fe17
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.)
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.)
2014
(This is the 119th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
RESIDENT BACKTRACKERRRR. I loved playing Resident Evil, both because it was about time I finally played some more of this series and also because it just simply has a timeless survival horror gameplay loop. In what is obviously a subjective taste however, I can't say I was the biggest fan of the constant (!) backtracking required in this game. The classic door animations that play every time you enter a room, while they do add to the atmosphere (and kudos for designing all (?) of them individually), they also add on many minutes to your playthrough, possibly up to an hour or more. This makes backtracking even more of a hassle. It helps that everything you do in between that is fantastic, but I should mention it to anyone who is potentially reading this before thinking of playing the game.
I believe there is a mod though that removes the door animations, so if I ever do replay the game (which I'm confident I will), I would have to do it with the mod. Considering the game oozes with atmosphere even without the door animations, I would be OK with this decision, and maybe you too.
But I want to share more thoughts about the game (spoiler-free), so if you're interested, keep on reading. TLDR of it is above. Great game, backtracking makes it a bit of a chore depending on your stance towards it.
I also played the 2014 Resident Evil HD Remaster version, not the original 1996 version. I did that because I don't think all the backtracking plus tank controls would have been doable for someone with my patience. Having seen gameplay of the original, I do feel like it has its own vibe enough (in a good way) that I want to try that some time as well, but since the games are otherwise pretty much the same in all that matters, I chose the convenience of the most modern version of the game.
The original came out on March 22nd, 1996 for PlayStation, and later for Windows, Sega Saturn and Nintendo DS. It was especially fun to play this game because I had played Clock Tower and Alone in the Dark previously. It is well noted that the game's primary inspiration came from 1989's Sweet Home, but from personal experience, this game just felt like a well-refined and much more grand type of game that Alone in the Dark and Clock Tower were. All three of these games just feel like Escape Rooms that you slowly solve as you make your escape. And I just realized that all three play in a mansion. Were developers not allowed to go outside of mansions at this point in time? Or were mansions just seen as this creepy in pop culture in the 90s? I guess they still are perceived that way.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10
You can choose to play as either Chris or Jill. Interesting: All three survival horror games I mentioned (AitD, Clock Tower and this) have a female main character.
The setting is like this: You are part of S.T.A.R.S. (Special Tactics And Rescue Service). It's 1998. A series of murders on the outskirts of Raccoon City (murdered people even getting eaten) got your departments Bravo Team sent to investigate. Contact to that team was lost, so your Alpha Team is sent in. You discover the site of their crashed helicopter, at which point you are attacked by a group of murderous dogs and run to safety. Safety at this moment is the creepy mansion in the distance.
I played as Jill (the easier of both choices), so Jill, Barry and Wesker made it to the mansion. Chris is missing. You go with Barry and Wesker heads off somewhere on his own. When you return to the rendezvous point, Wesker is missing and Barry (after stating how massive this mansion is), suggests splitting up. Amazing.
From here, you head off on your own and there are only sporadic appearances of Barry, Wesker, Chris and a bunch of side characters. The cool part is that you can get certain cutscenes depending on where you go at which point in time, and your actions and how quick you do things can impact whether some of them survive.
Other than this though, character development in the game is practically nonexistent and the story doesn't go anywhere outside of what nearly every gamer in the world knows anyway. There is a virus turning people into zombies.
Cutscenes are kept very short and most of the backstory is told through logs you find here and there. Whenever there are cutscenes, such as you finding Barry a bunch of times, you just listen to some of the WORST dialogue in video game history for 30 seconds, get given a nice gift and move on. Plot twists are not done very well, character motivations are questionable and it's all just hilariously bad. My favorites.
"What the hell is this thing?" "I found Kenneth killed by this thing." or
"Who would do this to him?" "I don't know, but I'm gonna find out what did this to him"
It's just the stiffest dialogue you could ever imagine. I didn't get tears from laughing, but the voice acting and dialogue might singlehandedly bring me to play the original, because I watched the opening of that and oh my god, that's just art right there.
GAMEPLAY | 16/20
Again, outside of the issues of backtracking, I pretty much got no complaints. Well, outside of one. The issue is that these complaints go hand in hand and can be a pretty big deal depending on what kind of player you are.
That other point is Inventory Management. If you play as Jill, you have eight spots. Every item takes up one spot, outside of daggers and the stun gun. This means key items, literal keys and every weapon and ammo type uses up a space. The lighter and kerosene needed to light zombies on fire use up two spaces too. They are very useful but I never used them because I couldn't really afford to.
If you choose Chris, it's even worse: You only have six slots. Six! Include your handgun, ammo and a healing item and one key that you always have one you for 80% of the game and you only have two slots remaining. Find a healing item on your way? Great, now you can only pick up one key item and on you go to the storage room.
I think the inventory management part of the game has its merits, but I think this is a bit too excessive here. I don't know how Resi 2 and 3 handled it, but I imagine they came to the same conclusion and gave the player more space.
Outside of this, the game is pure survival horror fun. You are in this gigantic mansion, trapped and alone, and need to use your wits and your survival instincts to get out in one piece. There are many zombies to fight (or avoid, if you're smart), dozens and dozens of rooms to check, hundreds of key and resource items to find and many puzzles to solve. As you get more comfortable, thinking ahead and creating routes to destinations becomes important to avoid as many fights as possible and preserve that precious ammo. The loop is fantastic, and it works great.
As there are so many rooms, another big difficulty becomes figuring out where you saw certain things that you know you need to go to to put this key item in that you just found. Making notes will surely help, or really paying attention to where important looking things are. Playing this for an hour or two once a week might make progression even more difficult for this reason.
You can either use the new controls which lets you move around with only one restriction: When you aim, you can't move. Outside of that, you can turn on the spot and have lots of freedom, while the classic tank controls mean you gotta tuuuuuuurn to move the opposite way, which I'm sure is not all that fun.
Shooting is restrictive because when you aim, you can only point straight, up or down. Since headshots are very useful (you don't need to put zombies on fire if you incapacitate them), it's frustrating to not just be able to aim at their head. You need to let them get real close for upwards aim to do the trick, or be lucky and have a body shot trigger a headshot.
Puzzles are actually very straigthforward for almost the entire game and only very slightly cryptic, which is nice. You do think a little bit here and there but I never had any trouble.
Enemy types are on the lower end. Normal zombies are commonplace, but they turn into steroid-versions of themselves (don't remember the canon name) and get massive claws, if you don't incapacitate them in their normal zombie form or burn them after killing them normally. These stronger versions also take more damage to kill, making passing through their area a danger to both health and resources.
Then there are crows and wasps which you can mostly avoid, as well as dogs which are a pain in the butt (as per usual for enemy dogs in games). The game introduces some other enemies later on, but these are your primary opponents.
Overall, there is a great game here. The remake did clearly not change much about the gameplay loop here, which allows me to say that for 1996's standards, the loop feels really good and creative. For their first try at this, Capcom obviously therefore didn't perfectly balance everything out (in my opinion), and so I'm looking forward to see how that improves in the sequels, if Capcom felt the same way about this as me.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
There is mainly ambient music here, and it fits really well. There is different music playing for different rooms, and then there are many areas with no music and just you, the environmental sounds and your character's footsteps, which is an eerie silence that I always enjoy in games like these. Resident Evil does not have a soundtrack that a normal human being will listen to outside of this game, but within the game it is perfect.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
I played the 2014 version, which has great background and environmental design to add a lot to all the locations you visit in the game. That's the most striking difference compared to the original (after the increased resolution of course) and while I prefer it, the simplicity of the original (which mainly has interactable objects as part of the background) has me very intrigued as well. Enemy design is very good and visuals overall look very good to this day. I can't say it couldn't profit from the modern Resi Remake treatment, but it will age very well in its current state too.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Horror games rarely ever scare me. If they accomplish this, it will be due to a jump scare or, like in this game's case, through great game design. This is truly survival horror, where you live on the edge of survival at all times. Limited resources, limited saves and lots (but not too many) of dangers. Each decision can be fatal, which is why I was on the edge of my seat throughout (and I played on EASY). Usually, I have enough ammo or have an auto save close enough to put me at ease, and while those games can accomplish dread just as well, Resident Evil is one of the earliest games to ever do it for me.
CONTENT | 9/10
The sheer volume of content in this game is impressive. You have your 15 hour normal playthrough. Then you have your second 15 hour playthrough with a different character and some different cutscenes, as well as a change in items. Jill has the lockpick, Chris has the lighter. Chris can take more hits but Jill gets a grenade launcher and improved shotgun. There is a clear easier route, but both worth playing. Then there are the different outcomes and endings based on who you manage to save.
The only issue with the content is that 15 hour playthroughs include about 5 hours of backtracking and door opening, which can drag down the experience depending on your preferences. That said, your second playthrough should be a few hours shorter since you know where to find everything at that point.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
They have done a great job at the survival horror gameplay loop, but I can't say I felt like the level design was perfect in this. I'd argue there are a few too many doors and a little too much backtracking with not enough interconnectivity in my opinion. Otherwise, great.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 9/10
Resident Evil made survival horror mainstream and even helped bring zombies back to pop culture. This type of game was done before in a much simpler form, which keeps me from giving it a full 10, but the impact of Resident Evil cannot be understated.
REPLAYABILITY | 5/5
Two characters, lots of different cutscenes and outcomes, and a number of challenge runs you are asked to do for 100% completion makes this a very replayable game. I mean look at this. Beat it in 5 hours, beat it in 3 hours, beat it with no saves, beat it with no saves ... I've got no chance, but for people who dare, this is great.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 86/100
Resident Evil is one of the best games I've played as part of this challenge and has rightfully started a major franchise that spread to a bunch of different media over the years. Not all done with the name ended up being good, but the original sure was. It made me realize that I truly do love survival horror, though I'm also not the biggest survival horror nut considering my thoughts about all the backtracking. A game that is a mix of this and Resident Evil 4's focus on action feels like it could be insane. Perhaps Resident Evil 2 Remake is that game, I will see soon enough.
RESIDENT BACKTRACKERRRR. I loved playing Resident Evil, both because it was about time I finally played some more of this series and also because it just simply has a timeless survival horror gameplay loop. In what is obviously a subjective taste however, I can't say I was the biggest fan of the constant (!) backtracking required in this game. The classic door animations that play every time you enter a room, while they do add to the atmosphere (and kudos for designing all (?) of them individually), they also add on many minutes to your playthrough, possibly up to an hour or more. This makes backtracking even more of a hassle. It helps that everything you do in between that is fantastic, but I should mention it to anyone who is potentially reading this before thinking of playing the game.
I believe there is a mod though that removes the door animations, so if I ever do replay the game (which I'm confident I will), I would have to do it with the mod. Considering the game oozes with atmosphere even without the door animations, I would be OK with this decision, and maybe you too.
But I want to share more thoughts about the game (spoiler-free), so if you're interested, keep on reading. TLDR of it is above. Great game, backtracking makes it a bit of a chore depending on your stance towards it.
I also played the 2014 Resident Evil HD Remaster version, not the original 1996 version. I did that because I don't think all the backtracking plus tank controls would have been doable for someone with my patience. Having seen gameplay of the original, I do feel like it has its own vibe enough (in a good way) that I want to try that some time as well, but since the games are otherwise pretty much the same in all that matters, I chose the convenience of the most modern version of the game.
The original came out on March 22nd, 1996 for PlayStation, and later for Windows, Sega Saturn and Nintendo DS. It was especially fun to play this game because I had played Clock Tower and Alone in the Dark previously. It is well noted that the game's primary inspiration came from 1989's Sweet Home, but from personal experience, this game just felt like a well-refined and much more grand type of game that Alone in the Dark and Clock Tower were. All three of these games just feel like Escape Rooms that you slowly solve as you make your escape. And I just realized that all three play in a mansion. Were developers not allowed to go outside of mansions at this point in time? Or were mansions just seen as this creepy in pop culture in the 90s? I guess they still are perceived that way.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10
You can choose to play as either Chris or Jill. Interesting: All three survival horror games I mentioned (AitD, Clock Tower and this) have a female main character.
The setting is like this: You are part of S.T.A.R.S. (Special Tactics And Rescue Service). It's 1998. A series of murders on the outskirts of Raccoon City (murdered people even getting eaten) got your departments Bravo Team sent to investigate. Contact to that team was lost, so your Alpha Team is sent in. You discover the site of their crashed helicopter, at which point you are attacked by a group of murderous dogs and run to safety. Safety at this moment is the creepy mansion in the distance.
I played as Jill (the easier of both choices), so Jill, Barry and Wesker made it to the mansion. Chris is missing. You go with Barry and Wesker heads off somewhere on his own. When you return to the rendezvous point, Wesker is missing and Barry (after stating how massive this mansion is), suggests splitting up. Amazing.
From here, you head off on your own and there are only sporadic appearances of Barry, Wesker, Chris and a bunch of side characters. The cool part is that you can get certain cutscenes depending on where you go at which point in time, and your actions and how quick you do things can impact whether some of them survive.
Other than this though, character development in the game is practically nonexistent and the story doesn't go anywhere outside of what nearly every gamer in the world knows anyway. There is a virus turning people into zombies.
Cutscenes are kept very short and most of the backstory is told through logs you find here and there. Whenever there are cutscenes, such as you finding Barry a bunch of times, you just listen to some of the WORST dialogue in video game history for 30 seconds, get given a nice gift and move on. Plot twists are not done very well, character motivations are questionable and it's all just hilariously bad. My favorites.
"What the hell is this thing?" "I found Kenneth killed by this thing." or
"Who would do this to him?" "I don't know, but I'm gonna find out what did this to him"
It's just the stiffest dialogue you could ever imagine. I didn't get tears from laughing, but the voice acting and dialogue might singlehandedly bring me to play the original, because I watched the opening of that and oh my god, that's just art right there.
GAMEPLAY | 16/20
Again, outside of the issues of backtracking, I pretty much got no complaints. Well, outside of one. The issue is that these complaints go hand in hand and can be a pretty big deal depending on what kind of player you are.
That other point is Inventory Management. If you play as Jill, you have eight spots. Every item takes up one spot, outside of daggers and the stun gun. This means key items, literal keys and every weapon and ammo type uses up a space. The lighter and kerosene needed to light zombies on fire use up two spaces too. They are very useful but I never used them because I couldn't really afford to.
If you choose Chris, it's even worse: You only have six slots. Six! Include your handgun, ammo and a healing item and one key that you always have one you for 80% of the game and you only have two slots remaining. Find a healing item on your way? Great, now you can only pick up one key item and on you go to the storage room.
I think the inventory management part of the game has its merits, but I think this is a bit too excessive here. I don't know how Resi 2 and 3 handled it, but I imagine they came to the same conclusion and gave the player more space.
Outside of this, the game is pure survival horror fun. You are in this gigantic mansion, trapped and alone, and need to use your wits and your survival instincts to get out in one piece. There are many zombies to fight (or avoid, if you're smart), dozens and dozens of rooms to check, hundreds of key and resource items to find and many puzzles to solve. As you get more comfortable, thinking ahead and creating routes to destinations becomes important to avoid as many fights as possible and preserve that precious ammo. The loop is fantastic, and it works great.
As there are so many rooms, another big difficulty becomes figuring out where you saw certain things that you know you need to go to to put this key item in that you just found. Making notes will surely help, or really paying attention to where important looking things are. Playing this for an hour or two once a week might make progression even more difficult for this reason.
You can either use the new controls which lets you move around with only one restriction: When you aim, you can't move. Outside of that, you can turn on the spot and have lots of freedom, while the classic tank controls mean you gotta tuuuuuuurn to move the opposite way, which I'm sure is not all that fun.
Shooting is restrictive because when you aim, you can only point straight, up or down. Since headshots are very useful (you don't need to put zombies on fire if you incapacitate them), it's frustrating to not just be able to aim at their head. You need to let them get real close for upwards aim to do the trick, or be lucky and have a body shot trigger a headshot.
Puzzles are actually very straigthforward for almost the entire game and only very slightly cryptic, which is nice. You do think a little bit here and there but I never had any trouble.
Enemy types are on the lower end. Normal zombies are commonplace, but they turn into steroid-versions of themselves (don't remember the canon name) and get massive claws, if you don't incapacitate them in their normal zombie form or burn them after killing them normally. These stronger versions also take more damage to kill, making passing through their area a danger to both health and resources.
Then there are crows and wasps which you can mostly avoid, as well as dogs which are a pain in the butt (as per usual for enemy dogs in games). The game introduces some other enemies later on, but these are your primary opponents.
Overall, there is a great game here. The remake did clearly not change much about the gameplay loop here, which allows me to say that for 1996's standards, the loop feels really good and creative. For their first try at this, Capcom obviously therefore didn't perfectly balance everything out (in my opinion), and so I'm looking forward to see how that improves in the sequels, if Capcom felt the same way about this as me.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
There is mainly ambient music here, and it fits really well. There is different music playing for different rooms, and then there are many areas with no music and just you, the environmental sounds and your character's footsteps, which is an eerie silence that I always enjoy in games like these. Resident Evil does not have a soundtrack that a normal human being will listen to outside of this game, but within the game it is perfect.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
I played the 2014 version, which has great background and environmental design to add a lot to all the locations you visit in the game. That's the most striking difference compared to the original (after the increased resolution of course) and while I prefer it, the simplicity of the original (which mainly has interactable objects as part of the background) has me very intrigued as well. Enemy design is very good and visuals overall look very good to this day. I can't say it couldn't profit from the modern Resi Remake treatment, but it will age very well in its current state too.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Horror games rarely ever scare me. If they accomplish this, it will be due to a jump scare or, like in this game's case, through great game design. This is truly survival horror, where you live on the edge of survival at all times. Limited resources, limited saves and lots (but not too many) of dangers. Each decision can be fatal, which is why I was on the edge of my seat throughout (and I played on EASY). Usually, I have enough ammo or have an auto save close enough to put me at ease, and while those games can accomplish dread just as well, Resident Evil is one of the earliest games to ever do it for me.
CONTENT | 9/10
The sheer volume of content in this game is impressive. You have your 15 hour normal playthrough. Then you have your second 15 hour playthrough with a different character and some different cutscenes, as well as a change in items. Jill has the lockpick, Chris has the lighter. Chris can take more hits but Jill gets a grenade launcher and improved shotgun. There is a clear easier route, but both worth playing. Then there are the different outcomes and endings based on who you manage to save.
The only issue with the content is that 15 hour playthroughs include about 5 hours of backtracking and door opening, which can drag down the experience depending on your preferences. That said, your second playthrough should be a few hours shorter since you know where to find everything at that point.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
They have done a great job at the survival horror gameplay loop, but I can't say I felt like the level design was perfect in this. I'd argue there are a few too many doors and a little too much backtracking with not enough interconnectivity in my opinion. Otherwise, great.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 9/10
Resident Evil made survival horror mainstream and even helped bring zombies back to pop culture. This type of game was done before in a much simpler form, which keeps me from giving it a full 10, but the impact of Resident Evil cannot be understated.
REPLAYABILITY | 5/5
Two characters, lots of different cutscenes and outcomes, and a number of challenge runs you are asked to do for 100% completion makes this a very replayable game. I mean look at this. Beat it in 5 hours, beat it in 3 hours, beat it with no saves, beat it with no saves ... I've got no chance, but for people who dare, this is great.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 86/100
Resident Evil is one of the best games I've played as part of this challenge and has rightfully started a major franchise that spread to a bunch of different media over the years. Not all done with the name ended up being good, but the original sure was. It made me realize that I truly do love survival horror, though I'm also not the biggest survival horror nut considering my thoughts about all the backtracking. A game that is a mix of this and Resident Evil 4's focus on action feels like it could be insane. Perhaps Resident Evil 2 Remake is that game, I will see soon enough.
2017
In Tacoma you play as Amy Ferrier and have the task of retrieving data and the wetware of an AI, ODIN. from an abandoned station, Tacoma, which was struck by a meteor a few days prior. The crew was rescued, so as you collect the data, which happens automatically, you are free to explore the many different rooms in the station, where you can re-watch interactions between the crew members during and immediately after the meteor strike from a few days ago. Doing this, you find out about each member's role, ambitions, backgrounds and relationships between each other.
As mentioned, the devs are behind Gone Home as well. These games are very similar in that there isn't any threat, you can basically just explore a location and piece together the story and the events that unfolded and so, they place a heavy burden on narrative, world building and atmosphere.
It's possible that you can beat the game without really "completing" the story or finding out every truth but I wouldn't recommend it, because the story is actually pretty interesting (way more than Gone Home in my opinion). Beware that this is a walking simulator, so there isn't much in terms of gameplay. You just walk around, read some notes, listen to dialogue, do a few very easy puzzles and interact with a couple other things and that's it. All the value here is in the story and the characters, so your prior experiences with walking sims should tell you, if this game is for you.
That said, that value is quite high, as the game places you in a narrative that is quite thoughtprovoking when it comes to our current dabbles and battles with AI and how it might look like in the future where AI is more embedded into our everyday lives. I don't want to say too much, because as I said, the narrative is very important in carrying your experience, but this is a game that, while it doesn't take that story theme to an unexplored area, does create an interesting and engaging plot where the player feels actively involved thanks to the rewinding / fast-forwarding mechanic that the player needs to use to gather clues on what happened on this station.
Overall, I can recommend it and it's definitely up there as one of the more enjoyable walking sims I've played. This comes from someone who isn't necessarily a big fan of the genre, but whatever that genre needs to do to make up for its lack of gameplay, this game has accomplished.
As mentioned, the devs are behind Gone Home as well. These games are very similar in that there isn't any threat, you can basically just explore a location and piece together the story and the events that unfolded and so, they place a heavy burden on narrative, world building and atmosphere.
It's possible that you can beat the game without really "completing" the story or finding out every truth but I wouldn't recommend it, because the story is actually pretty interesting (way more than Gone Home in my opinion). Beware that this is a walking simulator, so there isn't much in terms of gameplay. You just walk around, read some notes, listen to dialogue, do a few very easy puzzles and interact with a couple other things and that's it. All the value here is in the story and the characters, so your prior experiences with walking sims should tell you, if this game is for you.
That said, that value is quite high, as the game places you in a narrative that is quite thoughtprovoking when it comes to our current dabbles and battles with AI and how it might look like in the future where AI is more embedded into our everyday lives. I don't want to say too much, because as I said, the narrative is very important in carrying your experience, but this is a game that, while it doesn't take that story theme to an unexplored area, does create an interesting and engaging plot where the player feels actively involved thanks to the rewinding / fast-forwarding mechanic that the player needs to use to gather clues on what happened on this station.
Overall, I can recommend it and it's definitely up there as one of the more enjoyable walking sims I've played. This comes from someone who isn't necessarily a big fan of the genre, but whatever that genre needs to do to make up for its lack of gameplay, this game has accomplished.
(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.
(This is the 62nd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
This is the first game I'm reviewing that released in 1992. Boy, what an introduction to the year. Well, the good thing is, it can only go up from here. The Amazing Spider-Man 2, developed by Bits Studios (Rare made the original), is part of the early 90's Game Boy Trilogy that might just be the worst trilogy in gaming.
I have now played 4 Spider-Man games from the early 90s as part of the challenge, and all 4 probably find themselves in my Top 7 Worst Games I've played so far. It's like they're all in a competition for that #1 spot. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a darn good contender, so let's see how it scores in my review.
First, an extremely important note: This game received a 98% score by French magazine Consoles +. I'm not kidding, 98%! I cannot explain how significantly ridiculous this is. Picture this: Sonic received a 95% score. Mario Kart received 94%. Sonic 2 got 92%. Super Mario Bros 3 got the same 98%. So you got it there folks. This game is one of the best games of all time according to this French magazine. Wow.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
Peter Parker wakes up with an odd feeling that something is wrong. He is proven correct when he reads that day's newspaper: 'Spider-Man turns bad', it says. "I've been framed", Spider-Man thinks. As he still is in thought, Hobgoblin attacks. And the game starts.
From here, defeating bosses furthers the story with comic-book style storytelling. Turns out, someone IS framing Peter with some sort of "robot spideys". The story is incredibly basic and as per usual for this time period, not notable at all.
With this, the game unfortunately lost the tiny bit of charm that the original had, which was witty trash-talk between Spidey and the bad guys. That's present once or twice here, but not on that level.
This game has phoned it in so much that, even with those few pictures that are used to tell the story, the devs still literally re-used the same pictures for different 'cutscenes'.
GAMEPLAY | 5/20
Are you looking for a game that makes you laugh out loud over how terribly it controls? Well, look no further than this mess. This is called an "action-adventure" game instead of the Action / Platformer that was the original Game Boy game. Why? I have no idea. The only thing that has this game qualify is the fact that it isn't a traditional platformer. There isn't anything to qualify the adventure part though. I'm assuming it's the fact that you can enter a few buildings which have some items hidden, like a crowbar (which opens crates, because Spider-Man is too weak otherwise, as we all know).
This game controls worse than all other Spider-Man games I've played, which were the benchmark for terrible controls up until now, and I'd go as far as to say that this game's controls is a contender for the worst ever in a video game. It's definitely, without a doubt, the worst for any game that received a 98% rating (still can't get over that). This is a side-scrolling game with a lot of items that just don't work together. You climb up stairs akin to a Castlevania game, but it's not "up" that gets you up. No, because simply moving up will have you drop down because each step is actually not connected on the stairs in this game. So you need to jump up stairs. Amazing.
You do have a webswinging feature in this game, but it's hilariously terrible. The web only extends about a meter above your head and it doesn't matter whether you attach it to something or have it literally be suspended in mid-air, it works. Well, not really. You try to get momentum by swinging side to side, but Spidey lets go off the web at random and doesn't even properly elevate with it. In theory, if it works well, you can use it to quickly climb up buildings. There is no other use for it and even this use is questionable. Why? Because you simply can jump from window to window to climb a building, or use one of many invisible platforms to do so.
You can also climb the side of the buildings in this game. But since this is a 2D game, that idea does not work at all. Whenever you try to avoid bombs thrown from the heavens or enemies by jumping over them - you have to - you often will be doing so near the side of the wall. Spider-Man will automatically get attached to the wall, even if you don't want to. And whenever you do actively want to climb a wall, you need multiple tries every time to get attached. While climbing the wall, the Hobgoblin will regularly throw bombs at you and knock you off, and the game has no feature of attaching to walls mid-air, so you fall all the way down every time.
When the game starts you off, you have no clear goal. You run around in Peter's neighborhood and have Hobgoblin flying over your head, throwing bombs at you. These bombs not only can hit you on the head, but will then drop to the floor, explode and can damage you one more time from the after-effect of the explosion. Your goal, apparently, is to catch Hobgoblin with your web and ride him down, which will destroy his glider and let you actually attack him. Why can't you throw punches at him while he is right next to you? No idea, it just doesn't work. It doesn't help that your web fluids are limited, so I found myself not even being able to do what I'm supposed to on my first attempt. I can't say I would have figured it out, ever, without checking a longplay of this game though.
Regarding Spider-Man's weapons: You can punch. You can do a terrible jump-kick. You can shoot webs, but only if you crouch down (?) and only if you have enough web fluid, which is drained rather quickly.
You could argue I haven't gone over the worst part yet. The only enemies in this game are the things that are thrown at you from the bosses, the bosses themselves and out of screen snipers. There are no other enemies in this game! This game is just empty as shit. AGAIN, IT GOT A 98% REVIEW! 98%! The review (translated) says that "the whole city is against Spider-Man from the get-go". THERE ARE LITERALLY JUST THE BOSSES WHO SHOWED UP! I literally can't...
Overall, this is the worst game I have played in terms of pure gameplay as part of this challenge, or in general, so give credit to this game for that. But this truly is terrible. I was disappointed with a name like Rare being attached to a game like the original from this Game Boy trilogy, but in hindsight, that game had some charm, actual cohesive game design behind it, and managed to at least have some fans at the time. If Rare had been behind this as well, there is no chance that this would be nearly as horrible as it ended up being.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 4/10
No voice acting. Sound design is not great, not bad. The soundtrack consists of three tracks. I find it hard to find a retro soundtrack that sounds aggressively bad, and I can't say this soundtrack is bad either. It's just very short and sounds very uninspired.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 2/10
Can a game have no art design? On the Game Boy, there of course is no color, so attention to detail is even more important. This game is what you get when you go with the opposite of "attention to detail". The environments are incredibly bland. You run from side to side with same looking buildings scrolling through non-stop, and with a few skyscraping buildings visible in the background that is otherwise simply white. No clouds, nothing, just white. Spider-Man looks weird as hell and walks like he has no control over his limbs (every Spider-Man game in this challenge has had odd-looking Spidey animations), animations overall are poor, the devs were so lazy that they didn't even create enemies, cutscene pictures are repeated and there just is 0 passion that went into this game.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 2/10
How can you expect any atmosphere when the entire game looks empty? You simply are fighting one enemy that keeps you occupied, sometimes, while trying to get near him and figure out what the hell the game wants from you. Apart from the somewhat recognizable characters from the Spider-Man universe, there is nothing about this game that emanates a whiff of what you'd expect a Spider-Man game to look and feel like.
CONTENT | 2/10
I'm giving it an additional point for the fact that there is some actual content here, but it is of the worst kind. The levels are mostly empty, they look like crap, and there are just a few them in this game, which is of course good for people who don't enjoy it, but a shame for the kids who would play everything and anything you put in front of them, if they have no alternatives. That's a good description for this game. If you could play literally anything else, you probably would.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 2/10
One additional point for the fact that levels can actually be completed I guess? The first level immediately sets the tone. You exit the introductory cutscene to find yourself in this empty city with the Hobgoblin chucking bombs at you. You aren't told anything on what to do, and how to do it. The features in this game are counterintuitive to the control scheme and it makes for an awful time trying to make your way through the levels, which in addition to all this, offer no depth and complexity.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 1/10
This has no concept. You are put into a small area and have only one enemy to fight, who just annoying flings stuff at you while you are outside. You can simply enter buildings and have 0 threats while you look for boring, quasi-useless items. Remove the Spider-Man name and this has literally no selling proposition. None.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
No motivation given to replay this game after having beaten it the first time.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
The game works, but I'm taking a point off for the fact that the controls are so terrible and certain actions appear to be working randomly from time to time.
OVERALL | 25/100
And there we have it. The worst game I've played so far in this challenge is a Spider-Man game replacing the previous holder of that title, a different Spider-Man game. I love Spider-Man and it saddens me to see what had been done to him in the video game industry 30+ years ago. Thank god that new Spider-Man 2 showcase was awesome and I can rest easy in the comfort of the franchise's handling in this day and age.
This is the first game I'm reviewing that released in 1992. Boy, what an introduction to the year. Well, the good thing is, it can only go up from here. The Amazing Spider-Man 2, developed by Bits Studios (Rare made the original), is part of the early 90's Game Boy Trilogy that might just be the worst trilogy in gaming.
I have now played 4 Spider-Man games from the early 90s as part of the challenge, and all 4 probably find themselves in my Top 7 Worst Games I've played so far. It's like they're all in a competition for that #1 spot. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a darn good contender, so let's see how it scores in my review.
First, an extremely important note: This game received a 98% score by French magazine Consoles +. I'm not kidding, 98%! I cannot explain how significantly ridiculous this is. Picture this: Sonic received a 95% score. Mario Kart received 94%. Sonic 2 got 92%. Super Mario Bros 3 got the same 98%. So you got it there folks. This game is one of the best games of all time according to this French magazine. Wow.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
Peter Parker wakes up with an odd feeling that something is wrong. He is proven correct when he reads that day's newspaper: 'Spider-Man turns bad', it says. "I've been framed", Spider-Man thinks. As he still is in thought, Hobgoblin attacks. And the game starts.
From here, defeating bosses furthers the story with comic-book style storytelling. Turns out, someone IS framing Peter with some sort of "robot spideys". The story is incredibly basic and as per usual for this time period, not notable at all.
With this, the game unfortunately lost the tiny bit of charm that the original had, which was witty trash-talk between Spidey and the bad guys. That's present once or twice here, but not on that level.
This game has phoned it in so much that, even with those few pictures that are used to tell the story, the devs still literally re-used the same pictures for different 'cutscenes'.
GAMEPLAY | 5/20
Are you looking for a game that makes you laugh out loud over how terribly it controls? Well, look no further than this mess. This is called an "action-adventure" game instead of the Action / Platformer that was the original Game Boy game. Why? I have no idea. The only thing that has this game qualify is the fact that it isn't a traditional platformer. There isn't anything to qualify the adventure part though. I'm assuming it's the fact that you can enter a few buildings which have some items hidden, like a crowbar (which opens crates, because Spider-Man is too weak otherwise, as we all know).
This game controls worse than all other Spider-Man games I've played, which were the benchmark for terrible controls up until now, and I'd go as far as to say that this game's controls is a contender for the worst ever in a video game. It's definitely, without a doubt, the worst for any game that received a 98% rating (still can't get over that). This is a side-scrolling game with a lot of items that just don't work together. You climb up stairs akin to a Castlevania game, but it's not "up" that gets you up. No, because simply moving up will have you drop down because each step is actually not connected on the stairs in this game. So you need to jump up stairs. Amazing.
You do have a webswinging feature in this game, but it's hilariously terrible. The web only extends about a meter above your head and it doesn't matter whether you attach it to something or have it literally be suspended in mid-air, it works. Well, not really. You try to get momentum by swinging side to side, but Spidey lets go off the web at random and doesn't even properly elevate with it. In theory, if it works well, you can use it to quickly climb up buildings. There is no other use for it and even this use is questionable. Why? Because you simply can jump from window to window to climb a building, or use one of many invisible platforms to do so.
You can also climb the side of the buildings in this game. But since this is a 2D game, that idea does not work at all. Whenever you try to avoid bombs thrown from the heavens or enemies by jumping over them - you have to - you often will be doing so near the side of the wall. Spider-Man will automatically get attached to the wall, even if you don't want to. And whenever you do actively want to climb a wall, you need multiple tries every time to get attached. While climbing the wall, the Hobgoblin will regularly throw bombs at you and knock you off, and the game has no feature of attaching to walls mid-air, so you fall all the way down every time.
When the game starts you off, you have no clear goal. You run around in Peter's neighborhood and have Hobgoblin flying over your head, throwing bombs at you. These bombs not only can hit you on the head, but will then drop to the floor, explode and can damage you one more time from the after-effect of the explosion. Your goal, apparently, is to catch Hobgoblin with your web and ride him down, which will destroy his glider and let you actually attack him. Why can't you throw punches at him while he is right next to you? No idea, it just doesn't work. It doesn't help that your web fluids are limited, so I found myself not even being able to do what I'm supposed to on my first attempt. I can't say I would have figured it out, ever, without checking a longplay of this game though.
Regarding Spider-Man's weapons: You can punch. You can do a terrible jump-kick. You can shoot webs, but only if you crouch down (?) and only if you have enough web fluid, which is drained rather quickly.
You could argue I haven't gone over the worst part yet. The only enemies in this game are the things that are thrown at you from the bosses, the bosses themselves and out of screen snipers. There are no other enemies in this game! This game is just empty as shit. AGAIN, IT GOT A 98% REVIEW! 98%! The review (translated) says that "the whole city is against Spider-Man from the get-go". THERE ARE LITERALLY JUST THE BOSSES WHO SHOWED UP! I literally can't...
Overall, this is the worst game I have played in terms of pure gameplay as part of this challenge, or in general, so give credit to this game for that. But this truly is terrible. I was disappointed with a name like Rare being attached to a game like the original from this Game Boy trilogy, but in hindsight, that game had some charm, actual cohesive game design behind it, and managed to at least have some fans at the time. If Rare had been behind this as well, there is no chance that this would be nearly as horrible as it ended up being.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 4/10
No voice acting. Sound design is not great, not bad. The soundtrack consists of three tracks. I find it hard to find a retro soundtrack that sounds aggressively bad, and I can't say this soundtrack is bad either. It's just very short and sounds very uninspired.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 2/10
Can a game have no art design? On the Game Boy, there of course is no color, so attention to detail is even more important. This game is what you get when you go with the opposite of "attention to detail". The environments are incredibly bland. You run from side to side with same looking buildings scrolling through non-stop, and with a few skyscraping buildings visible in the background that is otherwise simply white. No clouds, nothing, just white. Spider-Man looks weird as hell and walks like he has no control over his limbs (every Spider-Man game in this challenge has had odd-looking Spidey animations), animations overall are poor, the devs were so lazy that they didn't even create enemies, cutscene pictures are repeated and there just is 0 passion that went into this game.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 2/10
How can you expect any atmosphere when the entire game looks empty? You simply are fighting one enemy that keeps you occupied, sometimes, while trying to get near him and figure out what the hell the game wants from you. Apart from the somewhat recognizable characters from the Spider-Man universe, there is nothing about this game that emanates a whiff of what you'd expect a Spider-Man game to look and feel like.
CONTENT | 2/10
I'm giving it an additional point for the fact that there is some actual content here, but it is of the worst kind. The levels are mostly empty, they look like crap, and there are just a few them in this game, which is of course good for people who don't enjoy it, but a shame for the kids who would play everything and anything you put in front of them, if they have no alternatives. That's a good description for this game. If you could play literally anything else, you probably would.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 2/10
One additional point for the fact that levels can actually be completed I guess? The first level immediately sets the tone. You exit the introductory cutscene to find yourself in this empty city with the Hobgoblin chucking bombs at you. You aren't told anything on what to do, and how to do it. The features in this game are counterintuitive to the control scheme and it makes for an awful time trying to make your way through the levels, which in addition to all this, offer no depth and complexity.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 1/10
This has no concept. You are put into a small area and have only one enemy to fight, who just annoying flings stuff at you while you are outside. You can simply enter buildings and have 0 threats while you look for boring, quasi-useless items. Remove the Spider-Man name and this has literally no selling proposition. None.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
No motivation given to replay this game after having beaten it the first time.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
The game works, but I'm taking a point off for the fact that the controls are so terrible and certain actions appear to be working randomly from time to time.
OVERALL | 25/100
And there we have it. The worst game I've played so far in this challenge is a Spider-Man game replacing the previous holder of that title, a different Spider-Man game. I love Spider-Man and it saddens me to see what had been done to him in the video game industry 30+ years ago. Thank god that new Spider-Man 2 showcase was awesome and I can rest easy in the comfort of the franchise's handling in this day and age.
1996
(This is the 120th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
I've officially gotten into the Big Three of id Software IPs. First there was Wolfenstein 3D, which built on lesser known Catacomb 3D to be the introduction to the FPS genre for some. Then came Doom, which was the introduction to the FPS genre for many. After that came Quake on June 22nd, 1996, which brings the genre to a whole new level.
I enjoyed them all over the past 12 months or so, none more though than Quake. For what on the surface might look like another Doom sequel, Quake does so many new things that spice up the entire experience. It introduces more puzzles, platforming and way more creative level design to the genre. As someone who mainly plays id Software FPS games through this challenge, it also lets you view up and down with the mouse for the first time in their history, which puts the icing on the cake.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
As per usual, the story is an afterthought for an id Software game. I mean, John Carmack famously said: "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not important". So it's actually a positive surprise that you get as much as you do I suppose.
Earth is invaded by an enemy code-named Quake (Shub-Niggurath). You need to find 4 runes to eventually find your way to Shub-Niggurath and kill it. The difference to Doom is its Lovecraftian theme and that these alien beings can jump through portals I guess, but you're not gonna be playing the game for the lore, or be disappointed if you do.
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
90's id Software FPS gameplay at its finest? I'm sure Doom vs Quake has been debated endlessly online, though I'd say both are very fine games in their own right. What makes Quake better for me is that it simply improves upon nearly everything over Doom from an objective standpoint. More enemy variety? Check. 3D objects over sprites? Check. Much more interesting and clever level design? Check.
The weapons are slightly different in Quake, and the weapons that both games share are balanced somewhat differently (like the shotgun, which I felt is weaker in Quake). Types of enemies are a bit different, music and theme are not the same either. So taste will play a role in these cases. But just based on what id Software was able to do with Quake in 96 versus with Doom in 93 from a technical standpoint just makes Quake a smoother, more modern experience that obviously resonated with me more in 2024.
Similarly to Doom, you enter a stage and need to kill enemies on your way to the exit. You gotta find keys hidden throughout the level to open locked doors in the meantime as well. The difference here is that id could do so much more that they couldn't with Doom 3 years earlier.
You can jump, you can platform, rooms can now be placed below rooms (exploring a river under a bridge in the first level as an example), secrets are not just moaning at every wall texture anymore but rather placed more intuitively, enemies are not just ranged threats anymore but also in melee thanks to enemy types like dogs, fiends and those horrible spawns, as well as others that have both ranged AND melee attacks combined.
Simultaneously, the most powerful weapon in the game, at least that's how I perceived it, are the rocket and grenade launchers (at least in terms of weapons that you regularly get ammo for). The trick with them is that they do significant damage, but when you're (not even all that) close to the enemy when they detonate, you take a lot of damage yourself. This means it's a high risk / high reward situation against all these enemies that rush you in the close quarter environments that Quake has, adding a strategic element to battles. Do I go quick and easy with these launchers but risk my own health, or do I go back to the shotgun and take them down slowly while opening myself up to more punishment from the enemy?
Vertical camera movement being possible also adds a lot here, though from what I understand it wasn't as smooth on MS-DOS back in the day as it is now. From a today standpoint, it's a fantastic addition of course.
On the face of it, it looks like a full 3D Doom with a visual upgrade, but all these additions make the gameplay experience much more smooth. Personally, I prefer this over Doom for sure, though Doom is still worth playing today as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Sound effects sound solid, and the soundtrack is very good. Quake goes for ambient music mainly, which I found interesting, but it adds a lot to the atmosphere. It's not music you can listen to outside of playing the game, but I can already hear you say "the music has to fit the game, not your Spotify playlist you nerd" and you're very correct about that indeed. In that regard, Quake's OST is very good as I mentioned.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
The jump to full 3D suits the game very well. Enemies look much scarier, environments much prettier and overall, levels and episodes are way more varied visually and thematically.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
The visuals and ambient music make for a great, dark atmosphere. The lighting effects for 96 are also pretty impressive and add to each level, especially whenever you see a dark room with a small, well-lit corner and a strong enemy standing right in there, staring at you menacingly. I'm still not sure whether to be disappointed by the reveal of Shub-Niggurath or impressed by what it means, but I think I'm going for the latter.
CONTENT | 10/10
Lots of content to indulge in here. A 7-8 hour main single player campaign over 4 episodes, multiple equally long expansion stories, plenty of weapons, power ups and enemy types to have fun with and I've read many times that Quake's multiplayer is supposedly fantastic, if you're interested in that. I'm sure it has an active mod community as well.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
Outside of very few individual levels, including the final one, the level design is just superb here. So many different environmental challenges, so much variety, so many secrets that can be found through simple exploration instead of wall spamming to unlock some random door and getting rewarded so many times for it makes for a grand time. Thematic differences in episodes adds to all this, really impressed.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 9/10
Sure, it's yet another FPS by id Software, but it more than sufficiently brings the genre forward in great ways. Vertical camera movement, jumping, platforming, more clever puzzles, more exploration, more differently acting enemies etc. If I played this when it came out, I'd feel like I'm playing something familiar like I would have wanted, as well as feeling like I'm playing the next gen version of it, which is all, if not more than I would ask for.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
In the sense of replaying the main story, there is some incentive to do so in terms of finding more secrets, going through levels quicker and going for higher difficulties. In an overall sense, more campaigns and multiplayer obviously make this game endlessly replayable for the right player.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 83/100
1996 continues in strong fashion with Quake. My expectations for this game were definitely met and then some, and it's probably my favorite old school FPS after Half-Life now. It's a shame to read up on all the issues during the development of this, as well as the fallout, but all the more impressive that this was the end product of all that anyway. Going back to the starting days of the FPS genre and experiencing the growth has definitely been very enjoyable and if you're a fan of the genre I would definitely recommend you to do the same to gain a new appreciation for it all.
I've officially gotten into the Big Three of id Software IPs. First there was Wolfenstein 3D, which built on lesser known Catacomb 3D to be the introduction to the FPS genre for some. Then came Doom, which was the introduction to the FPS genre for many. After that came Quake on June 22nd, 1996, which brings the genre to a whole new level.
I enjoyed them all over the past 12 months or so, none more though than Quake. For what on the surface might look like another Doom sequel, Quake does so many new things that spice up the entire experience. It introduces more puzzles, platforming and way more creative level design to the genre. As someone who mainly plays id Software FPS games through this challenge, it also lets you view up and down with the mouse for the first time in their history, which puts the icing on the cake.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
As per usual, the story is an afterthought for an id Software game. I mean, John Carmack famously said: "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not important". So it's actually a positive surprise that you get as much as you do I suppose.
Earth is invaded by an enemy code-named Quake (Shub-Niggurath). You need to find 4 runes to eventually find your way to Shub-Niggurath and kill it. The difference to Doom is its Lovecraftian theme and that these alien beings can jump through portals I guess, but you're not gonna be playing the game for the lore, or be disappointed if you do.
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
90's id Software FPS gameplay at its finest? I'm sure Doom vs Quake has been debated endlessly online, though I'd say both are very fine games in their own right. What makes Quake better for me is that it simply improves upon nearly everything over Doom from an objective standpoint. More enemy variety? Check. 3D objects over sprites? Check. Much more interesting and clever level design? Check.
The weapons are slightly different in Quake, and the weapons that both games share are balanced somewhat differently (like the shotgun, which I felt is weaker in Quake). Types of enemies are a bit different, music and theme are not the same either. So taste will play a role in these cases. But just based on what id Software was able to do with Quake in 96 versus with Doom in 93 from a technical standpoint just makes Quake a smoother, more modern experience that obviously resonated with me more in 2024.
Similarly to Doom, you enter a stage and need to kill enemies on your way to the exit. You gotta find keys hidden throughout the level to open locked doors in the meantime as well. The difference here is that id could do so much more that they couldn't with Doom 3 years earlier.
You can jump, you can platform, rooms can now be placed below rooms (exploring a river under a bridge in the first level as an example), secrets are not just moaning at every wall texture anymore but rather placed more intuitively, enemies are not just ranged threats anymore but also in melee thanks to enemy types like dogs, fiends and those horrible spawns, as well as others that have both ranged AND melee attacks combined.
Simultaneously, the most powerful weapon in the game, at least that's how I perceived it, are the rocket and grenade launchers (at least in terms of weapons that you regularly get ammo for). The trick with them is that they do significant damage, but when you're (not even all that) close to the enemy when they detonate, you take a lot of damage yourself. This means it's a high risk / high reward situation against all these enemies that rush you in the close quarter environments that Quake has, adding a strategic element to battles. Do I go quick and easy with these launchers but risk my own health, or do I go back to the shotgun and take them down slowly while opening myself up to more punishment from the enemy?
Vertical camera movement being possible also adds a lot here, though from what I understand it wasn't as smooth on MS-DOS back in the day as it is now. From a today standpoint, it's a fantastic addition of course.
On the face of it, it looks like a full 3D Doom with a visual upgrade, but all these additions make the gameplay experience much more smooth. Personally, I prefer this over Doom for sure, though Doom is still worth playing today as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Sound effects sound solid, and the soundtrack is very good. Quake goes for ambient music mainly, which I found interesting, but it adds a lot to the atmosphere. It's not music you can listen to outside of playing the game, but I can already hear you say "the music has to fit the game, not your Spotify playlist you nerd" and you're very correct about that indeed. In that regard, Quake's OST is very good as I mentioned.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
The jump to full 3D suits the game very well. Enemies look much scarier, environments much prettier and overall, levels and episodes are way more varied visually and thematically.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
The visuals and ambient music make for a great, dark atmosphere. The lighting effects for 96 are also pretty impressive and add to each level, especially whenever you see a dark room with a small, well-lit corner and a strong enemy standing right in there, staring at you menacingly. I'm still not sure whether to be disappointed by the reveal of Shub-Niggurath or impressed by what it means, but I think I'm going for the latter.
CONTENT | 10/10
Lots of content to indulge in here. A 7-8 hour main single player campaign over 4 episodes, multiple equally long expansion stories, plenty of weapons, power ups and enemy types to have fun with and I've read many times that Quake's multiplayer is supposedly fantastic, if you're interested in that. I'm sure it has an active mod community as well.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
Outside of very few individual levels, including the final one, the level design is just superb here. So many different environmental challenges, so much variety, so many secrets that can be found through simple exploration instead of wall spamming to unlock some random door and getting rewarded so many times for it makes for a grand time. Thematic differences in episodes adds to all this, really impressed.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 9/10
Sure, it's yet another FPS by id Software, but it more than sufficiently brings the genre forward in great ways. Vertical camera movement, jumping, platforming, more clever puzzles, more exploration, more differently acting enemies etc. If I played this when it came out, I'd feel like I'm playing something familiar like I would have wanted, as well as feeling like I'm playing the next gen version of it, which is all, if not more than I would ask for.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
In the sense of replaying the main story, there is some incentive to do so in terms of finding more secrets, going through levels quicker and going for higher difficulties. In an overall sense, more campaigns and multiplayer obviously make this game endlessly replayable for the right player.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 83/100
1996 continues in strong fashion with Quake. My expectations for this game were definitely met and then some, and it's probably my favorite old school FPS after Half-Life now. It's a shame to read up on all the issues during the development of this, as well as the fallout, but all the more impressive that this was the end product of all that anyway. Going back to the starting days of the FPS genre and experiencing the growth has definitely been very enjoyable and if you're a fan of the genre I would definitely recommend you to do the same to gain a new appreciation for it all.
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
(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.
1994
(This is the 98th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Couldn't really bring myself to get back to this game after having played it for 10 or so hours a while back. Probably a prime candidate to be replayed some time in the future but for now, there are two main reasons for why I ended up dropping this.
1) I played a lot of Final Fantasy the past year, 3, 4, 5 and now 6, in addition to other JRPGs of its time. As commendable and ahead of the pack Final Fantasy was at this point, these turn based battles are usually tolerable at best, considering that the majority of battles are very simple and repetitive in how they unfold. If you loved combat from FF3-5 or even the successors to FF6, then this should not discourage you from playing FF6.
2) The above would be more tolerable if I enjoyed the dialogue and liked the cast of characters as well as where the story was headed. In this regard, FF6 chooses to do things differently to other entries in the series, which, again, is very much going to be something each individual will have their preferences about. In FF6, there are a lot of "main characters" instead of one or up to 4 of them, and you are sent back and forth between them over the course of this game. Considering that there are multiple characters with mysterious backgrounds who don't have much in personality in the early going, I thought giving them little screen time made me care very little about pretty much the entire cast as a result, at least during the time I played. The resolutions might be satisfying, but combined with everything else, I could not make myself play this for 20-30+ more hours to see the results.
Again, I might revisit the game at some point, especially if FF7 and beyond finally make me fans of Final Fantasy games. For now, what I can say, despite my subjective criticisms, is that it is clear during every minute that you play this that FF6 is way beyond 99% of video games at its time in terms of production values. And if there is one thing I really liked about this game, it would be its soundtrack. Terras Theme is definitely my favorite Final Fantasy theme as of now.
But to conclude, FF6 progresses the series forward but the paths it chooses to take in storytelling combined with your affinity (or lack thereof) for the battle system will determine whether you will want to see this through.
Couldn't really bring myself to get back to this game after having played it for 10 or so hours a while back. Probably a prime candidate to be replayed some time in the future but for now, there are two main reasons for why I ended up dropping this.
1) I played a lot of Final Fantasy the past year, 3, 4, 5 and now 6, in addition to other JRPGs of its time. As commendable and ahead of the pack Final Fantasy was at this point, these turn based battles are usually tolerable at best, considering that the majority of battles are very simple and repetitive in how they unfold. If you loved combat from FF3-5 or even the successors to FF6, then this should not discourage you from playing FF6.
2) The above would be more tolerable if I enjoyed the dialogue and liked the cast of characters as well as where the story was headed. In this regard, FF6 chooses to do things differently to other entries in the series, which, again, is very much going to be something each individual will have their preferences about. In FF6, there are a lot of "main characters" instead of one or up to 4 of them, and you are sent back and forth between them over the course of this game. Considering that there are multiple characters with mysterious backgrounds who don't have much in personality in the early going, I thought giving them little screen time made me care very little about pretty much the entire cast as a result, at least during the time I played. The resolutions might be satisfying, but combined with everything else, I could not make myself play this for 20-30+ more hours to see the results.
Again, I might revisit the game at some point, especially if FF7 and beyond finally make me fans of Final Fantasy games. For now, what I can say, despite my subjective criticisms, is that it is clear during every minute that you play this that FF6 is way beyond 99% of video games at its time in terms of production values. And if there is one thing I really liked about this game, it would be its soundtrack. Terras Theme is definitely my favorite Final Fantasy theme as of now.
But to conclude, FF6 progresses the series forward but the paths it chooses to take in storytelling combined with your affinity (or lack thereof) for the battle system will determine whether you will want to see this through.
1992
(This is the 68th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
There are three things about this challenge than I enjoy the most. Reaching a new generation of consoles. Playing my first ever game or a sequel in a well-known franchise. And witnessing the debut of an iconic character/series. The second and third points both apply to this game I'm reviewing today, which is Kirby's Dream Land, the debut of Kirby.
The game came out on April 27, 1992 in Japan and released in NA and PAL regions later that same year exclusively for the Game Boy. I never played a Kirby game before and pretty much all Game Boy titles I've played as part of this series I didn't find enjoyable, but this game is definitely by far the best one on that system for me so far.
The game is unique for its focus on beginner gamers over experienced ones, and I can confirm that this game works as intended in that regard. Though newer entries in the Kirby series probably get the job done even better, if you ever want to introduce a beginner/new gamer to Kirby or platformers in general, this game does a fine job there as well, though the monochromic graphics of the Game Boy might be offputting at this point in time.
It did the job back in the day though, and how! Up until 2022's Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Kirby's Dream Land was the best selling game in the entire series with over 5 million copies sold, over a million more than 3rd placed Kirby Star Allies. The newest entry in the series finally bested the 92 Game Boy title with about 6.5 million copies sold up to this point.
Is it the second best game in the series? I'm going to assume no, even though this is my first ever Kirby game. It will obviously lack a lot of features introduced later on and the Game Boy is not known for being a powerful system of course, so there was only so much the developers led by Masahiro Sakurai could do, though there is no doubting the creativity and marketing behind this game at the time.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
I'm giving it additional points for introducing an iconic character, but as is common for the early 90s, there is very little story here and that is pretty much relegated to the manual.
Dream Land is a place on a tiny star "somewhere far". The inhabitants are called "Dream Landers" who use magical Sparkling Stars to play and work among the heavens. But, of course, something evil befalls this place, as otherwise the player would have no reason to be here in the form of Kirby. Kirby is a "spry little boy", who sees the need to rescue his fellow Dream Landers because evil King Dedede swooped down on Dream Land from the neighbouring Mount Dedede and stole both food and Sparkling Stars.
For obvious reasons, I'm not going to overanalyze this, it's a basic, cutesy setup that isn't supposed to make a lot of sense to introduce us to this character.
What is more interesting is that Kirby was supposed to be named "Popopo" and the developers, HAL Laboratory Inc were looking to self-publish the title. That is, until they realized that pre-orders for the game were on the lower end, so they asked Nintendo publish, who decided to change the character's name to Kirby based on the results they got from polling Nintendo of America. While the Popopo game was no more, you can see it live on in other parts of the game. Stage 2 plays on Castle Lololo. The final stage plays on Mount Dedede and you fight the final boss King Dedede there.
Another notable tid-bit is that there was some confusion regarding Kirby's color. We now know it's purple, but the monochromic display of the Game Boy meant nobody but the developers knew this at the time, so there is a funny story that some of the staff thought Kirby was white, while Shigeru Miyamoto assumed he was yellow (like Pac-Man or 'Noobow'). I can't say if this is the main reason for it, but in later Kirby games that had 2-player modes, the second Kirby would be yellow.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
Kirby is a 2D platformer. As is usual practice for the time, you move to the left or right of the screen, fight enemies and do some platforming until you reach the end of the level and move on to the next stage. There are bosses in each stage as well.
What makes Kirby unique are two things. First, Kirby can inhale and exhale enemies. Think of Yoshi from Super Mario World. He inhales them and when he spits them back out, they turn into a star and kill other enemies. You can also inhale with Kirby to make him fly. Kirby will continue flying until you exhale, which releases an "Air Pellet" that kills enemies but also makes Kirby fall back down.
The other unique feature here is the difficulty. The director, Masahiro Sakurai, wanted to make this game beginner-friendly and an easy pick up and play title. He also wanted to have the player to make use of enemies in a way that wasn't the case in other games, both of which where the core ideas behind this game. This is pretty easy to see in gameplay. Inhaling an enemy and spitting it back out makes things pretty easy. Flying allows you to entirely bypass enemies and some of the "harder" platforming segments in this game. And bosses usually only need to be hit a couple of times before they die. We went over the sales numbers, so this definitely worked in attracting players.
Now, while this game is 'easy' and definitely wants to help the player in actually beating it (which will only take an hour for the majority of players), it's by no means a game where you just run straight and beat the game. Kirby is equipped with a health bar, and after six hits taken, he dies. You can use "Pep Brew" and "Bag of Magic Food" items to replenish health, but I did lose more than a few lives. After 4 deaths, you get a GAME OVER screen.
Where the game gets even easier though is that there seem to be unlimited continues (I used 4 and didn't see a counter for how many I have left) and that, if you simply lose a life, you just go to the beginning of the screen, which is usually just a few seconds of gameplay.
Regardless, boss fights were clever enough to be enjoyable and the five stages, while short and mostly easy, offered a nice introduction to Kirby.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
No voice acting. The sound design is pretty good and way more intricate than you would expect from a Game Boy title. Sound effects sound unique here and not chosen from a pre-made selection like some other games. Notable sounds are for inhaling/exhaling and for dropping the microphone power-up, which lets out a cute screeching noise.
The soundtrack suits the game really well and gives off the vibe of a fun little adventure with low stakes. So, again, suitable for this game. Most of the tracks have a slow pace, with the boss theme being the exception. There is no track specifically here that stands out in my opinion. It's a soundtrack that I feel like I'd definitely be nostalgic over had I played this back in the day, but there is no iconic song here like we'd get from future Kirby games. Tracks that even non-players of Kirby games like me knows of, such as Gourmet Race.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
The Game Boy is a great handheld. I'm not disagreeing on that. But because it is a handheld from the late 80s and Nintendo had to achieve a lot from so little, there are many things about it that don't translate well to today in my opinion, unlike the home consoles from the time. The monochromic screen doesn't help.
That said, this game is probably my favorite looking Game Boy game so far simply due to its design and presentation. Kirby immediately endears himself to the player through his cute character design. On top of that, the visual effects in this game are pretty good for the Game Boy.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 7/10
If you're looking for a low-stakes, low-challenge, quick to beat type game, and you want it to be retro, this is the one. The game does a great job of making this obvious as well, from the gameplay to the visuals to the music. No color is a shame though, and on the Game Boy there aren't areas in this game as diverse as you'd like to see, but that's something that can be built on in future entries.
CONTENT | 6/10
There are 5 stages and 30-60 minutes of gameplay here for one playthrough. You got one or two bosses per stage. I give the game an above-average score because a one hour game that is enjoyable to play is 10 times better than a 30 hour game with 95% of that being boring and repetitive. That said, it still is very little and the gameplay, while unique and enjoyable, is what it is.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
The first four stages are similarly designed in two parts. You go through the first part and I believe 2 or 3 times take on a mini-boss at the end. Then you climb on a star and are shot through the map to the second part of the stage. At the end of this stage, you fight bosses in all stages, collect a star, watch Kirby and two clones do a victory dance, and move on to the next stage.
As explained, the stages are usually pretty easy. Later on, there is enough going on that you WILL end up losing lives and continues, but nothing that will give you trouble the second or third time through.
The final stage is a boss-rush stage. You enter four doors and go through very short stages to fight the same four bosses at the end. After that, the final door opens up and you enter a boss fight with King Dedede. The boss fights all are distinguishable and unique enough considering what the devs were working with in terms of gameplay.
Overall, the devs had a concept in mind and stuck with it, and unlimited continues bring it all home to make for a frustration-free experience.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
This game sold over 5 million copies! The creation of an iconic character and making a fun, beginner-friendly game will be major reasons for that. You'll be hard-pressed to see gameplay based on inhaling enemies too, and it's a fun idea that can definitely be built upon. I'm looking forward to see how the game translates to a home console next.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
There is a hard mode that you can play after initially beating the game. This adds some enemies to the screen, makes the bosses attack faster and in different patterns compared to normal (aka easy) mode. So if you want to experience a Kirby game on the level of a medium difficulty NES platformer, there you go. Apart from this, the only replay value you get is from trying to beat your high score.
**PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 65/100
Often enough, the debuts of certain franchises and characters are skippable. Kirby's debut is not necessarily firmly the opposite, but the game is short enough that the novelty of the gameplay elements here don't get old by the time you finish it. So if you do intend to do a marathon, I'm sure you'll appreciate this game for what it is, though don't expect a memorable experience, but rather one that can appreciated for its place in video game history.
There are three things about this challenge than I enjoy the most. Reaching a new generation of consoles. Playing my first ever game or a sequel in a well-known franchise. And witnessing the debut of an iconic character/series. The second and third points both apply to this game I'm reviewing today, which is Kirby's Dream Land, the debut of Kirby.
The game came out on April 27, 1992 in Japan and released in NA and PAL regions later that same year exclusively for the Game Boy. I never played a Kirby game before and pretty much all Game Boy titles I've played as part of this series I didn't find enjoyable, but this game is definitely by far the best one on that system for me so far.
The game is unique for its focus on beginner gamers over experienced ones, and I can confirm that this game works as intended in that regard. Though newer entries in the Kirby series probably get the job done even better, if you ever want to introduce a beginner/new gamer to Kirby or platformers in general, this game does a fine job there as well, though the monochromic graphics of the Game Boy might be offputting at this point in time.
It did the job back in the day though, and how! Up until 2022's Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Kirby's Dream Land was the best selling game in the entire series with over 5 million copies sold, over a million more than 3rd placed Kirby Star Allies. The newest entry in the series finally bested the 92 Game Boy title with about 6.5 million copies sold up to this point.
Is it the second best game in the series? I'm going to assume no, even though this is my first ever Kirby game. It will obviously lack a lot of features introduced later on and the Game Boy is not known for being a powerful system of course, so there was only so much the developers led by Masahiro Sakurai could do, though there is no doubting the creativity and marketing behind this game at the time.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
I'm giving it additional points for introducing an iconic character, but as is common for the early 90s, there is very little story here and that is pretty much relegated to the manual.
Dream Land is a place on a tiny star "somewhere far". The inhabitants are called "Dream Landers" who use magical Sparkling Stars to play and work among the heavens. But, of course, something evil befalls this place, as otherwise the player would have no reason to be here in the form of Kirby. Kirby is a "spry little boy", who sees the need to rescue his fellow Dream Landers because evil King Dedede swooped down on Dream Land from the neighbouring Mount Dedede and stole both food and Sparkling Stars.
For obvious reasons, I'm not going to overanalyze this, it's a basic, cutesy setup that isn't supposed to make a lot of sense to introduce us to this character.
What is more interesting is that Kirby was supposed to be named "Popopo" and the developers, HAL Laboratory Inc were looking to self-publish the title. That is, until they realized that pre-orders for the game were on the lower end, so they asked Nintendo publish, who decided to change the character's name to Kirby based on the results they got from polling Nintendo of America. While the Popopo game was no more, you can see it live on in other parts of the game. Stage 2 plays on Castle Lololo. The final stage plays on Mount Dedede and you fight the final boss King Dedede there.
Another notable tid-bit is that there was some confusion regarding Kirby's color. We now know it's purple, but the monochromic display of the Game Boy meant nobody but the developers knew this at the time, so there is a funny story that some of the staff thought Kirby was white, while Shigeru Miyamoto assumed he was yellow (like Pac-Man or 'Noobow'). I can't say if this is the main reason for it, but in later Kirby games that had 2-player modes, the second Kirby would be yellow.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
Kirby is a 2D platformer. As is usual practice for the time, you move to the left or right of the screen, fight enemies and do some platforming until you reach the end of the level and move on to the next stage. There are bosses in each stage as well.
What makes Kirby unique are two things. First, Kirby can inhale and exhale enemies. Think of Yoshi from Super Mario World. He inhales them and when he spits them back out, they turn into a star and kill other enemies. You can also inhale with Kirby to make him fly. Kirby will continue flying until you exhale, which releases an "Air Pellet" that kills enemies but also makes Kirby fall back down.
The other unique feature here is the difficulty. The director, Masahiro Sakurai, wanted to make this game beginner-friendly and an easy pick up and play title. He also wanted to have the player to make use of enemies in a way that wasn't the case in other games, both of which where the core ideas behind this game. This is pretty easy to see in gameplay. Inhaling an enemy and spitting it back out makes things pretty easy. Flying allows you to entirely bypass enemies and some of the "harder" platforming segments in this game. And bosses usually only need to be hit a couple of times before they die. We went over the sales numbers, so this definitely worked in attracting players.
Now, while this game is 'easy' and definitely wants to help the player in actually beating it (which will only take an hour for the majority of players), it's by no means a game where you just run straight and beat the game. Kirby is equipped with a health bar, and after six hits taken, he dies. You can use "Pep Brew" and "Bag of Magic Food" items to replenish health, but I did lose more than a few lives. After 4 deaths, you get a GAME OVER screen.
Where the game gets even easier though is that there seem to be unlimited continues (I used 4 and didn't see a counter for how many I have left) and that, if you simply lose a life, you just go to the beginning of the screen, which is usually just a few seconds of gameplay.
Regardless, boss fights were clever enough to be enjoyable and the five stages, while short and mostly easy, offered a nice introduction to Kirby.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
No voice acting. The sound design is pretty good and way more intricate than you would expect from a Game Boy title. Sound effects sound unique here and not chosen from a pre-made selection like some other games. Notable sounds are for inhaling/exhaling and for dropping the microphone power-up, which lets out a cute screeching noise.
The soundtrack suits the game really well and gives off the vibe of a fun little adventure with low stakes. So, again, suitable for this game. Most of the tracks have a slow pace, with the boss theme being the exception. There is no track specifically here that stands out in my opinion. It's a soundtrack that I feel like I'd definitely be nostalgic over had I played this back in the day, but there is no iconic song here like we'd get from future Kirby games. Tracks that even non-players of Kirby games like me knows of, such as Gourmet Race.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
The Game Boy is a great handheld. I'm not disagreeing on that. But because it is a handheld from the late 80s and Nintendo had to achieve a lot from so little, there are many things about it that don't translate well to today in my opinion, unlike the home consoles from the time. The monochromic screen doesn't help.
That said, this game is probably my favorite looking Game Boy game so far simply due to its design and presentation. Kirby immediately endears himself to the player through his cute character design. On top of that, the visual effects in this game are pretty good for the Game Boy.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 7/10
If you're looking for a low-stakes, low-challenge, quick to beat type game, and you want it to be retro, this is the one. The game does a great job of making this obvious as well, from the gameplay to the visuals to the music. No color is a shame though, and on the Game Boy there aren't areas in this game as diverse as you'd like to see, but that's something that can be built on in future entries.
CONTENT | 6/10
There are 5 stages and 30-60 minutes of gameplay here for one playthrough. You got one or two bosses per stage. I give the game an above-average score because a one hour game that is enjoyable to play is 10 times better than a 30 hour game with 95% of that being boring and repetitive. That said, it still is very little and the gameplay, while unique and enjoyable, is what it is.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
The first four stages are similarly designed in two parts. You go through the first part and I believe 2 or 3 times take on a mini-boss at the end. Then you climb on a star and are shot through the map to the second part of the stage. At the end of this stage, you fight bosses in all stages, collect a star, watch Kirby and two clones do a victory dance, and move on to the next stage.
As explained, the stages are usually pretty easy. Later on, there is enough going on that you WILL end up losing lives and continues, but nothing that will give you trouble the second or third time through.
The final stage is a boss-rush stage. You enter four doors and go through very short stages to fight the same four bosses at the end. After that, the final door opens up and you enter a boss fight with King Dedede. The boss fights all are distinguishable and unique enough considering what the devs were working with in terms of gameplay.
Overall, the devs had a concept in mind and stuck with it, and unlimited continues bring it all home to make for a frustration-free experience.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
This game sold over 5 million copies! The creation of an iconic character and making a fun, beginner-friendly game will be major reasons for that. You'll be hard-pressed to see gameplay based on inhaling enemies too, and it's a fun idea that can definitely be built upon. I'm looking forward to see how the game translates to a home console next.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
There is a hard mode that you can play after initially beating the game. This adds some enemies to the screen, makes the bosses attack faster and in different patterns compared to normal (aka easy) mode. So if you want to experience a Kirby game on the level of a medium difficulty NES platformer, there you go. Apart from this, the only replay value you get is from trying to beat your high score.
**PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 65/100
Often enough, the debuts of certain franchises and characters are skippable. Kirby's debut is not necessarily firmly the opposite, but the game is short enough that the novelty of the gameplay elements here don't get old by the time you finish it. So if you do intend to do a marathon, I'm sure you'll appreciate this game for what it is, though don't expect a memorable experience, but rather one that can appreciated for its place in video game history.
2013
I really wanted to like this game. Games that are lean on gameplay and heavy on writing don't scare me, I specifically chose to play this game due to that. I didn't know much else about it though.
When I played through the first Act, I thought to myself: OK, what the fuck? I have 0 idea what is going on. I don't know if I like it, but let's give it more time
When I played through the second Act right after, I thought: OK, what the fuck? I have 0 idea what is going on. I don't really like it, but I'll give it more time. There must be something that I hang on to at some point.
When I played through Act III, I realized that the game was not going to satisfy what I'm looking for. I like the visual style, I think the songs that play are nice (albeit not really leaving any impact on me) and I think the game's style is unique and certainly worth experiencing for yourself to see if it sticks with you in a way it didn't with me.
One major thing that I didn't really gel with was the "magical realism" style that this apparently has. Never heard of the term before, but it's basically a realistic, mundane setting with magical elements in it. It's not sci fi, not fantasy but it's own thing and personally, I dislike magical realism. At first I thought the game would have a grounded setting and would tell a deeply human story. There is certainly the attempt of it here (a successful attempt if you ask many others), but I just couldn't buy this setting. Give me something grounded or buy into the magical more. I, subjectively, dislike the middle road a lot and I doubt I'll interact with media in this literary style again.
The game has a heavy focus on dialogue (I don't mind. I read plenty of books, I enjoy visual novels and Disco Elysium is one of my favorite games of all time for example), but a lot of conversations just felt so odd and unpleasant. For one thing, too often I think characters don't conversate, they just say things unrelated to what their conversation partner is saying. The game was sold to me as very realistic, but I've never done that in my life. Second, a lot of conversations drag on by going on tangents for no apparent reason. Third, a lot of the dialogue and characters were too cryptic. Sure, I get that there is commentary about life, about the highs and lows, about death, about regret and a lot more topics that make life what it is, but the way these topics are addressed left me unimpressed for a lack of a better word than be brought along a mysterious, bittersweet journey like it seems to be the case for many others. Ultimately, I have felt more emotional about these topics while playing dozens of other video games, either by telling a grounded story and or a story in a fantasy setting with human stakes involved rather than what Kentucky Route Zero tries to do.
Look at the review score for this by critics and on many online sites. They're pretty high. Needless to say, this is just my opinion and it's not shared by the majority. So if you own it, give it a try. For me personally, the game was not fun as game, which was a given, but also was not enjoyable as a novel, which was not.
When I played through the first Act, I thought to myself: OK, what the fuck? I have 0 idea what is going on. I don't know if I like it, but let's give it more time
When I played through the second Act right after, I thought: OK, what the fuck? I have 0 idea what is going on. I don't really like it, but I'll give it more time. There must be something that I hang on to at some point.
When I played through Act III, I realized that the game was not going to satisfy what I'm looking for. I like the visual style, I think the songs that play are nice (albeit not really leaving any impact on me) and I think the game's style is unique and certainly worth experiencing for yourself to see if it sticks with you in a way it didn't with me.
One major thing that I didn't really gel with was the "magical realism" style that this apparently has. Never heard of the term before, but it's basically a realistic, mundane setting with magical elements in it. It's not sci fi, not fantasy but it's own thing and personally, I dislike magical realism. At first I thought the game would have a grounded setting and would tell a deeply human story. There is certainly the attempt of it here (a successful attempt if you ask many others), but I just couldn't buy this setting. Give me something grounded or buy into the magical more. I, subjectively, dislike the middle road a lot and I doubt I'll interact with media in this literary style again.
The game has a heavy focus on dialogue (I don't mind. I read plenty of books, I enjoy visual novels and Disco Elysium is one of my favorite games of all time for example), but a lot of conversations just felt so odd and unpleasant. For one thing, too often I think characters don't conversate, they just say things unrelated to what their conversation partner is saying. The game was sold to me as very realistic, but I've never done that in my life. Second, a lot of conversations drag on by going on tangents for no apparent reason. Third, a lot of the dialogue and characters were too cryptic. Sure, I get that there is commentary about life, about the highs and lows, about death, about regret and a lot more topics that make life what it is, but the way these topics are addressed left me unimpressed for a lack of a better word than be brought along a mysterious, bittersweet journey like it seems to be the case for many others. Ultimately, I have felt more emotional about these topics while playing dozens of other video games, either by telling a grounded story and or a story in a fantasy setting with human stakes involved rather than what Kentucky Route Zero tries to do.
Look at the review score for this by critics and on many online sites. They're pretty high. Needless to say, this is just my opinion and it's not shared by the majority. So if you own it, give it a try. For me personally, the game was not fun as game, which was a given, but also was not enjoyable as a novel, which was not.
(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.
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.
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.)