dialogue with Jagar Tharn when you do, who is pissed, but won't do shit about it other than sending minions because guess what, there are no bosses in this game apart from the finale I believe. Now repeat this process many times.
Second, here is what you do outside of the main story. Go somewhere, walk around the villages, talk to people to get to know their name and occupation, ask for general and work-related rumors, pick up a randomly generated or artifact related side quest, do the side quest.
That's pretty much it. If you're playing this in 1994 or the years afterwards, many of you would have clearly had a solid time based on the game's reception. Play it today and you'll be left with a repetitive game that has been improved upon not only by hundreds of other RPGs since, but by 4 iterations in the same series as well. So apart from the novelty of it all for the first couple of hours, there is no reason to indulge.
If the general things you can do here don't scare you off, here is the gameplay. Combat is done by pulling the mouse across the screen in a bunch of directions. Up and down, diagonally up/down, left/right, every way you can imagine basically. Some of these attacks do more damage, but are likelier to miss. Some deal less damage, but are likelier to hit. Some are neutral. There are plenty of weapons to choose from with different animations, but the idea remains the same. There is also spellcasting though, which adds a nice extra layer to it.
As you explore dungeons, you fight a rather low number of different enemies, at least until the point that I played, with Lizard Men, Orcs, Skeletons and Spiders being regular foes. You collect loot from their bodies or loot piles, which gives you gold, armor and other items like "Mark"s, which are items with special abilities, such as the ability to heal you or to cast certain magic attacks. Items have different tiers and the better you want your gear to be, the more gold you need of course, but from my experience, getting the gold necessary to properly deck yourself out takes a loooot of time of doing the same thing over and over again. Instead, what you can do is simple.
Mage guilds sell certain Ebony items that are very expensive. Absurdly expensive. You can simply pickpocket these and sell them back. If you fail, you can simply kill the mage, exit the guild, re-enter and the mage reappears, meaning there is no real system behind it other than the fact that pickpocketing exists in the game. Do that a few times and you're rich and can test out all sorts of items to your hearts content. It sounds like that's cheating and boring, but I'd say it's the only thing that will keep you from yawning your jaw off and actually opens up the game a bit more.
One final point regarding combat here: I feel like about half of my encounters started with me not even seeing the enemy. You get visually and audibly alerted to an enemy attacking you, so it's not the end of the world, but the amount of times enemies got a hit in without me seeing them was crazy. The path before you in dungeons is dark as you approach it, and any dead angle can have an enemy getting alerted to your presence, and especially early on, by the time you realize you're attacked, you'll have nearly your entire health drained by some of the enemies.
Looking at gameplay clips of Daggerfall makes me realize how dated Arena looks compared to its sequel, which is shocking considering that there is only a two-year difference in release dates. If you really want to dabble with old-school Elder Scrolls, Daggerfall looks like a much, much, much better choice, while Arena can safely be skipped in my opinion.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
There is voice acting here and it's actually not terrible. Jagar Tharn does a better job here than Ria Silmane in my opinion, but neither sounds as bad as you might expect 1994 voice acting to sound. The sound design has some discomforting qualities to it, in a good way, and I'm sure I'll find myself awakening in my own pool of sweat to the door sounds in this game at some point in the future. Add to this disturbing sound the sudden and in-your-face level-up tune and you got yourself a horror RPG a la Elvira. The soundtrack itself is quite long at 40 total minutes compared to other games at the time, but for an RPG that is quite long, this still means listening to the same tracks over and over again. The soundtrack can be best described as the most 1990s Fantasy RPG OST of all time. Puts you in the right mood, but does not stand out.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10
The fact that this game is so massive in terms of number of villages and dungeons is both a positive and negative for it visually. On the one hand, the game can show off the surprisingly varied designs used to create these villages. On the other, there obviously are not nearly enough differences to make up for so many villages. On top of that, dungeons in particular look same-y quite quickly, and considering that that is what you're looking it for most of your playthrough, your eyes will deserve a raise after you're done with the game for the sacrifices they make. That said, special effects used in this game and the design of the cutscenes were some of the standouts here visually, though overall the game is meh in that regard.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
Towns/Villages in this game are MASSIVE. Tons and tons of buildings, lots of NPCs, all of them with unique names and jobs, plenty of rumors to hear, inns to visit, provinces to travel to and the vibe you get from the soundtrack make this game a hell of a lot more immersive than one would expect. It felt like a Morrowind-lite in that regard, where the ideas are there already, but not the means to execute properly.
CONTENT | 5/10
Lots of provinces, races, classes, and weapons. Lots of towns/villages, NPCs, dungeons and more. Content quantity is truly large. Content quality on the other hand is lacking in many regards.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
I truly appreciate the way you find your main mission locations: By interacting with the NPCs and asking them, which gives you the feeling of immersiveness that makes Morrowind so beloved and unique to this day. Obviously, the systems are extremely limited here even in comparison to Morrowind, but just giving you instant quest markers would make this game even more boring than it already is in modern times. That said, the repetitive nature of both how you get to your locations and the dungeon layout within is hard to ignore.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10
The game is very ambitious, but unlike many other unique, ambitious games of its time, this one doesn't quite hit the mark like its sequel "Daggerfall" might have. Ultimately, the game presents you with a really large world, but with very few ways to interact with it that you are meant to repeat ad nauseam. You can already see what kind of games Bethesda want to make, and how they want their games to be ultimate fantasy RPG simulators, but the systems in place here are not refined at all, probably mainly due to the technology available in 1994, but also probably because of what ultimately led to a delay out of the Christmas Day window. 2 years later, at least at a glance, Daggerfall looks like on a whole nother level within just two years, and I don't think PC gaming got along THAT far during that time for their to ostensibly be such a massive difference in quality, though I might be underestimating the growth of gaming at the time.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
Yeah, the game is replayable, but replayability must also mean fun to replay, and I think the only part that provides that is the fact that you can have an entire playthrough feel different by placing an emphasis on spell-casting instead of melee combat.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 61/100
I respect this game a lot for its ambitions and for bringing us the Elder Scrolls franchise. That said, if you are intrigued by its "talk to NPCs to figure out your way" system, just play Morrowind. If you're OK with more hand-holding, just play Oblivion and/or Skyrim at this point. Elder Scrolls Arena does not have much to offer anymore after its first few hours.
(This is the 96th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
As someone who is a very big fan of Bethesda's work from Fallout 3 to today, and as someone who has always wanted to look at their library before that point as well (Oblivion & Morrowind mainly), I'm pretty happy to have finally taken that step by playing a good chunk of time of the first Elder Scrolls game ever made. I did not beat the game, for many reasons, but I've played enough and read up on the game enough to be able to give you a run down on what this game offers and why you probably wouldn't enjoy this much once the novelty wears off.
The game released initially on March 25, 1994 after a three-month delay on its original 1993 Christmas Day launch date. For various reasons, the game initially only sold roughly 3.000 units, but in what should show you the quality of the game at its time, word of mouth was what ended up pushing The Elder Scrolls: Arena into a success commercially and by the end of 1994 and 1995, critically through the reception of many awards.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10
What I like about playing the first game of any franchise spanning multiple titles vs. starting from the newest one is that you don't feel overwhelmed by the amount of lore in it. Instead, you get to enjoy the ride from the very start, and every bit of info you receive is all there was up to that point. You quickly realize that it's not as daunting as it seemed, though this is not to discount the fact that there certainly is a lot of lore in place even in The Elder Scrolls: Arena.
For starters, a lot of locations, names and dates will instantly be familiar to players of other Elder Scrolls games. The game's setting is Tamriel (a continent located on the planet Nirn). It plays in the Third Era and its 389th year. While this is the beginning date, each time you fast travel elsewhere, a lot of time passes depending on the distance, and you're unlikely to spend less than a couple years in the game before finishing it. Theoretically though, you could fast travel so much that you end up going thousands of years into the future and to the date of more modern Elder Scrolls games, which is a funny thought (at least I think there is no limit).
Jagar Tharn is the main antagonist in this game, betraying Emperor Uriel Septim VII, whose betrayal is witnessed by a mage apprentice called Ria Silmane. She is killed by Jagar Tharn, but takes up an incorporeal form, meaning she can't take a physical form, but reveal herself to the player in their dream. The player starts the game imprisoned (of course) and gets a message from Ria Silmane regarding the events that led to her death, and she tasks you with stopping Jagar Tharn. To do so, you need to get the Staff of Chaos' eight fragments, piece it together and destroy it to kill Jagar Tharn, whose life force is held within it.
It's a very typical story for a game of this time I realize more and more with each game I play, especially RPGs. There is only so much different gameplay that these games can offer, and apparently the only way to tell stories is to tell the player that there are x number of objects/people/locations that they have to collect/visit/destroy in order to win the game. It's not necessarily something I dislike in and of itself, but when the gameplay truly is one dimensional, focusing on just the main story can be quite repetitive and tedious.
Thankfully, this is Bethesda we're talking about, and the main story is only one part of your adventure. Elder Scrolls: Arena doesn't just take place in one province, but in the entire continent of Tamriel. Depending on the race you choose, exiting the first dungeon sends you to your home province. Not only that, but you are also randomly sent to one of dozens of unique villages/towns in each province. From there, you can travel to and explore every single one of them if you so desire, as well as explore the outskirts of these towns if you so wish. While they look same-y after a short while of course, there are differences, including in weather, building structures and placements, textures and types of citizens.
From my understanding, each player gets the same locations in every playthrough, and even every village's inns for example have the same unique names every time. NPCs might even be the same at all times, but then there are many things that are randomly generated. The outskirts for example seem to be procedurally generated and will look differently in each playthrough for specific villages, but I doubt there are many different variants there. Either way, in terms of story and exploration, they don't really have had any role in my playthrough. Dungeons are procedurally generated as well, and not only that, but side quests are too. This means that asking for work can result in you being tasked to bring an NPC item A from NPC B in Location C until the Deadline D, and you will be compensated with X amount of gold for doing so. If we go back to 1994, this is a pretty neat way of constantly giving the player things to do and reasons to enter dungeons and explore other areas. Clearly, it won't result in a lot of exciting, unique moments, but for 1994, this was unique and also probably pretty enjoyable. From a lore standpoint however, these don't offer any value other than maybe sending you to certain towns in, say, Skyrim, many of which are still named the same in the Elder Scrolls V, which I thought was pretty cool.
Bigger side quests exist as well though, especially from a lore standpoint. There are "Artifacts", legendary items of lore, which you can collect. You ask for General rumors, and if you're lucky, get one regarding one of these Artifacts, which you can then find in a dungeon. These are mainly items you can wear, but there is also the "Oghma Infinium", which gives you 50 attribute points to distribute. These Artifacts have descriptions however and some might even be relevant in future Elder Scrolls titles.
That said, the main way you will learn more about the Elder Scrolls universe is through the main story, which is quite disappointing in that regard. Similarly to many Bethesda games, the main story seems a bit like an afterthought, though the side content is not filled with excellent exploration to make up for it here. Ultimately, you will need to be satisfied with the small story you get with the three main characters being Ria Silmane, Jagar Tharn and Uriel Septim VII. Is that worth playing the game for? I don't think so. But if you're expecting very little here, the number of areas and NPCs that exist here and have actual names, jobs and tasks makes for a cool, somewhat immersive setting. The main way of progressing the story adds a lot to this as well, since you have to ask NPCs for information on dungeons to be able to pinpoint their locations. But thanks to the Elder Scrolls series growing since, I think anyone looking for an RPG where you need to use the help of NPCs instead of quest markers should simply play Morrowind.
GAMEPLAY | 9/20
There is no sugarcoating it, the game hasn't aged well. Controls are unintuitive, combat is incredibly unforgiving, you can easily find yourself losing hours of progress by being stuck at the end of a long dungeon, items and their benefits are not explained until you use or wear them, dungeons are repetitive and you either have to grind a ton or cheese the game's systems to get incredibly rich and make combat very easy for yourself.
First, here is what you do as part of the main story. Go to a village. Ask for information on a dungeon. The dungeon name is given to you by Ria Silmane whenever you sleep after finding the previous piece of the Staff of Chaos. You get information on the province where it will be. Go there. Ask around some more, get to person who needs you to find an Elder Scroll, which will reveal the location of the dungeon you're looking for. So go to dungeon to get the item that unlocks the main dungeon. Now go to main dungeon. Find your way to the lowest floor and find the piece. You get dialogue with Jagar Tharn when you do, who is pissed, but won't do shit about it other than sending minions because guess what, there are no bosses in this game apart from the finale I believe. Now repeat this process many times.
Second, here is what you do outside of the main story. Go somewhere, walk around the villages, talk to people to get to know their name and occupation, ask for general and work-related rumors, pick up a randomly generated or artifact related side quest, do the side quest.
That's pretty much it. If you're playing this in 1994 or the years afterwards, many of you would have clearly had a solid time based on the game's reception. Play it today and you'll be left with a repetitive game that has been improved upon not only by hundreds of other RPGs since, but by 4 iterations in the same series as well. So apart from the novelty of it all for the first couple of hours, there is no reason to indulge.
If the general things you can do here don't scare you off, here is the gameplay. Combat is done by pulling the mouse across the screen in a bunch of directions. Up and down, diagonally up/down, left/right, every way you can imagine basically. Some of these attacks do more damage, but are likelier to miss. Some deal less damage, but are likelier to hit. Some are neutral. There are plenty of weapons to choose from with different animations, but the idea remains the same. There is also spellcasting though, which adds a nice extra layer to it.
As you explore dungeons, you fight a rather low number of different enemies, at least until the point that I played, with Lizard Men, Orcs, Skeletons and Spiders being regular foes. You collect loot from their bodies or loot piles, which gives you gold, armor and other items like "Mark"s, which are items with special abilities, such as the ability to heal you or to cast certain magic attacks. Items have different tiers and the better you want your gear to be, the more gold you need of course, but from my experience, getting the gold necessary to properly deck yourself out takes a loooot of time of doing the same thing over and over again. Instead, what you can do is simple.
Mage guilds sell certain Ebony items that are very expensive. Absurdly expensive. You can simply pickpocket these and sell them back. If you fail, you can simply kill the mage, exit the guild, re-enter and the mage reappears, meaning there is no real system behind it other than the fact that pickpocketing exists in the game. Do that a few times and you're rich and can test out all sorts of items to your hearts content. It sounds like that's cheating and boring, but I'd say it's the only thing that will keep you from yawning your jaw off and actually opens up the game a bit more.
One final point regarding combat here: I feel like about half of my encounters started with me not even seeing the enemy. You get visually and audibly alerted to an enemy attacking you, so it's not the end of the world, but the amount of times enemies got a hit in without me seeing them was crazy. The path before you in dungeons is dark as you approach it, and any dead angle can have an enemy getting alerted to your presence, and especially early on, by the time you realize you're attacked, you'll have nearly your entire health drained by some of the enemies.
Looking at gameplay clips of Daggerfall makes me realize how dated Arena looks compared to its sequel, which is shocking considering that there is only a two-year difference in release dates. If you really want to dabble with old-school Elder Scrolls, Daggerfall looks like a much, much, much better choice, while Arena can safely be skipped in my opinion.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
There is voice acting here and it's actually not terrible. Jagar Tharn does a better job here than Ria Silmane in my opinion, but neither sounds as bad as you might expect 1994 voice acting to sound. The sound design has some discomforting qualities to it, in a good way, and I'm sure I'll find myself awakening in my own pool of sweat to the door sounds in this game at some point in the future. Add to this disturbing sound the sudden and in-your-face level-up tune and you got yourself a horror RPG a la Elvira. The soundtrack itself is quite long at 40 total minutes compared to other games at the time, but for an RPG that is quite long, this still means listening to the same tracks over and over again. The soundtrack can be best described as the most 1990s Fantasy RPG OST of all time. Puts you in the right mood, but does not stand out.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10
The fact that this game is so massive in terms of number of villages and dungeons is both a positive and negative for it visually. On the one hand, the game can show off the surprisingly varied designs used to create these villages. On the other, there obviously are not nearly enough differences to make up for so many villages. On top of that, dungeons in particular look same-y quite quickly, and considering that that is what you're looking it for most of your playthrough, your eyes will deserve a raise after you're done with the game for the sacrifices they make. That said, special effects used in this game and the design of the cutscenes were some of the standouts here visually, though overall the game is meh in that regard.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
Towns/Villages in this game are MASSIVE. Tons and tons of buildings, lots of NPCs, all of them with unique names and jobs, plenty of rumors to hear, inns to visit, provinces to travel to and the vibe you get from the soundtrack make this game a hell of a lot more immersive than one would expect. It felt like a Morrowind-lite in that regard, where the ideas are there already, but not the means to execute properly.
CONTENT | 5/10
Lots of provinces, races, classes, and weapons. Lots of towns/villages, NPCs, dungeons and more. Content quantity is truly large. Content quality on the other hand is lacking in many regards.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
I truly appreciate the way you find your main mission locations: By interacting with the NPCs and asking them, which gives you the feeling of immersiveness that makes Morrowind so beloved and unique to this day. Obviously, the systems are extremely limited here even in comparison to Morrowind, but just giving you instant quest markers would make this game even more boring than it already is in modern times. That said, the repetitive nature of both how you get to your locations and the dungeon layout within is hard to ignore.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10
The game is very ambitious, but unlike many other unique, ambitious games of its time, this one doesn't quite hit the mark like its sequel "Daggerfall" might have. Ultimately, the game presents you with a really large world, but with very few ways to interact with it that you are meant to repeat ad nauseam. You can already see what kind of games Bethesda want to make, and how they want their games to be ultimate fantasy RPG simulators, but the systems in place here are not refined at all, probably mainly due to the technology available in 1994, but also probably because of what ultimately led to a delay out of the Christmas Day window. 2 years later, at least at a glance, Daggerfall looks like on a whole nother level within just two years, and I don't think PC gaming got along THAT far during that time for their to ostensibly be such a massive difference in quality, though I might be underestimating the growth of gaming at the time.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
Yeah, the game is replayable, but replayability must also mean fun to replay, and I think the only part that provides that is the fact that you can have an entire playthrough feel different by placing an emphasis on spell-casting instead of melee combat.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 61/100
I respect this game a lot for its ambitions and for bringing us the Elder Scrolls franchise. That said, if you are intrigued by its "talk to NPCs to figure out your way" system, just play Morrowind. If you're OK with more hand-holding, just play Oblivion and/or Skyrim at this point. Elder Scrolls Arena does not have much to offer anymore after its first few hours.
(This is the 96th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Possibly the best written and most replayable video game out there. It's been over a year since I originally beat this, but coming back to it the past few days and deciding to play things differently confirmed the magic of this game to me once again.
I'd be lying to you, if I said I understood everything, especially when the characters start getting into long discussions on political ideologies mixed in with Disco Elysium lore in a way that is hard to differentiate at times for layman like me, which makes me doubly confused. Notwithstanding that, the dialogue in this game has me hooked nonstop anyway, and I suppose if you're more of a politically inclined person, even those long discussions would be a major positive for you.
There are so many iconic moments in this game, an unreal amount of laugh out loud lines that rivals and bests almost any video game I ever played and to top it all off, some truly magical scenes that I won't spoil.
I started this review with the keyword "replayability", so I want to end this review by explaining what I am. 1) There are thousands of passive checks that lead to different and/or additional conversation paths. How you pick and develop your skills impacts conversations quite notably. 2) There are dozens of "thoughts" you can internalize, leading to even more dialogue choices, and I got 3 thoughts I didn't get in my first playthrough within the first 2 hours of playthrough #2. They also sometimes allow you to DO certain things as well, not just make dialogue choices. 3) There are a lot of ways to tackle your overall mission of solving a case. I don't want to go into them, since they are spoiler territory, but it's pretty wild how significantly different approaches can be. 4) You can align yourself with and against many of the bigger characters, again leading to very different (smaller scale) outcomes.
In terms of games that don't have any actual combat, Disco Elysium to me is far and away the best game out there right now, and it's one of the best games I ever played period.
I'd be lying to you, if I said I understood everything, especially when the characters start getting into long discussions on political ideologies mixed in with Disco Elysium lore in a way that is hard to differentiate at times for layman like me, which makes me doubly confused. Notwithstanding that, the dialogue in this game has me hooked nonstop anyway, and I suppose if you're more of a politically inclined person, even those long discussions would be a major positive for you.
There are so many iconic moments in this game, an unreal amount of laugh out loud lines that rivals and bests almost any video game I ever played and to top it all off, some truly magical scenes that I won't spoil.
I started this review with the keyword "replayability", so I want to end this review by explaining what I am. 1) There are thousands of passive checks that lead to different and/or additional conversation paths. How you pick and develop your skills impacts conversations quite notably. 2) There are dozens of "thoughts" you can internalize, leading to even more dialogue choices, and I got 3 thoughts I didn't get in my first playthrough within the first 2 hours of playthrough #2. They also sometimes allow you to DO certain things as well, not just make dialogue choices. 3) There are a lot of ways to tackle your overall mission of solving a case. I don't want to go into them, since they are spoiler territory, but it's pretty wild how significantly different approaches can be. 4) You can align yourself with and against many of the bigger characters, again leading to very different (smaller scale) outcomes.
In terms of games that don't have any actual combat, Disco Elysium to me is far and away the best game out there right now, and it's one of the best games I ever played period.