fe17
1992
As for a lot of gamers, I am a big fan of Hideo Kojima's work. Not just because I find it of high quality and a lot of fun to engage with, but because these days, he is among few AAA game directors who truly try to make unique video games. Not those "focus-grouped to death" copies of each other with a different coat of paint to appear as mainstream as possible, but once in a lifetime experiences where he doesn't care whether it is universally praised or not. See Death Stranding for example, a game literally about making deliveries from Point A to B. Go into it deeper and you will find a way more profound experience with a lot of commentary on modern society (scarily apt during the pandemic that started a year after its release as well), and personally I found the gameplay to be a lot of fun as well.
Just as Hideo Kojima's work over the past couple decades is unique to the AAA video game industry to this day, his work in 1988 with SNATCHER is unique to this day's Hideo Kojima. It's not an Action blockbuster like the Metal Gear Solid or Death Stranding games, but it's rather a game in a genre of games Hideo Kojima enjoyed during his own formative years, the visual novel / crime mystery genre that was somewhat popular in Japan at the time.
Snatcher released initially on November 26, 1988 for the PC-8801 and the MSX2, two Japanese personal computers. It then released in a "remade" version on October 23, 1992 for the PC-Engine (exclusively for the Japanese version of the TurboGrafx-16) before it finally got an English release in December 15, 1994 for the Sega CD, which is the excuse I used to add it to my playlist for the challenge I am currently doing. To be honest, I have no idea how it came about to release this game in the West after not having done so in the 6 years prior, especially since the spritual successor 'Policenauts', which also released in 1994, did not get a Western release. But, thankfully, it happened, and with voice acting to boot. These games have a cult following these days and after having finished Snatcher, you can count me in among those who would be happy to see Hideo Kojima do another game of this type as some sort of side project during these modern times.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
If you decide to play Snatcher, you will probably do so to mainly experience its story. If that is not your expectation going in, I'm sure it will quickly become what will hold your attention, as the gameplay is rather typical for a visual novel. It's mainly clicking at prompts and listening to dialogue.
So with that being the case, delivering an interesting story full of interesting characters, plot twists and tense moments is quite important for this game to be worth playing. Luckily, the game delivers on all fronts thanks to its cyberpunk setting filled with a lot of well thoughtout, interesting lore, its compelling premise and its cast of characters.
50 years ago, the explosion of a biological weapon in a research facility near Moscow called "Lucifer-Alpha" killed over half of the world's population in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In the present, a new city on an artificial island in Eastern Asia was made and is called "Neo Kobe City", a melting pot of cultures due to large number of immigrants from China, the USA, Eastern and Western Europe and even more areas of the world. Mankind faces a new dilemma due to the appearance of humanoid robots that are called "Snatchers", because they 'snatch' a person (kill and dispose of them) and take up their spot. They can't be detected due to the fact that they breathe, bleed and sweat like any human and even wear artifical skin to look exactly like the person they are copying. They mainly snatch VIP types however, which presumably means that their appearance goes beyond "AI gone rogue".
You play Gillian Seed, who, along with your wife, is an amnesiac and just got assigned to the JUNKERs, a special anti-Snatcher task force (Japanese Undercover Neuro Kinetic Elimination Ranger). Your assignment is to be a runner, an in-field operative taking on the highest of risks by facing these Snatchers head on and eliminating them. To do this, you are assigned a Navigator, a robot that assists you on the field. Navigators get their personalities formed somewhat after the Junker they are assigned to, so yours. Your navigator is called "Metal Gear Mk. II", designed after the "Metal Gear menace from the 20th century", so yes, this seems to play in an alternate future of the Metal Gear universe.
This game is a visual novel, so gameplay looks like this. The first screen you see is that of the Junker HQ reception. A panel of prompts appears at the bottom half of the screen. You can "Look" at things, "Investigate" things, "Talk" and "Ask" if a person is in the room with you and also look at your "Possessions" to "look" and "investigate" them as well. Looking at things and investigating things is different in that investigating them is more analytical. You are often meant to look and investigate things multiple times, as each time reveals new information and thoughts. Some of these options are optionable if you want to get immersed more deeply with your surroundings, and some you are meant to use to trigger a moment that lets you progress, such as uncovering a new clue. As someone who likes to get immersed as much as possible, I have used every single option as many times as I could (at least I think), which not only does what I just told you, but also triggered a few "hidden" moments that I found quite entertaining. In one part of the city for example, Gillian attempts to "pick up women" and if you do so multiple times, one woman turns out to be a Snatcher, which triggers a "Game Over?" screen before it is revealed that Gillian was just daydreaming.
Gillian Seed in general is a pretty odd fellow, though he is more of a poster-boy for how Kojima seemingly wanted the game's atmosphere to be more humane to balance out the fact that Snatchers dominate everything else in this game. Gillian is an amnesiac as mentioned and has a wife called "Jamie", though they don't remember each other. He likes to use humor whenever possible to lower the tension that the entire case and his occupation represents, though balances that out with a get shit done attitude when the situation requires it. The non-serious part of his personality would have felt a bit too "in your face" however, if he wasn't assisted by Metal Gear Mk. 2, who steals the show in this game in my opinion. Both the voice acting and the personality of Metal Gear is perfection, as Metal Gear uses his analytical makeup to save Gillian's butt countless times on the field, but also roasts him every chance he gets when they get a break from the Snatcher-hunting they do. For a guy like Gillian who I can only describe as a "creep" for most parts of the game, I think it was a great idea to have him be accompanied by someone like Metal Gear who keeps him in line as much as possible. I say "creep" because there are 3 female side characters and several other female NPCs in this game, and I don't think there was a single one Gillian didn't make a pass at. For one, you can "look" at any character several times, and doing so once illicits a "she looks great" type response from Gilliant, while doing so more than once prompts the women to say that they feel uncomfortable, which doesn't stop Gillian from making way more straightforward remarks about their apperance. Now don't get me wrong, this type of behavior doesn't usually weird me out and I can see it for what it is, which is entertainment. But with Gillian, it's different. For one, he has a wife, which you can call in this game to tell her how much you want to get to know and to love her again. This creates a very weird situation where Gillian talks to Jamie on the phone, only to flirt with several women over the next hour alone. Second, one of the women includes the 18-year old daughter of a fallen co-worker, who is 14 in Japan's version of the game, so that Gillian doesn't know boundaries whatsoever is pretty off-putting. Otherwise though, his attempts at flirtation are mainly meant to be humorous, and it works since he gets shot down constantly (and gets ridiculed by Metal Gear for it), but on his own he doesn't make a great main character because his personality is mainly doing this shtick.
Apart from Metal Gear, who is the best character in the game for me, there are several individuals who have this mysterious aura around them, like there is more to them than you'd think. Harry the engineer is one of these types, but it extends to the Chief of the JUNKER operation, a bounty hunter named Random Hajile, your wife Jamie, an informer you talk to several times, and Gibson, the only other JUNKER who currently works as a runner alongside you.
With that, I want to get to the main story. I don't want to spoil anything, and in general I think the big story beats flow at a great pace and introduce a lot of twists and memorable moments. However, there is one flaw to the premise of the story that I found to be pretty odd. Actually, there were several over the first couple of hours, but it is worth noting that the plot cleared up plenty of questions I had and actually answered them in a quite satisfactory manner. This one issue that remains though is that this JUNKER operation seems pathetically tiny considering that the "Snatcher menace" presents a huge issue to all of mankind. ALL OF MANKIND. Meanwhile, here you are in the secret JUNKER operation tasked with stopping it and all you have is 5 (five) measly people working there, including just two actual runners. What? Even if Snatchers would snatch up everyday folk, this would be unrealistic, but when VIPs are exclusively involved, you'd think more monetary efforts would be made to make sure the menace was eradicated asap. The game does have an answer to this worry later on at least somewhat I suppose, but I still think that is too unrealistic to have two guys do all the work.
That said, if you enjoy a good mystery story, if you enjoy visual novels and if you like the cyberpunk aesthetic, I think you will enjoy the story that this game tells. It's well executed, I never felt like the game dragged with filler moments and the plot twists were well executed. The pre-1992 version had only 2 acts, but while this version comes with an additional third, which turns this game from one with a cliffhanger ending to one with a complete story. Knowing this, the third act did feel slightly out of place, as the majority of it involves listening to dialogue instead of much player input when it comes to investigation or the like, but the act does end things on a satisfactory note, so I'm glad it's there to give the player a full story to enjoy, though it does leave some room for a sequel.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
This is a visual novel, though not exactly like most modern ones. Instead of listening to a story and just clicking the A/X button to read the next lines, you select options to look at and investigate, so you are constantly involved with what the next set of lines of dialogue will focus on, keeping you more engaged. But of course, gameplay is a low priority in this game overall.
There is only one part about this game that has true gameplay, which is the game's light gun sections. In a 3x3 grid akin to a game of whack-a-mole, enemies appear in one of the 9 spots and you need to quickly react and aim and shoot at the part of the grid that they are on. This is a pretty small part of the game and I found it to be appear just the perfect number of times over the course of the game. I didn't fail once, but I've read that some found these parts to be kind of difficult. There is a rush of enemies in one late-game section of this, which might give you some trouble, if you are slower on the buttons, but I'm not nearly the fastest and got by with plenty of health remaining.
With visual novels, I find that the quality of the story makes the gameplay more or less tolerable, and since I found the story to be so good, I enjoyed taking my time with this one. This involved choosing every option to investigate multiple times, even to just trigger some optional dialogue from the characters.
You don't just choose options however. First, to find clues and progress, you often need to choose specific options multiple times. The order you would usually choose is to look at something and then to investigate. Sometimes though, you look, investigate and then have to look again to trigger an event, which was a weird way to do things, so be wary of this. That said, asking the player to be thorough is not a bad thing on its own, as reading through all the lines that are available adds to the overall context that the player gets.
One final part of the gameplay here are the puzzles. Often, you need to input answers, such as the password to talk to an informant, the name of a person, the really contrived "Oleen" puzzle and more. If a puzzle gives you any trouble, the game guides you to the answer pretty nicely, so don't worry about not figuring them out.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
This game has voice acting!!! An anomaly for games that I play as part of this retro challenge I'm doing. Of course, it's less unique for Sega CD titles, but still a very new thing for video games at the time. Due to this, I was expecting terrible performances, but the majority of characters are genuinely well voiced. These of course do not compare to today's quality, but for 1994, they don't take away from the experience. Some voices I thought didn't really have much emotion in them, such as the voice of Katrina, while the voice actress for Metal Gear did a fantastic job in my opinion. It's a good performance from the cast overall, with some high and low points.
The soundtrack of this game has a very unique sound to it in my opinion, and I mean that in a positive way. This is a cyberpunk / cyber noir themed game, and while I couldn't have told you what that sounded like beforehand, I think the game nails that atmosphere really well. The track that plays when shit hits the fan really gets you off your seat and ready to investigate the crap out of the place you're in, while I have no doubt that I will remember some tracks (like the Junker HQ one) years and years down the line. Liked it a lot overall.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
Snatcher has a great cyberpunk aesthetic. Whether its the neon-lit Neo Kobe City, the run-down slums in the otherwise high-tech environment or the presentation of the Snatchers, it has a great visual style, timeless you could even say. The game features some pretty gory sections (decapacitated humans, dead animals), so if you don't like that sort of stuff, stay away. For me, it added a lot to the legitimacy of the Snatcher threat and was not used too much as to be tactless. The presentation of the screens in this game looks pretty good in this remade version of the game, though they are simple-looking for the most part, as the majority of screens had little to no actual movement in them but rather remained still. This didn't take away from the cinematics however, which were well done despite the visual limitations the game had to work with.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Incredibly atmospheric. Cyber noir is presenting "technology as a destructive and dystopian force that threatens every aspect of our reality", and that fits the game's theme perfectly. It's a story about humanity's lack of trust in one another and how it is one of our biggest flaws, and it carries that from its beginning all the way to the end. Heck, due to suffering from amnesia, Gillian is partly defined by this, though he hardly is the only one here. The game portrays this theme well several times throughout the game. The cyberpunk part of the cyber noir theme is also well represented here, with the contrast of high tech and the rich parts of Neo Kobe City being compared to the slums ridden with poverty. There are even minor things here, like a group of women taking their artificially enhanced pets to the vet, like a parrot with instant memorization, a dog that barely makes any sound and ... a pigeon? The deep lore that you can read up on on the computer at Junker HQ also is worth going through to familiarize yourself with Neo Kobe City.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game took me about 10 hours to beat, though you can easily beat it a couple hours sooner, if you skip some of the optional stuff. For example, reading through all the lore on the computer at Junker HQ took me over half an hour and is completely optional. There is a lot of good stuff here, and little feels as filler.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
This is a pretty well-paced adventure throughout, with a good mix of investigating, action, comedy and romance, though the last part never really felt right to me due to what I talked about in the Story part of this review. My only issue was that progression was somehow hidden behind a combination of Look / Investigate / Look that felt unnecessary, and some of the puzzles felt really contrived. That said, this is a pretty focused game and does its job well in terms of the design of its structure.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
This is not a new concept, as Hideo Kojima used similar Japanese crime adventures as inspiration for this game. It is unique in that I haven't played it in the 4+ years worth of games I've played as part of this challenge, it is a visual novel, which is a rare breed for its time, especially in the West and it tells a good story that aged pretty well. And I guess it's also worth pointing out that the game does enough to keep the player engaged without making this game feel like a book and without making the limited light gun sequences to feel annoying.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
This is a very linear adventure. If you are going through all options like me, which doesn't take a lot of effort, you will see everything in one go, besides some minor dialogue results at times perhaps. But other than that, one playthrough will give you pretty much everything here.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 78/100
A visual novel that is worthy of being played. If you are a fan of Kojima's work, this is a must play, if you are a fan of visual novels or adventure games, this is well worth a playthrough and if you enjoy good stories in video games, this is in the upper tiers, especially for its time.
(This is the 94th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Just as Hideo Kojima's work over the past couple decades is unique to the AAA video game industry to this day, his work in 1988 with SNATCHER is unique to this day's Hideo Kojima. It's not an Action blockbuster like the Metal Gear Solid or Death Stranding games, but it's rather a game in a genre of games Hideo Kojima enjoyed during his own formative years, the visual novel / crime mystery genre that was somewhat popular in Japan at the time.
Snatcher released initially on November 26, 1988 for the PC-8801 and the MSX2, two Japanese personal computers. It then released in a "remade" version on October 23, 1992 for the PC-Engine (exclusively for the Japanese version of the TurboGrafx-16) before it finally got an English release in December 15, 1994 for the Sega CD, which is the excuse I used to add it to my playlist for the challenge I am currently doing. To be honest, I have no idea how it came about to release this game in the West after not having done so in the 6 years prior, especially since the spritual successor 'Policenauts', which also released in 1994, did not get a Western release. But, thankfully, it happened, and with voice acting to boot. These games have a cult following these days and after having finished Snatcher, you can count me in among those who would be happy to see Hideo Kojima do another game of this type as some sort of side project during these modern times.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
If you decide to play Snatcher, you will probably do so to mainly experience its story. If that is not your expectation going in, I'm sure it will quickly become what will hold your attention, as the gameplay is rather typical for a visual novel. It's mainly clicking at prompts and listening to dialogue.
So with that being the case, delivering an interesting story full of interesting characters, plot twists and tense moments is quite important for this game to be worth playing. Luckily, the game delivers on all fronts thanks to its cyberpunk setting filled with a lot of well thoughtout, interesting lore, its compelling premise and its cast of characters.
50 years ago, the explosion of a biological weapon in a research facility near Moscow called "Lucifer-Alpha" killed over half of the world's population in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In the present, a new city on an artificial island in Eastern Asia was made and is called "Neo Kobe City", a melting pot of cultures due to large number of immigrants from China, the USA, Eastern and Western Europe and even more areas of the world. Mankind faces a new dilemma due to the appearance of humanoid robots that are called "Snatchers", because they 'snatch' a person (kill and dispose of them) and take up their spot. They can't be detected due to the fact that they breathe, bleed and sweat like any human and even wear artifical skin to look exactly like the person they are copying. They mainly snatch VIP types however, which presumably means that their appearance goes beyond "AI gone rogue".
You play Gillian Seed, who, along with your wife, is an amnesiac and just got assigned to the JUNKERs, a special anti-Snatcher task force (Japanese Undercover Neuro Kinetic Elimination Ranger). Your assignment is to be a runner, an in-field operative taking on the highest of risks by facing these Snatchers head on and eliminating them. To do this, you are assigned a Navigator, a robot that assists you on the field. Navigators get their personalities formed somewhat after the Junker they are assigned to, so yours. Your navigator is called "Metal Gear Mk. II", designed after the "Metal Gear menace from the 20th century", so yes, this seems to play in an alternate future of the Metal Gear universe.
This game is a visual novel, so gameplay looks like this. The first screen you see is that of the Junker HQ reception. A panel of prompts appears at the bottom half of the screen. You can "Look" at things, "Investigate" things, "Talk" and "Ask" if a person is in the room with you and also look at your "Possessions" to "look" and "investigate" them as well. Looking at things and investigating things is different in that investigating them is more analytical. You are often meant to look and investigate things multiple times, as each time reveals new information and thoughts. Some of these options are optionable if you want to get immersed more deeply with your surroundings, and some you are meant to use to trigger a moment that lets you progress, such as uncovering a new clue. As someone who likes to get immersed as much as possible, I have used every single option as many times as I could (at least I think), which not only does what I just told you, but also triggered a few "hidden" moments that I found quite entertaining. In one part of the city for example, Gillian attempts to "pick up women" and if you do so multiple times, one woman turns out to be a Snatcher, which triggers a "Game Over?" screen before it is revealed that Gillian was just daydreaming.
Gillian Seed in general is a pretty odd fellow, though he is more of a poster-boy for how Kojima seemingly wanted the game's atmosphere to be more humane to balance out the fact that Snatchers dominate everything else in this game. Gillian is an amnesiac as mentioned and has a wife called "Jamie", though they don't remember each other. He likes to use humor whenever possible to lower the tension that the entire case and his occupation represents, though balances that out with a get shit done attitude when the situation requires it. The non-serious part of his personality would have felt a bit too "in your face" however, if he wasn't assisted by Metal Gear Mk. 2, who steals the show in this game in my opinion. Both the voice acting and the personality of Metal Gear is perfection, as Metal Gear uses his analytical makeup to save Gillian's butt countless times on the field, but also roasts him every chance he gets when they get a break from the Snatcher-hunting they do. For a guy like Gillian who I can only describe as a "creep" for most parts of the game, I think it was a great idea to have him be accompanied by someone like Metal Gear who keeps him in line as much as possible. I say "creep" because there are 3 female side characters and several other female NPCs in this game, and I don't think there was a single one Gillian didn't make a pass at. For one, you can "look" at any character several times, and doing so once illicits a "she looks great" type response from Gilliant, while doing so more than once prompts the women to say that they feel uncomfortable, which doesn't stop Gillian from making way more straightforward remarks about their apperance. Now don't get me wrong, this type of behavior doesn't usually weird me out and I can see it for what it is, which is entertainment. But with Gillian, it's different. For one, he has a wife, which you can call in this game to tell her how much you want to get to know and to love her again. This creates a very weird situation where Gillian talks to Jamie on the phone, only to flirt with several women over the next hour alone. Second, one of the women includes the 18-year old daughter of a fallen co-worker, who is 14 in Japan's version of the game, so that Gillian doesn't know boundaries whatsoever is pretty off-putting. Otherwise though, his attempts at flirtation are mainly meant to be humorous, and it works since he gets shot down constantly (and gets ridiculed by Metal Gear for it), but on his own he doesn't make a great main character because his personality is mainly doing this shtick.
Apart from Metal Gear, who is the best character in the game for me, there are several individuals who have this mysterious aura around them, like there is more to them than you'd think. Harry the engineer is one of these types, but it extends to the Chief of the JUNKER operation, a bounty hunter named Random Hajile, your wife Jamie, an informer you talk to several times, and Gibson, the only other JUNKER who currently works as a runner alongside you.
With that, I want to get to the main story. I don't want to spoil anything, and in general I think the big story beats flow at a great pace and introduce a lot of twists and memorable moments. However, there is one flaw to the premise of the story that I found to be pretty odd. Actually, there were several over the first couple of hours, but it is worth noting that the plot cleared up plenty of questions I had and actually answered them in a quite satisfactory manner. This one issue that remains though is that this JUNKER operation seems pathetically tiny considering that the "Snatcher menace" presents a huge issue to all of mankind. ALL OF MANKIND. Meanwhile, here you are in the secret JUNKER operation tasked with stopping it and all you have is 5 (five) measly people working there, including just two actual runners. What? Even if Snatchers would snatch up everyday folk, this would be unrealistic, but when VIPs are exclusively involved, you'd think more monetary efforts would be made to make sure the menace was eradicated asap. The game does have an answer to this worry later on at least somewhat I suppose, but I still think that is too unrealistic to have two guys do all the work.
That said, if you enjoy a good mystery story, if you enjoy visual novels and if you like the cyberpunk aesthetic, I think you will enjoy the story that this game tells. It's well executed, I never felt like the game dragged with filler moments and the plot twists were well executed. The pre-1992 version had only 2 acts, but while this version comes with an additional third, which turns this game from one with a cliffhanger ending to one with a complete story. Knowing this, the third act did feel slightly out of place, as the majority of it involves listening to dialogue instead of much player input when it comes to investigation or the like, but the act does end things on a satisfactory note, so I'm glad it's there to give the player a full story to enjoy, though it does leave some room for a sequel.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
This is a visual novel, though not exactly like most modern ones. Instead of listening to a story and just clicking the A/X button to read the next lines, you select options to look at and investigate, so you are constantly involved with what the next set of lines of dialogue will focus on, keeping you more engaged. But of course, gameplay is a low priority in this game overall.
There is only one part about this game that has true gameplay, which is the game's light gun sections. In a 3x3 grid akin to a game of whack-a-mole, enemies appear in one of the 9 spots and you need to quickly react and aim and shoot at the part of the grid that they are on. This is a pretty small part of the game and I found it to be appear just the perfect number of times over the course of the game. I didn't fail once, but I've read that some found these parts to be kind of difficult. There is a rush of enemies in one late-game section of this, which might give you some trouble, if you are slower on the buttons, but I'm not nearly the fastest and got by with plenty of health remaining.
With visual novels, I find that the quality of the story makes the gameplay more or less tolerable, and since I found the story to be so good, I enjoyed taking my time with this one. This involved choosing every option to investigate multiple times, even to just trigger some optional dialogue from the characters.
You don't just choose options however. First, to find clues and progress, you often need to choose specific options multiple times. The order you would usually choose is to look at something and then to investigate. Sometimes though, you look, investigate and then have to look again to trigger an event, which was a weird way to do things, so be wary of this. That said, asking the player to be thorough is not a bad thing on its own, as reading through all the lines that are available adds to the overall context that the player gets.
One final part of the gameplay here are the puzzles. Often, you need to input answers, such as the password to talk to an informant, the name of a person, the really contrived "Oleen" puzzle and more. If a puzzle gives you any trouble, the game guides you to the answer pretty nicely, so don't worry about not figuring them out.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
This game has voice acting!!! An anomaly for games that I play as part of this retro challenge I'm doing. Of course, it's less unique for Sega CD titles, but still a very new thing for video games at the time. Due to this, I was expecting terrible performances, but the majority of characters are genuinely well voiced. These of course do not compare to today's quality, but for 1994, they don't take away from the experience. Some voices I thought didn't really have much emotion in them, such as the voice of Katrina, while the voice actress for Metal Gear did a fantastic job in my opinion. It's a good performance from the cast overall, with some high and low points.
The soundtrack of this game has a very unique sound to it in my opinion, and I mean that in a positive way. This is a cyberpunk / cyber noir themed game, and while I couldn't have told you what that sounded like beforehand, I think the game nails that atmosphere really well. The track that plays when shit hits the fan really gets you off your seat and ready to investigate the crap out of the place you're in, while I have no doubt that I will remember some tracks (like the Junker HQ one) years and years down the line. Liked it a lot overall.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
Snatcher has a great cyberpunk aesthetic. Whether its the neon-lit Neo Kobe City, the run-down slums in the otherwise high-tech environment or the presentation of the Snatchers, it has a great visual style, timeless you could even say. The game features some pretty gory sections (decapacitated humans, dead animals), so if you don't like that sort of stuff, stay away. For me, it added a lot to the legitimacy of the Snatcher threat and was not used too much as to be tactless. The presentation of the screens in this game looks pretty good in this remade version of the game, though they are simple-looking for the most part, as the majority of screens had little to no actual movement in them but rather remained still. This didn't take away from the cinematics however, which were well done despite the visual limitations the game had to work with.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Incredibly atmospheric. Cyber noir is presenting "technology as a destructive and dystopian force that threatens every aspect of our reality", and that fits the game's theme perfectly. It's a story about humanity's lack of trust in one another and how it is one of our biggest flaws, and it carries that from its beginning all the way to the end. Heck, due to suffering from amnesia, Gillian is partly defined by this, though he hardly is the only one here. The game portrays this theme well several times throughout the game. The cyberpunk part of the cyber noir theme is also well represented here, with the contrast of high tech and the rich parts of Neo Kobe City being compared to the slums ridden with poverty. There are even minor things here, like a group of women taking their artificially enhanced pets to the vet, like a parrot with instant memorization, a dog that barely makes any sound and ... a pigeon? The deep lore that you can read up on on the computer at Junker HQ also is worth going through to familiarize yourself with Neo Kobe City.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game took me about 10 hours to beat, though you can easily beat it a couple hours sooner, if you skip some of the optional stuff. For example, reading through all the lore on the computer at Junker HQ took me over half an hour and is completely optional. There is a lot of good stuff here, and little feels as filler.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
This is a pretty well-paced adventure throughout, with a good mix of investigating, action, comedy and romance, though the last part never really felt right to me due to what I talked about in the Story part of this review. My only issue was that progression was somehow hidden behind a combination of Look / Investigate / Look that felt unnecessary, and some of the puzzles felt really contrived. That said, this is a pretty focused game and does its job well in terms of the design of its structure.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
This is not a new concept, as Hideo Kojima used similar Japanese crime adventures as inspiration for this game. It is unique in that I haven't played it in the 4+ years worth of games I've played as part of this challenge, it is a visual novel, which is a rare breed for its time, especially in the West and it tells a good story that aged pretty well. And I guess it's also worth pointing out that the game does enough to keep the player engaged without making this game feel like a book and without making the limited light gun sequences to feel annoying.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
This is a very linear adventure. If you are going through all options like me, which doesn't take a lot of effort, you will see everything in one go, besides some minor dialogue results at times perhaps. But other than that, one playthrough will give you pretty much everything here.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 78/100
A visual novel that is worthy of being played. If you are a fan of Kojima's work, this is a must play, if you are a fan of visual novels or adventure games, this is well worth a playthrough and if you enjoy good stories in video games, this is in the upper tiers, especially for its time.
(This is the 94th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
This review contains spoilers
Shin Megami Tensei II, which released exclusively in Japan on March 18, 1994 for the Super Famicom, is the direct sequel to Shin Megami Tensei - not just in number like for most of the Megami Tensei games - and has become a video game that I have very conflicted feelings for. It is a game I enjoyed a lot overall, but one I can't recommend to anyone who isn't a big Megami Tensei fan. It is a game that confirmed once again that the Megami Tensei franchise is one of my favorites in gaming, but is also a game I don't see myself ever playing again (unless we get a remake). Though I'll explain what I thought about the game in detail in this review.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
(To preface this, as with the original, it's worth cautioning that if you are a deeply religious individual, you might take offense to the portrayal of the Messians in this game. Personally, I think a work of fiction should be treated as such, and I think the social commentary in this game goes way beyond the Messians (who appear to be portraying Christians) but if this kind of portrayal is a no-go for you, I'd stay away from the game. Some say this fear within Atlus is why the games never released in the West at the time, but who knows.)
SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST GAME: This game starts several decades after the first game ended. From the ashes of Tokyo, the Messian religion created a new encapsulated city called "Tokyo Millenium". Millenium's purpose for the Messians is to bring about the Thousand Year Kingdom, an age where people can live in peace. This concept was put forth in the first game as well, but did not come to fruition for the Messians yet, who are awaiting their Savior / Messiah who can guide them there. These seemingly noble amibitions aside, looking at the layout of the Millenium paints a different picture of perhaps not only their intentions, but definitely of their actions.
See, Millenium is divided into several districts, with one central tower controlling and ruling them all, aptly named "The Center". This is where the Messians and the elite live. The other districts include "Factory", the industrial center where commodities are produced and mining and excavation projects take place, "Arcadia", a demon-free district filled with care-free citizens, and "Valhalla", a zone more or less free of control by the Center and one where its citizens can pursue earthly delights as well as fight in a "Collosseum" in deadly tournaments, the winners of which get to live in the Center themselves.
You are one such fighter called "Hawk". Your trainer, Okamoto, wakes you up one day to train for the upcoming finale of the tournament. You are also an amnesiac who Okamoto "found", took in and named one day after you were unable to do so yourself. As you prepare for the final battle, many mysterious characters show themselves to you in odd visions. There is an old man in most of them standing next to bodies of men and women who are standing motionless in chambers, as the man asks you if you remember their names. Apparently, they are tied to your destiny. There is also a guy named Steven, who you will remember from SMT 1 if you played it, who appears in a "Virtual Battling Program" to give you something he calls the "Demon Summoning Program", which he gives to many capable people because of certain events that he fears will take place soon.
From here, you become demon-summoning Hawk, though that's just the start of who you are. What is your real name? Who are you and why are you strong? Why did the old man come to you in these visions? How do you tie in with the Center and their plans for the Thousand Year Kingdom?
Know that the characters you name ARE tied to your destiny somehow and that the reveal of who you really are is a big deal in this game and a pretty awesome moment. In general, characters feel a lot more fleshed out here than in the original. While two of the characters you are asked to name appear very briefly in this game, multiple of them play a massive role and the others have their own storylines that are interesting to follow for many hours. The resolution to all of their invidiual stories were satisfying in my opinion. The characters, both yourself and the others, have canon names which you can let the old man give them, or you can look them up and give the names yourself. The difference here is that letting the old man name them somehow means you get a lot of points towards the "Law" alignment.
Yes, the Law and Chaos alignments return in this game and as with SMT 1, there are many ways that your alignment at any given moment impact the way the game is played. During the end game part, you once again then decide which path to ultimately follow and you get one of three endings from there, Law, Neutral and Chaos.
SPOILERS REST OF THE WAY
Unlike SMT 1 though, I feel like Atlus played around with these alignments a bit more. While Law was not your "Objectively morally good" path then, it is even less so here, with some surprises along the way in terms of the characters that are supposed to portray and follow the Law path. Whatever you were expecting in that regard, it likely will not have been what this game throws out there. While the game starts off with a heavy focus on the Messian religion and would make you seem that this game becomes a negative commentary on Christianity, it moves beyond that to provide general social commentary about humanity's need for guidance and the leader's tendency to exploit it.
In that regard, I found the Law ending that I achieved in the end to be really satisfying. Unlike the Neutral ending, where guiders / leaders / saviors are generally rejected, or the Chaos ending, where you follow Lucifer's anarchic path to freedom (which I personally think could never last), the Law ending, to me, presents the best path to achieve true peace.
While the Messians used their ambitions as a pretense to make a luxurious life for themselves and let the majority of citizens in Millenium slave away for them, the Law ending takes things in a different way when the Archangel Gabriel takes the protagonist to the top of the Center, where the garden of Eden is located. The idea is to create the Thousand Year Kingdom here, as Eden turns out to be on a "spaceship" that will take its inhabitants away from the Earth while the Earth. Instead of taking those with them who pretend to be working for the ideals that they propose, such as the leaders of the Center, you find that regular citizens of Millenium were chosen and brought to Eden, people who devoted their lives to make the Thousand Year Kingdom a reality in pursuit of true peace, with no ulterior motives. Meanwhile, you can find followers of the Messian religion remaining in the lower floors of the Center, wondering whether God made a mistake because they weren't chosen.
What really tops it off for me is the fact that at the end of the game, YHVH himself is challenged by you and Satan (yes, Satan), despite the fact that you seemingly follow the same ideals. I presume this was done because Satan didn't want a being to be mindlessly worshipped and one everyone attempts to please and be judged by. Instead, killing him and bringing all those pure-souled people with them achieves the reality of the Thousand Year Kingdom, where people truly work for each other's benefit, while those with the exact same ideals, the protagonist and Hiroko (who turns out to be the protagonist's surrogate mother), are presented as the "leaders", mainly to satisfy humanity's desire for "leaders" to cling to, instead of actually acting as the sort of leader YHVH or the Elders in the Center would have been.
I think an argument can be made for all three alignments however, which is why I like the alignment system, even though I am by no means someone who has more than basic knowledge on any religion, political ideologies or mythologies.
All this is brought home with the cyberpunk aesthetic of this game, both through the art design and its themes, which makes this stand out over the first SMT game. I don't SMT II's story is among the best in the history of video games, but it is certainly among the best for its time, it is certainly a notable one for the medium despite its shortcomings in pacing and character development at times (lack of memory storage at the time would play a big role there) and it is certainly one worth retelling thorugh a remake (PS: the genocide in the Law alignment is indeed fucked up, but I think it works as part of what the Law alignment proposes I feel).
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Shin Megami Tensei II's gameplay is a tale of two sides. There is the Great side and the Terrible side. The Great side is just as great as the original with some quality of life improvements but little innovation, while the Terrible side slightly improves upon the issues that were present in the original, but adds a couple more terrible things. Well, and then there is some stuff that is not terrible, but also not great.
The Great side
This game features the same gameplay as SMT I but improves upon it in some areas. The screen is divided into two halves akin to a Nintendo DS, with the top half presenting the gameworld and its dungeons, and the bottom half showing you the up to 6 humans and demons you have on your team. You and one other human character are together for most of the game, while the remaining 4 slots can be filled by demons. You acquire demons by negotiating with them and persuading them to join you by selecting the correct dialogue options, giving the demon presents and sometimes, hoping that the invisible stat-checks work in your favor. Once you acquire demons, you can summon them for battle. In the Cathedral of Shadows, here 'Jakyou', you can fuse 2 or 3 demons together to create even stronger demons, which you will need to do in order to be strong enough for the battles ahead. As you level up, you have access to higher level demons and as you progress in the game, you get into areas where some of these stronger demons can be found and negotiated with. As with the majority of the Megami Tensei series, this gameplay loop is more or less the same and pretty addicting.
As you traverse dungeons or the overworld, a multitude of random encounters await you where you need to battle demons and figure out a way to your destination, where you fight bosses to progress the story. Random encounters are not difficult for the most part, so you can use the Auto Battle function to quickly dispose of the enemies, but there are enough tough enemies to make you face them manually, and besting them will require you to have a certain strategy to do so. There are no affinities here like in future games, but you still have to see if the enemy is more susceptible to physical or magic attacks and you will need to find demons with certain skills that will make your life easier like "-kaja" attacks that can buff your attack or defense. Getting those demons requires a lot of negotiating, fusing and testing, which is, again, a really fun gameplay loop that can entertain for dozens of hours, as is the case here.
The game is your typical early 90s RPG, with story moments mixed in between all the dungeon crawling you do. Dungeons are more or less the same in the way you traverse them and in their layout, but traversing feels a lot smoother here, which makes doing so more satisfying. There are also a lot more different challenges dungeons have for you. There are the fog levels as in SMT 1, but there is also a dungeon that pushes you around in a specific pattern which you will need to fight to reach the stairs, there are a lot of dungeons with traps that will throw you down a couple flights of stairs if you walk into them and more. I have this listed under "the Great side" because I like that there are more challenges than simply walking forward, but this aspect certainly has a negative side to it that I will get to later.
There are also a lot of optional dungeons and areas you can enter, many of which will grant you pretty nice bonuses for your playthrough, such as better equipment or boosts to your stats like "Strength", "Magic", "Vitality/Stamina" and "Speed". Even in mandatory dungeons, you can go straight to the destination or be rewarded for exploring every nook and cranny with item drops and sometimes entrances to areas that provide you with a Save point.
Finally, the best quality of life improvement here is that you can now instantly access the map by pressing the left bumper, which is such a big deal here.
Overall, the best part about this game is simply the gameplay loop of demon negotiating, fusing and battling, which is I think some of the most engaging combat in an RPG for its time. It's not nearly as fleshed out as in later entries of the series (obviously) but I think it is satisfying enough to still be enjoyed here. Unfortunately, distractions from this come in many negative forms.
The Terrible Side
It starts off easy enough. One of the early objectives you get is to go to a place called "Holytown" and kill two bosses. There are 4 districts you can go to on this overworld where you get the task, all of which could be "Holytown". If you talked to a specific NPC in a bar, you will know which it is without having to potentially go through all four. Nice, you get rewarded for exploring with this useful piece of info. Once you get to Holytown, you explore the dungeons and find one of the bosses. Great, no hand holding and you get it done, no problem. The other boss however is not in these dungeons. Instead, I stumble upon it by walking through a semi-random spot on the overworld. Hm, ok, no problem.
Then, it gets progressively worse. To unlock a new area, you need to find six pillars. I found most of them, but one gave me trouble and one would give all players trouble who go into this blind I think. That is that you need to win a now infamous dancing contest to get one of the pillars. This is done in a disco. Finding the disco can take a while on its own if you don't mark every notable location somewhere on a notepad or something while you play, walking through the disco is a pain because no matter where you go or where you look, each individual step is interrupted with a good 3-5 seconds of uninterruptable dialogue showing people who dance and a text that states that they dance. Once you finally find the spot, you may enter the dancing contest, but ONLY if you have 10 magic. Magic is a useless stat for your protagonist because he can't do magic, so you wouldn't level magic due to this. If you read up on a couple small tips beforehand, you will know, but if you don't and are stuck with the 4 magic at the start of the game, you may be in some trouble and have to grind for a while. Getting a certain drink and wearing a certain equippable item can get your magic up by up to 4 points temporarily I believe however.
The other thing that I myself had trouble with was with one pillar that you apparently get by going to a super-random location in one of the, by this point, dozens of dungeons you unlocked, and finding one random NPC. Getting these pillars can generally be random (buy something from the junk store to get one, go to a digging site on one overworld map to get another) but this felt over the top. There are countless times where the solution to progression is not intuitive at all and talking to NPCs doesn't help either, which I think takes it way too far. On top of that, there is absurd amounts of backtracking that you are meant to do, and that's if you even know where to go. If you don't, you can easily spend hours per task just to find where you needed to go, so I can't imagine anyone wanting to go through this without a guide. It didn't stop me from enjoying the game (it actually helped with that) but I can imagine this being a dealbreaker for some and is the primary reason why I can't recommend this game. Late in the game for example, I need to enter a certain area. I can't, and so I apparently have to go all the way back to a different area, have one short chat, and go all the way back to the area I wanted to enter to be able to do so. This can easily take 45 minutes and is just one instance of backtracking being brutal here.
In terms of the combat, while I enjoyed it, there is one issue and that is that it is way too easy after you reach about the mid-way point of the game. I got a Gun at this point that let my protagonist and other human partner shoot 3-6 shots per turn, which absolutely obliterated the majority of random encounters. Get one or two demons that have the Tarukaja spell (increases damage) and you will do absurd amounts of damage. This has made pretty much every boss fight from that point on trivial and simply a matter of depleting their health. Some bosses are resistant to Gun attacks, like the final one, but even there the damage the boss dished out was so low (and they only get one action per turn) that I just had to wait for the boss to go down. Part of me was glad because I notoriously am terrible at JRPGs, but obviously being able to spam one tactic for half of the game is not very fulfilling.
I also can't end this part without mentioning the encounter rate. There are many areas where the encounter rate is actually more than OK, but there still are too many where the encounter rate is way too high. It's especially infuriating when you are lost and trying to figure out where to go, or when you are thrown down two flights of stairs and have to go back. It is an improvement over 1 though.
The "Meh" Side
This game still has the Magnetite system, which I believe will stick around for a while, and I can't say I like it that much, though it's not a big deal, if you know how to deal with it. Magnetite is a resource that is spend with each step you take, if you have a demon in your lineup. The more demons you have active, the quicker it goes down. As dungeons get larger and more complex, your Magnetite can run out insanely fast if you have two or more demons active. If you have 0 Magnetite, each step dishes out damage to your demons, so you should always have Magnetite. This forced me to grind for Magnetite at multiple points early on to have enough (luckily some enemies give you a lot of Magnetite) but what you can also do is simply walk around without any demons being active. This means you will be in a tough position if you can't get away from an encounter and it means you need to re-summon demons, which costs a little bit of money, but it was a great trade-off in my opinion. In the end game, you get so much Magnetite but dungeons are so massive that even that is not enough, so I never felt secure with the Magnetite I had in stock right until the end, and it's a system I can definitely live without.
There are also some activities you can do on the side, like go to the Casino or play in a "Code Breaker" game. While I didn't play in the casino (I hear you can get some near-game-breaking items from there), I found the Code Breaker game to be not really rewarding. You need to guess 5 numbers in the right order and have about 10 guesses to do so. If you picked one of the correct numbers, a B is shown to indicate that. Get the number in the correct spot and an H is shown. 12345 could for example show you "HBBB", which means one of the numbers is in the correct spot and three others are in the solution. 21358 for example could be the solution, and the quicker you get it, the better the reward. Unfortunately, the only rewards that are worth it were for the first two guesses, and you can imagine how unlikely it is to get those right, so either use your emulator to cheat a win or don't bother. Plus, you need Metal Cards to participate, but you get so many and these Code Breaker stores appear so rarely that they only end up clogging up your limited inventory space, and I didn't realize they were a waste of time until I got to play the game again and truly understand how poor the rewards were.
In general, a lot of items in this game are pretty useless. "Maha-" stones for example are attacks that can damage multiple enemies. Usually, if you face one enemy, it would just hit that enemy, at least if you use "Maha" attacks as part of a demon's magic. If you use the item, it doesn't even work unless there are multiple enemies on the screen. Then there are tons of other items which have 0 use for boss battles and are ineffective compared to your other attacks, so I went through almost all of the game without using any. Only time I needed to use some was during the final few boss fights, when I was locked out from going to any stores and the last 5 or so stores only sold guns, which meant my protagonist (who went from Neutral to Law at this point) couldn't equip his sword anymore, couldn't find a new sword anymore and was useless because he has no Magic attacks and all Gun attacks were blocked, so I just ended up using his turns to waste all the items I had been carrying for almost the entirety of the game.
OVERALL
Overall, I can't say I would have finished this game if it weren't for the fact that I played it on an emulator that let me use save states and let me fast forward whenever I needed to and used a guide. The pacing of everything being slow can really be frustrating when most of the time you are simply trying to figure out what even to do, and backtracking for ages just to get a nugget of info (if it even was available) just felt too ridiculous. I did want to beat it though because I think it is worth it for the story, but I'd recommend watching someone else play it to not potentially lose your mind with this.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10
No voice acting. I'd say the sound design was a mild improvement over the original, but not too noticeable in that regard. The soundtrack was great once again here, though I'd say a step down from SMT 1's soundtrack. There weren't enough tracks that were as notable as in that game, and even worse, a select few would play for roughly 80% of your playtime. Truthfully, I did not get fed up with these tracks and could gladly listen to them right now, but I can see how it would get on people's nerves after 30+ hours. There are plenty of bangers here however and it is one of my favorite soundtracks out of all games I played as part of this challenge I am doing, so I can't complain, I just know that Atlus has done better a lot of times.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
This game is not technically impressive by any means, so the majority of time is spent looking at wall tiles in first-person dungeon crawling that, while they look improved from the original thanks to actual textures being used (and a variety of them), each dungeon's tiles all look the same and each texture is reused multiple times, apart from later ones. The other part of the game is spent in the overworld, which has an odd mix of blue-yellowish colors but, after getting used to it, is definitely a step up to the originals. Where the game really shines visually is in the design of its demons, which are pretty much all looking excellent and also in its cyberpunk aesthetic, which I think could have been more prominent but shone through whenever it needed to. The UI in this game also looks much better compared to the original, as it has been cleaned up and doesn't take nearly as much space anymore.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Shin Megami Tensei II is just as atmospheric as the first game, and the series in general has some of the best atmosphere out of any video game I've played. To do this despite the clear technical limiations at the time is quite impressive, and it couldn't be done without the game's soundtrack, its art design and the story. There are multiple events that really surprise you and make you realize that in this fucked up world, everything is fair game and no one is safe. Its an atmosphere that is as depressing and hopeless as in the first game due to the state of the world, but I think the options of resolution offered here made me feel more hopeful once it was all said and one than I felt with the first.
CONTENT | 7/10
Dozens of mandatory dungeons, a handful of optional ones, plenty of which provide you with really useful stuff. A huge list of 100-200 demons to choose from, a fun battle system and more story content than in the majority of games at the time and among the highest quality story content for sure. The game will take you 30+ hours, though closer to 40 to 50 if you do the Neutral route and closer to 70 hours, if you decide not to use a guide at all. Unfortunately, as you can tell, a lot of these hours come from not knowing where to go and/or backtracking, so a lot of very good content feels slightly buried in between these nuisances.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
There are a ton of really interesting areas to explore in this game, such as the multiple districts in the Millenium, the underworld and the Abyss, but the backtracking and cryptic progression are just so bad. If you want to show a horrible example to the "I liked when games didn't hold your hands" crowd, this is it.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
The concept still feels really fresh here, simply because there was no game like it at the time. All RPGs I've played focused on the same style of turn-based combat and put the onus on level-grinding to be able to beat tough enemies. This game offers a lot more strategic options beyond putting man-hours into playing it, which is what I really appreciate about its system, and its approach to storytelling is unique to this day. Its such a demonic story that the developers, to this day, go to a shrine to cleanse themselves before working on one of these games, and I am glad that their superstition didn't lead them to stop making these outright. In an era where console games where nearly exclusively aimed at kids, I am glad this was made.
That said, the game doesn't innovate a lot over the original, though that is to change over the coming years when SMT moves from mainline to the Devil Summoner and Persona series.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
Once beaten, you can decide to go for the other two routes, which will not only change the path to the ending but will also allow you to use different demons and equipment. Replayability is reduced a bit by the fact that progression has a big focus on backtracking.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 74/100
In many ways, this is an improvement over the original and in some ways, it's a step back. It's a game that shows its age a lot and will be tough to play and enjoy for the majority of people who try it these days, which is why I can only recommend this to hardcore SMT fans. The story is worth experiencing and is the main reason why this game is worthy of a remake, and it didn't do anything to stop me from being excited to play Shin Megami Tense if... in a couple weeks / months, but I'm unlikely to want to play SMT II again in its current state, though happy to have done so.
(This is the 93rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
(To preface this, as with the original, it's worth cautioning that if you are a deeply religious individual, you might take offense to the portrayal of the Messians in this game. Personally, I think a work of fiction should be treated as such, and I think the social commentary in this game goes way beyond the Messians (who appear to be portraying Christians) but if this kind of portrayal is a no-go for you, I'd stay away from the game. Some say this fear within Atlus is why the games never released in the West at the time, but who knows.)
SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST GAME: This game starts several decades after the first game ended. From the ashes of Tokyo, the Messian religion created a new encapsulated city called "Tokyo Millenium". Millenium's purpose for the Messians is to bring about the Thousand Year Kingdom, an age where people can live in peace. This concept was put forth in the first game as well, but did not come to fruition for the Messians yet, who are awaiting their Savior / Messiah who can guide them there. These seemingly noble amibitions aside, looking at the layout of the Millenium paints a different picture of perhaps not only their intentions, but definitely of their actions.
See, Millenium is divided into several districts, with one central tower controlling and ruling them all, aptly named "The Center". This is where the Messians and the elite live. The other districts include "Factory", the industrial center where commodities are produced and mining and excavation projects take place, "Arcadia", a demon-free district filled with care-free citizens, and "Valhalla", a zone more or less free of control by the Center and one where its citizens can pursue earthly delights as well as fight in a "Collosseum" in deadly tournaments, the winners of which get to live in the Center themselves.
You are one such fighter called "Hawk". Your trainer, Okamoto, wakes you up one day to train for the upcoming finale of the tournament. You are also an amnesiac who Okamoto "found", took in and named one day after you were unable to do so yourself. As you prepare for the final battle, many mysterious characters show themselves to you in odd visions. There is an old man in most of them standing next to bodies of men and women who are standing motionless in chambers, as the man asks you if you remember their names. Apparently, they are tied to your destiny. There is also a guy named Steven, who you will remember from SMT 1 if you played it, who appears in a "Virtual Battling Program" to give you something he calls the "Demon Summoning Program", which he gives to many capable people because of certain events that he fears will take place soon.
From here, you become demon-summoning Hawk, though that's just the start of who you are. What is your real name? Who are you and why are you strong? Why did the old man come to you in these visions? How do you tie in with the Center and their plans for the Thousand Year Kingdom?
Know that the characters you name ARE tied to your destiny somehow and that the reveal of who you really are is a big deal in this game and a pretty awesome moment. In general, characters feel a lot more fleshed out here than in the original. While two of the characters you are asked to name appear very briefly in this game, multiple of them play a massive role and the others have their own storylines that are interesting to follow for many hours. The resolution to all of their invidiual stories were satisfying in my opinion. The characters, both yourself and the others, have canon names which you can let the old man give them, or you can look them up and give the names yourself. The difference here is that letting the old man name them somehow means you get a lot of points towards the "Law" alignment.
Yes, the Law and Chaos alignments return in this game and as with SMT 1, there are many ways that your alignment at any given moment impact the way the game is played. During the end game part, you once again then decide which path to ultimately follow and you get one of three endings from there, Law, Neutral and Chaos.
SPOILERS REST OF THE WAY
Unlike SMT 1 though, I feel like Atlus played around with these alignments a bit more. While Law was not your "Objectively morally good" path then, it is even less so here, with some surprises along the way in terms of the characters that are supposed to portray and follow the Law path. Whatever you were expecting in that regard, it likely will not have been what this game throws out there. While the game starts off with a heavy focus on the Messian religion and would make you seem that this game becomes a negative commentary on Christianity, it moves beyond that to provide general social commentary about humanity's need for guidance and the leader's tendency to exploit it.
In that regard, I found the Law ending that I achieved in the end to be really satisfying. Unlike the Neutral ending, where guiders / leaders / saviors are generally rejected, or the Chaos ending, where you follow Lucifer's anarchic path to freedom (which I personally think could never last), the Law ending, to me, presents the best path to achieve true peace.
While the Messians used their ambitions as a pretense to make a luxurious life for themselves and let the majority of citizens in Millenium slave away for them, the Law ending takes things in a different way when the Archangel Gabriel takes the protagonist to the top of the Center, where the garden of Eden is located. The idea is to create the Thousand Year Kingdom here, as Eden turns out to be on a "spaceship" that will take its inhabitants away from the Earth while the Earth. Instead of taking those with them who pretend to be working for the ideals that they propose, such as the leaders of the Center, you find that regular citizens of Millenium were chosen and brought to Eden, people who devoted their lives to make the Thousand Year Kingdom a reality in pursuit of true peace, with no ulterior motives. Meanwhile, you can find followers of the Messian religion remaining in the lower floors of the Center, wondering whether God made a mistake because they weren't chosen.
What really tops it off for me is the fact that at the end of the game, YHVH himself is challenged by you and Satan (yes, Satan), despite the fact that you seemingly follow the same ideals. I presume this was done because Satan didn't want a being to be mindlessly worshipped and one everyone attempts to please and be judged by. Instead, killing him and bringing all those pure-souled people with them achieves the reality of the Thousand Year Kingdom, where people truly work for each other's benefit, while those with the exact same ideals, the protagonist and Hiroko (who turns out to be the protagonist's surrogate mother), are presented as the "leaders", mainly to satisfy humanity's desire for "leaders" to cling to, instead of actually acting as the sort of leader YHVH or the Elders in the Center would have been.
I think an argument can be made for all three alignments however, which is why I like the alignment system, even though I am by no means someone who has more than basic knowledge on any religion, political ideologies or mythologies.
All this is brought home with the cyberpunk aesthetic of this game, both through the art design and its themes, which makes this stand out over the first SMT game. I don't SMT II's story is among the best in the history of video games, but it is certainly among the best for its time, it is certainly a notable one for the medium despite its shortcomings in pacing and character development at times (lack of memory storage at the time would play a big role there) and it is certainly one worth retelling thorugh a remake (PS: the genocide in the Law alignment is indeed fucked up, but I think it works as part of what the Law alignment proposes I feel).
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Shin Megami Tensei II's gameplay is a tale of two sides. There is the Great side and the Terrible side. The Great side is just as great as the original with some quality of life improvements but little innovation, while the Terrible side slightly improves upon the issues that were present in the original, but adds a couple more terrible things. Well, and then there is some stuff that is not terrible, but also not great.
The Great side
This game features the same gameplay as SMT I but improves upon it in some areas. The screen is divided into two halves akin to a Nintendo DS, with the top half presenting the gameworld and its dungeons, and the bottom half showing you the up to 6 humans and demons you have on your team. You and one other human character are together for most of the game, while the remaining 4 slots can be filled by demons. You acquire demons by negotiating with them and persuading them to join you by selecting the correct dialogue options, giving the demon presents and sometimes, hoping that the invisible stat-checks work in your favor. Once you acquire demons, you can summon them for battle. In the Cathedral of Shadows, here 'Jakyou', you can fuse 2 or 3 demons together to create even stronger demons, which you will need to do in order to be strong enough for the battles ahead. As you level up, you have access to higher level demons and as you progress in the game, you get into areas where some of these stronger demons can be found and negotiated with. As with the majority of the Megami Tensei series, this gameplay loop is more or less the same and pretty addicting.
As you traverse dungeons or the overworld, a multitude of random encounters await you where you need to battle demons and figure out a way to your destination, where you fight bosses to progress the story. Random encounters are not difficult for the most part, so you can use the Auto Battle function to quickly dispose of the enemies, but there are enough tough enemies to make you face them manually, and besting them will require you to have a certain strategy to do so. There are no affinities here like in future games, but you still have to see if the enemy is more susceptible to physical or magic attacks and you will need to find demons with certain skills that will make your life easier like "-kaja" attacks that can buff your attack or defense. Getting those demons requires a lot of negotiating, fusing and testing, which is, again, a really fun gameplay loop that can entertain for dozens of hours, as is the case here.
The game is your typical early 90s RPG, with story moments mixed in between all the dungeon crawling you do. Dungeons are more or less the same in the way you traverse them and in their layout, but traversing feels a lot smoother here, which makes doing so more satisfying. There are also a lot more different challenges dungeons have for you. There are the fog levels as in SMT 1, but there is also a dungeon that pushes you around in a specific pattern which you will need to fight to reach the stairs, there are a lot of dungeons with traps that will throw you down a couple flights of stairs if you walk into them and more. I have this listed under "the Great side" because I like that there are more challenges than simply walking forward, but this aspect certainly has a negative side to it that I will get to later.
There are also a lot of optional dungeons and areas you can enter, many of which will grant you pretty nice bonuses for your playthrough, such as better equipment or boosts to your stats like "Strength", "Magic", "Vitality/Stamina" and "Speed". Even in mandatory dungeons, you can go straight to the destination or be rewarded for exploring every nook and cranny with item drops and sometimes entrances to areas that provide you with a Save point.
Finally, the best quality of life improvement here is that you can now instantly access the map by pressing the left bumper, which is such a big deal here.
Overall, the best part about this game is simply the gameplay loop of demon negotiating, fusing and battling, which is I think some of the most engaging combat in an RPG for its time. It's not nearly as fleshed out as in later entries of the series (obviously) but I think it is satisfying enough to still be enjoyed here. Unfortunately, distractions from this come in many negative forms.
The Terrible Side
It starts off easy enough. One of the early objectives you get is to go to a place called "Holytown" and kill two bosses. There are 4 districts you can go to on this overworld where you get the task, all of which could be "Holytown". If you talked to a specific NPC in a bar, you will know which it is without having to potentially go through all four. Nice, you get rewarded for exploring with this useful piece of info. Once you get to Holytown, you explore the dungeons and find one of the bosses. Great, no hand holding and you get it done, no problem. The other boss however is not in these dungeons. Instead, I stumble upon it by walking through a semi-random spot on the overworld. Hm, ok, no problem.
Then, it gets progressively worse. To unlock a new area, you need to find six pillars. I found most of them, but one gave me trouble and one would give all players trouble who go into this blind I think. That is that you need to win a now infamous dancing contest to get one of the pillars. This is done in a disco. Finding the disco can take a while on its own if you don't mark every notable location somewhere on a notepad or something while you play, walking through the disco is a pain because no matter where you go or where you look, each individual step is interrupted with a good 3-5 seconds of uninterruptable dialogue showing people who dance and a text that states that they dance. Once you finally find the spot, you may enter the dancing contest, but ONLY if you have 10 magic. Magic is a useless stat for your protagonist because he can't do magic, so you wouldn't level magic due to this. If you read up on a couple small tips beforehand, you will know, but if you don't and are stuck with the 4 magic at the start of the game, you may be in some trouble and have to grind for a while. Getting a certain drink and wearing a certain equippable item can get your magic up by up to 4 points temporarily I believe however.
The other thing that I myself had trouble with was with one pillar that you apparently get by going to a super-random location in one of the, by this point, dozens of dungeons you unlocked, and finding one random NPC. Getting these pillars can generally be random (buy something from the junk store to get one, go to a digging site on one overworld map to get another) but this felt over the top. There are countless times where the solution to progression is not intuitive at all and talking to NPCs doesn't help either, which I think takes it way too far. On top of that, there is absurd amounts of backtracking that you are meant to do, and that's if you even know where to go. If you don't, you can easily spend hours per task just to find where you needed to go, so I can't imagine anyone wanting to go through this without a guide. It didn't stop me from enjoying the game (it actually helped with that) but I can imagine this being a dealbreaker for some and is the primary reason why I can't recommend this game. Late in the game for example, I need to enter a certain area. I can't, and so I apparently have to go all the way back to a different area, have one short chat, and go all the way back to the area I wanted to enter to be able to do so. This can easily take 45 minutes and is just one instance of backtracking being brutal here.
In terms of the combat, while I enjoyed it, there is one issue and that is that it is way too easy after you reach about the mid-way point of the game. I got a Gun at this point that let my protagonist and other human partner shoot 3-6 shots per turn, which absolutely obliterated the majority of random encounters. Get one or two demons that have the Tarukaja spell (increases damage) and you will do absurd amounts of damage. This has made pretty much every boss fight from that point on trivial and simply a matter of depleting their health. Some bosses are resistant to Gun attacks, like the final one, but even there the damage the boss dished out was so low (and they only get one action per turn) that I just had to wait for the boss to go down. Part of me was glad because I notoriously am terrible at JRPGs, but obviously being able to spam one tactic for half of the game is not very fulfilling.
I also can't end this part without mentioning the encounter rate. There are many areas where the encounter rate is actually more than OK, but there still are too many where the encounter rate is way too high. It's especially infuriating when you are lost and trying to figure out where to go, or when you are thrown down two flights of stairs and have to go back. It is an improvement over 1 though.
The "Meh" Side
This game still has the Magnetite system, which I believe will stick around for a while, and I can't say I like it that much, though it's not a big deal, if you know how to deal with it. Magnetite is a resource that is spend with each step you take, if you have a demon in your lineup. The more demons you have active, the quicker it goes down. As dungeons get larger and more complex, your Magnetite can run out insanely fast if you have two or more demons active. If you have 0 Magnetite, each step dishes out damage to your demons, so you should always have Magnetite. This forced me to grind for Magnetite at multiple points early on to have enough (luckily some enemies give you a lot of Magnetite) but what you can also do is simply walk around without any demons being active. This means you will be in a tough position if you can't get away from an encounter and it means you need to re-summon demons, which costs a little bit of money, but it was a great trade-off in my opinion. In the end game, you get so much Magnetite but dungeons are so massive that even that is not enough, so I never felt secure with the Magnetite I had in stock right until the end, and it's a system I can definitely live without.
There are also some activities you can do on the side, like go to the Casino or play in a "Code Breaker" game. While I didn't play in the casino (I hear you can get some near-game-breaking items from there), I found the Code Breaker game to be not really rewarding. You need to guess 5 numbers in the right order and have about 10 guesses to do so. If you picked one of the correct numbers, a B is shown to indicate that. Get the number in the correct spot and an H is shown. 12345 could for example show you "HBBB", which means one of the numbers is in the correct spot and three others are in the solution. 21358 for example could be the solution, and the quicker you get it, the better the reward. Unfortunately, the only rewards that are worth it were for the first two guesses, and you can imagine how unlikely it is to get those right, so either use your emulator to cheat a win or don't bother. Plus, you need Metal Cards to participate, but you get so many and these Code Breaker stores appear so rarely that they only end up clogging up your limited inventory space, and I didn't realize they were a waste of time until I got to play the game again and truly understand how poor the rewards were.
In general, a lot of items in this game are pretty useless. "Maha-" stones for example are attacks that can damage multiple enemies. Usually, if you face one enemy, it would just hit that enemy, at least if you use "Maha" attacks as part of a demon's magic. If you use the item, it doesn't even work unless there are multiple enemies on the screen. Then there are tons of other items which have 0 use for boss battles and are ineffective compared to your other attacks, so I went through almost all of the game without using any. Only time I needed to use some was during the final few boss fights, when I was locked out from going to any stores and the last 5 or so stores only sold guns, which meant my protagonist (who went from Neutral to Law at this point) couldn't equip his sword anymore, couldn't find a new sword anymore and was useless because he has no Magic attacks and all Gun attacks were blocked, so I just ended up using his turns to waste all the items I had been carrying for almost the entirety of the game.
OVERALL
Overall, I can't say I would have finished this game if it weren't for the fact that I played it on an emulator that let me use save states and let me fast forward whenever I needed to and used a guide. The pacing of everything being slow can really be frustrating when most of the time you are simply trying to figure out what even to do, and backtracking for ages just to get a nugget of info (if it even was available) just felt too ridiculous. I did want to beat it though because I think it is worth it for the story, but I'd recommend watching someone else play it to not potentially lose your mind with this.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10
No voice acting. I'd say the sound design was a mild improvement over the original, but not too noticeable in that regard. The soundtrack was great once again here, though I'd say a step down from SMT 1's soundtrack. There weren't enough tracks that were as notable as in that game, and even worse, a select few would play for roughly 80% of your playtime. Truthfully, I did not get fed up with these tracks and could gladly listen to them right now, but I can see how it would get on people's nerves after 30+ hours. There are plenty of bangers here however and it is one of my favorite soundtracks out of all games I played as part of this challenge I am doing, so I can't complain, I just know that Atlus has done better a lot of times.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
This game is not technically impressive by any means, so the majority of time is spent looking at wall tiles in first-person dungeon crawling that, while they look improved from the original thanks to actual textures being used (and a variety of them), each dungeon's tiles all look the same and each texture is reused multiple times, apart from later ones. The other part of the game is spent in the overworld, which has an odd mix of blue-yellowish colors but, after getting used to it, is definitely a step up to the originals. Where the game really shines visually is in the design of its demons, which are pretty much all looking excellent and also in its cyberpunk aesthetic, which I think could have been more prominent but shone through whenever it needed to. The UI in this game also looks much better compared to the original, as it has been cleaned up and doesn't take nearly as much space anymore.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Shin Megami Tensei II is just as atmospheric as the first game, and the series in general has some of the best atmosphere out of any video game I've played. To do this despite the clear technical limiations at the time is quite impressive, and it couldn't be done without the game's soundtrack, its art design and the story. There are multiple events that really surprise you and make you realize that in this fucked up world, everything is fair game and no one is safe. Its an atmosphere that is as depressing and hopeless as in the first game due to the state of the world, but I think the options of resolution offered here made me feel more hopeful once it was all said and one than I felt with the first.
CONTENT | 7/10
Dozens of mandatory dungeons, a handful of optional ones, plenty of which provide you with really useful stuff. A huge list of 100-200 demons to choose from, a fun battle system and more story content than in the majority of games at the time and among the highest quality story content for sure. The game will take you 30+ hours, though closer to 40 to 50 if you do the Neutral route and closer to 70 hours, if you decide not to use a guide at all. Unfortunately, as you can tell, a lot of these hours come from not knowing where to go and/or backtracking, so a lot of very good content feels slightly buried in between these nuisances.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
There are a ton of really interesting areas to explore in this game, such as the multiple districts in the Millenium, the underworld and the Abyss, but the backtracking and cryptic progression are just so bad. If you want to show a horrible example to the "I liked when games didn't hold your hands" crowd, this is it.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
The concept still feels really fresh here, simply because there was no game like it at the time. All RPGs I've played focused on the same style of turn-based combat and put the onus on level-grinding to be able to beat tough enemies. This game offers a lot more strategic options beyond putting man-hours into playing it, which is what I really appreciate about its system, and its approach to storytelling is unique to this day. Its such a demonic story that the developers, to this day, go to a shrine to cleanse themselves before working on one of these games, and I am glad that their superstition didn't lead them to stop making these outright. In an era where console games where nearly exclusively aimed at kids, I am glad this was made.
That said, the game doesn't innovate a lot over the original, though that is to change over the coming years when SMT moves from mainline to the Devil Summoner and Persona series.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
Once beaten, you can decide to go for the other two routes, which will not only change the path to the ending but will also allow you to use different demons and equipment. Replayability is reduced a bit by the fact that progression has a big focus on backtracking.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 74/100
In many ways, this is an improvement over the original and in some ways, it's a step back. It's a game that shows its age a lot and will be tough to play and enjoy for the majority of people who try it these days, which is why I can only recommend this to hardcore SMT fans. The story is worth experiencing and is the main reason why this game is worthy of a remake, and it didn't do anything to stop me from being excited to play Shin Megami Tense if... in a couple weeks / months, but I'm unlikely to want to play SMT II again in its current state, though happy to have done so.
(This is the 93rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
(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.
1994
(This is the 91st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
As part of this challenge, I've been going through these Sonic games as fast as, well, Sonic, and just like that, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is the Sonic series' fourth attempt to make me a fan of the franchise. It's not like I think these are bad games, definitely not, but there are some pretty key things about Sonic games that do not align with my tastes, and that has been the case for Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic CD, though Sonic CD has been the game I enjoyed the most so far.
I'm going to explain my likes and dislikes about the Sonic series below and whether this game does something different in those regards, but going in, I didn't really expect anything different here than what Sonic fans got up to this point. And that's more than OK, considering that this is a beloved series of many gamers. Additionally, this is the 4th Sonic game for the Genesis / Sega CD in just 3 years, so I imagine that innovation will be kept to a minimum simply due to time constraints. Looking at this game's wiki, that seems to be the case, as Sonic the Hedgehog would not only not include certain features that would later be turned into Sonic 3D Blast, but there is also a large part of the game that was simply cut and later republished as Sonic & Knuckles. Sonic & Knuckles' cartridge has an adapter that lets you attach Sonic 3 to it, which turns both games into Sonic 3 & Knuckles, in case you are interested in that. I'm only reviewing Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
At the beginning of the game, Sonic has the Chaos Emeralds but gets them stolen from him by Knuckles the Echidna, a new character in the Sonic series at this point in time. Knuckles is the last of his kind living on the "Angel Island", on which the Death Egg of Dr Robotnik crash-lands prior to the start of this game. Knuckles guards the "Master Emerald", which gives Angel Island its levitational power, so Dr Robotnik uses this opportunity to pit Sonic and Knuckles against each other by telling Knuckles that Sonic is attempting to steal the Master Emerald.
For the game itself, that's pretty much it. Knuckles makes life harder on Sonic during the game but there is very little in terms of story here, not unlike other Sonic and platforming games in general at the time. As per usual, this is fine, as it is not expected, especially for a game in 1994, where story cutscenes would likely damage the experience more by interrupting it than enhancing it.
GAMEPLAY | 9/20
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is, to me, the worst Sonic game to date in terms of gameplay. On the one hand, it innovates very little from the formula of the other Sonic games. If you enjoyed those, you will enjoy this game too for the most part, so no need to read on. In the following however, I will explain what exactly irked me more than usual in this game, especially since it is coming off the heels of Sega CD and Sonic 2, both of which are games that I praised for innovating enough in terms of controls, gameplay and level design.
The core gameplay idea behind this Sonic game is the same as with the others. Enter a large level with multiple ways to traverse to the exit, explore to find secret areas, defeat a boss at the end of the zone and in between, learn the flow of the level to go through it without losing one of your limited lives. As per usual, Sonic has a lot of speed, and as per usual, you are supposed to use this speed during appropriate times.
Because, AS PER USUAL, this Sonic game has terrible enemy placement and enemies appearing a millisecond before you can process them as you speed through any area of any level. So, while controlling a fast character, you once again tip-toe around levels once you realize that no matter where you go, unfair threats look to take your rings from you. You then have to recover those rings, because carrying at least one ring means you won't die from your next hit. Unfortunately, in this game, rings are unrecoverable for a good 2-3 seconds after you get hit, so I found myself either recovering very few even if I had dozens on me, or recovering 0. For example, there is this one enemy that has spikes and shoots three balls diagonally upwards. Almost always, it hit me. Half the time, I couldn't recover any rings. This means I had to tip toe next to it to wait for it shoot the balls in order to jump on top of it. Sonic moves like he is gliding on ice however, so the controls are not nearly as tight as you would want them to. Plus, input detection is not as immediate as you would need it to be either. Ultimately, you need to get close enough to time the jump, you need to stay away far enough to not touch the enemy and you can't stay away too far, otherwise you won't time the jump within that short time frame between the three balls that are shot. This would lead me to die countless times to one of these things as I try to do a very simple thing of just jumping on top of this one goddamn enemy.
Enemy design in this game is horrible in general, but there is no enemy more infuriating than that fucking piranha that tries to bite you underwater. It won't let go, you can't do anything about it, so 100% of the time, this means you are just waiting 10 to 15 seconds until Sonic can't hold his breath anymore and dies. Fucking terrible. You fall downwards a lot and can't see these piranhas, so if you jump downwards unfavorably, you literally cannot do anything against them. One of my biggest gripes in any video game is having to jump down from somewhere without seeing enemies/obstacles, and this game's challenge is simply made out of this trope.
Two other things I dislike in Sonic 3 are 1) the special stages, which I think are the worst of all Sonic games so far (you collect blue balls and have to quickly change direction, where you fight the game's controls more than anything) and 2) Tails now being completely forced on you. In Sonic 2, you could go to the options menu and remove Tails, but here, you can't. Tails does almost nothing in 1-player mode but constantly die and distract you. Tails for example cannot breathe underwater, and has his own timer appear for whatever reason, which confuses you into thinking that you need air yourself. The worst fucking part is when I stood near the air bubbles with 2 seconds to go on my own timer, jumped up to grab one of the air bubbles and have FUCKING TAILS STEAL IT FROM ME. I died after those 2 seconds and quit the game right after.
Again, Sonic games are not objectively bad, despite the overwhelming negativity here, but at their best, the 2D platformers are tolerable to me, and at their worst, like here, they're downright terrible to play.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10
The saving grace for Sonic games comes from their soundtrack. As with all other Sonic games (minus the Sega CD boss fight theme), this game has a good soundtrack as well. From what I've listened to, the save select screen's theme is funnily enough my favorite. The worst track here by far is the one for the new special stage, which makes the special stage even less tolerable than it already was to me.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
I can only really say the same thing here that I was able to for the other Sonic games. They are some of the best-looking games on the Genesis, some of the better looking games of the 16-bit era and all that applies to Sonic 3 as well. At the same time, Sonic levels often have a cluttered quality to them and can be overdesigned visually, which is not as bad herre as in Sonic 2, but still present.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 7/10
Not much to say here for this game. It plays, sounds and feels like a Sonic game. The only thing I dislike here in that sense are the underwater levels, which are a lot more present here than in the other Sonic games unfortunately, and they usually are my least favorite part.
CONTENT | 5/10
The main content is similar to what you have come to expect from the other Sonic games, only worse in my opinion due to the issues I mentioned under 'Gameplay'. The special stage here is the worst out of the 4 16-bit Sonic games in my opinion and this game doesn't innovate in any way here, a far cry of the effort that was put into Sonic CD in '93.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
Levels are long as per usual and you can go through them in multiple different ways once again. There are a lot of rings to collect, Chaos Emeralds to find through the special stages and bosses to battle, but the in between issues of enemy placement and the terrible way through which this game achieves its difficulty makes this game a step down from the other Sonic games, where I had complained about the enemy placement as well, but never at the level of Sonic 3.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 3/10
Play Sonic 1, 2 and Sonic CD instead of this. Sonic 3 innovates the least out of all these games and feels like a step back for the most part. Knuckles' debut is cool but that's really all you get here.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
Less replay value than for Sonic 2 and CD, but Sonic games always have plenty of secret areas to find and Chaos Emeralds to collect, so replay value is present at usual levels.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 55/100
Sonic games eminate high production values, and there certainly was a lot of money poured into making them once Sonic 2 took off as it did, but money can't buy creativity, and Sonic 3 to me is the proof of it. The core system for Sonic games is in place, and Sonic 3 feels like those were simply re-used with little thought given to how the levels work. Based on the very good reviews the game got at the time, I realize I'm in the minority with this thinking, but I truly did not have a good time with this game. Its above-average visually and through its soundtrack as per usual, and when the game actually flows well it's fun like the others can be, but the annoyances that enemy placement and pop-ups present are more discernible here than they ever were.
As part of this challenge, I've been going through these Sonic games as fast as, well, Sonic, and just like that, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is the Sonic series' fourth attempt to make me a fan of the franchise. It's not like I think these are bad games, definitely not, but there are some pretty key things about Sonic games that do not align with my tastes, and that has been the case for Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic CD, though Sonic CD has been the game I enjoyed the most so far.
I'm going to explain my likes and dislikes about the Sonic series below and whether this game does something different in those regards, but going in, I didn't really expect anything different here than what Sonic fans got up to this point. And that's more than OK, considering that this is a beloved series of many gamers. Additionally, this is the 4th Sonic game for the Genesis / Sega CD in just 3 years, so I imagine that innovation will be kept to a minimum simply due to time constraints. Looking at this game's wiki, that seems to be the case, as Sonic the Hedgehog would not only not include certain features that would later be turned into Sonic 3D Blast, but there is also a large part of the game that was simply cut and later republished as Sonic & Knuckles. Sonic & Knuckles' cartridge has an adapter that lets you attach Sonic 3 to it, which turns both games into Sonic 3 & Knuckles, in case you are interested in that. I'm only reviewing Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
At the beginning of the game, Sonic has the Chaos Emeralds but gets them stolen from him by Knuckles the Echidna, a new character in the Sonic series at this point in time. Knuckles is the last of his kind living on the "Angel Island", on which the Death Egg of Dr Robotnik crash-lands prior to the start of this game. Knuckles guards the "Master Emerald", which gives Angel Island its levitational power, so Dr Robotnik uses this opportunity to pit Sonic and Knuckles against each other by telling Knuckles that Sonic is attempting to steal the Master Emerald.
For the game itself, that's pretty much it. Knuckles makes life harder on Sonic during the game but there is very little in terms of story here, not unlike other Sonic and platforming games in general at the time. As per usual, this is fine, as it is not expected, especially for a game in 1994, where story cutscenes would likely damage the experience more by interrupting it than enhancing it.
GAMEPLAY | 9/20
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is, to me, the worst Sonic game to date in terms of gameplay. On the one hand, it innovates very little from the formula of the other Sonic games. If you enjoyed those, you will enjoy this game too for the most part, so no need to read on. In the following however, I will explain what exactly irked me more than usual in this game, especially since it is coming off the heels of Sega CD and Sonic 2, both of which are games that I praised for innovating enough in terms of controls, gameplay and level design.
The core gameplay idea behind this Sonic game is the same as with the others. Enter a large level with multiple ways to traverse to the exit, explore to find secret areas, defeat a boss at the end of the zone and in between, learn the flow of the level to go through it without losing one of your limited lives. As per usual, Sonic has a lot of speed, and as per usual, you are supposed to use this speed during appropriate times.
Because, AS PER USUAL, this Sonic game has terrible enemy placement and enemies appearing a millisecond before you can process them as you speed through any area of any level. So, while controlling a fast character, you once again tip-toe around levels once you realize that no matter where you go, unfair threats look to take your rings from you. You then have to recover those rings, because carrying at least one ring means you won't die from your next hit. Unfortunately, in this game, rings are unrecoverable for a good 2-3 seconds after you get hit, so I found myself either recovering very few even if I had dozens on me, or recovering 0. For example, there is this one enemy that has spikes and shoots three balls diagonally upwards. Almost always, it hit me. Half the time, I couldn't recover any rings. This means I had to tip toe next to it to wait for it shoot the balls in order to jump on top of it. Sonic moves like he is gliding on ice however, so the controls are not nearly as tight as you would want them to. Plus, input detection is not as immediate as you would need it to be either. Ultimately, you need to get close enough to time the jump, you need to stay away far enough to not touch the enemy and you can't stay away too far, otherwise you won't time the jump within that short time frame between the three balls that are shot. This would lead me to die countless times to one of these things as I try to do a very simple thing of just jumping on top of this one goddamn enemy.
Enemy design in this game is horrible in general, but there is no enemy more infuriating than that fucking piranha that tries to bite you underwater. It won't let go, you can't do anything about it, so 100% of the time, this means you are just waiting 10 to 15 seconds until Sonic can't hold his breath anymore and dies. Fucking terrible. You fall downwards a lot and can't see these piranhas, so if you jump downwards unfavorably, you literally cannot do anything against them. One of my biggest gripes in any video game is having to jump down from somewhere without seeing enemies/obstacles, and this game's challenge is simply made out of this trope.
Two other things I dislike in Sonic 3 are 1) the special stages, which I think are the worst of all Sonic games so far (you collect blue balls and have to quickly change direction, where you fight the game's controls more than anything) and 2) Tails now being completely forced on you. In Sonic 2, you could go to the options menu and remove Tails, but here, you can't. Tails does almost nothing in 1-player mode but constantly die and distract you. Tails for example cannot breathe underwater, and has his own timer appear for whatever reason, which confuses you into thinking that you need air yourself. The worst fucking part is when I stood near the air bubbles with 2 seconds to go on my own timer, jumped up to grab one of the air bubbles and have FUCKING TAILS STEAL IT FROM ME. I died after those 2 seconds and quit the game right after.
Again, Sonic games are not objectively bad, despite the overwhelming negativity here, but at their best, the 2D platformers are tolerable to me, and at their worst, like here, they're downright terrible to play.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10
The saving grace for Sonic games comes from their soundtrack. As with all other Sonic games (minus the Sega CD boss fight theme), this game has a good soundtrack as well. From what I've listened to, the save select screen's theme is funnily enough my favorite. The worst track here by far is the one for the new special stage, which makes the special stage even less tolerable than it already was to me.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
I can only really say the same thing here that I was able to for the other Sonic games. They are some of the best-looking games on the Genesis, some of the better looking games of the 16-bit era and all that applies to Sonic 3 as well. At the same time, Sonic levels often have a cluttered quality to them and can be overdesigned visually, which is not as bad herre as in Sonic 2, but still present.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 7/10
Not much to say here for this game. It plays, sounds and feels like a Sonic game. The only thing I dislike here in that sense are the underwater levels, which are a lot more present here than in the other Sonic games unfortunately, and they usually are my least favorite part.
CONTENT | 5/10
The main content is similar to what you have come to expect from the other Sonic games, only worse in my opinion due to the issues I mentioned under 'Gameplay'. The special stage here is the worst out of the 4 16-bit Sonic games in my opinion and this game doesn't innovate in any way here, a far cry of the effort that was put into Sonic CD in '93.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
Levels are long as per usual and you can go through them in multiple different ways once again. There are a lot of rings to collect, Chaos Emeralds to find through the special stages and bosses to battle, but the in between issues of enemy placement and the terrible way through which this game achieves its difficulty makes this game a step down from the other Sonic games, where I had complained about the enemy placement as well, but never at the level of Sonic 3.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 3/10
Play Sonic 1, 2 and Sonic CD instead of this. Sonic 3 innovates the least out of all these games and feels like a step back for the most part. Knuckles' debut is cool but that's really all you get here.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
Less replay value than for Sonic 2 and CD, but Sonic games always have plenty of secret areas to find and Chaos Emeralds to collect, so replay value is present at usual levels.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 55/100
Sonic games eminate high production values, and there certainly was a lot of money poured into making them once Sonic 2 took off as it did, but money can't buy creativity, and Sonic 3 to me is the proof of it. The core system for Sonic games is in place, and Sonic 3 feels like those were simply re-used with little thought given to how the levels work. Based on the very good reviews the game got at the time, I realize I'm in the minority with this thinking, but I truly did not have a good time with this game. Its above-average visually and through its soundtrack as per usual, and when the game actually flows well it's fun like the others can be, but the annoyances that enemy placement and pop-ups present are more discernible here than they ever were.
(This is the 90th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Mario felt so bad after kicking Wario's butt in Super Mario Land 2 that he decided to gift him his Game Boy series. So in his first adventure as the protagonist, Wario figures out a path to obtaining enough money to buy a castle for himself in Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, which initially released on January 21st, 1994 as a first-party Nintendo title exclusively for the Game Boy.
It went on to sell over 5 million units to date and released to mostly positive reviews at the time. Wario would go on to start in plenty more games after this, including Wario Land 2 to 4, as well as Wario World and Wario Land: Shake It! among others. Wario was still a very new Nintendo creation at the time of this game's release, having debuted just a little over a year prior to this as the final boss of Super Mario Land 2. All players knew about him at the time was that he was a bad guy who stole Mario's appearance and castle (he would be called the "wicked imposter" in commercials for that game), and with the release of this game, the manual would go on to describe him as "mean and ugly". You would also quickly come to understand that Wario is quite a greedy individual. You'd think that doesn't sound like the ideal protagonist, but 1) the sales numbers tell a different story and 2) I can appreciate a unique personality for a protagonist in the video game medium, where "Protagonist saves the world" stories are all you have at this point in time.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
Wario lost his chance at his own castle when Mario took his own castle back from the thieving hands of Wario. Wario remains steadfast in his desire to find his own castle howevere, and one day, he hears of a rumor that the giant golden statue of Princess Peach got stolen by the pirates of Kitchen Island. "Mario is looking for it but, if I find it first, I could cash it in for a princess' ransom." Wario is looking to get enough money to buy a castle that is even bigger than the one Mario has.
This little summary of what you find in the manual is pretty much all you get here, apart from the endings, which I think add a lot here. Depending on how many coins you collect through your playthrough, you can get one of five different endings in this game. The thresholds are not known to me, but if you don't reach the first threshold, a cutscene plays where Wario hands a genie one bag of coins and gets ... a tiny birdhouse. Wario looks to the floor in disappointment and as a player, you can't help but feel sorry for him. Get more coins and you can get Wario a ... treehouse, which he also doesn't like. Keep going and you can finally get him his castle at one point. Reach the 99,999 limit of coins and a surprising gift awaits Wario. I thought these were well done and add nice incentive to do well during your playthrough.
GAMEPLAY | 9/20
Wario Land plays like the uglier version of Mario Land, which fits the two characters and therefore, if this was intended, should be seen as a compliment. In reality though, I just couldn't enjoy my time playing this game as much as I would have liked.
The game is functional and overall well made, as is typical for a first-party Nintendo title. The end product does not equate fun to me however. Similarly to many Mario adventures, you see Wario on an overworld and start in World #1 Stage #1. With each stage or 'course' that you beat, you get closer to the boss stage. Beat the boss, and the next world opens up.
Each world is themed differently and each course has its own challenges for the player to overcome through platforming. You have to watch out for enemies, spikes, gravity and something that looks like water but actually isn't and will kill you.
What makes or breaks platformers though is how you engage with these challenges, and in that regard, I think Wario Land falls short in what makes a platformer enjoyable to me. First off, Wario Land's gameplay is really slow and repetitive. Through the first two worlds, most of what I experienced felt pretty much the same, looked mostly the same and played exactly the same. Few enemy types (there are a total of 10 in this game with little variety), low difficulty (apart from many cheap deaths like the aforementioned "water" and jumps having to be a lot more precise than one can comfortably do) and bland power-up choices.
Wario can have a normal size and a shrunk-down version of himself just like Mario. When he is at his normal size, finding a "pot" allows him to become Jet Wario (which lets him fly for a short period of time), Bull Wario (attach Wario to the ceiling with the horns) and Dragon Wario (fire breathing skill). Wario has no speed to speak of and the challenges are just way too one-dimensional to ever really get a fun gameplay loop going in this game.
As far as items to collect go, there are only three. A star like in the Mario games, which I found just once. Hearts, which you find regularly and which give you 10 points to your heart counter (when you get 100, you get 1 extra life) and a key, which you are meant to carry while you search for a treasure room, which you need to find to get better (and the best) endings.
It's all competently made but it just plays like one of the less inspired Nintendo games of its time.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 3/10
No voice acting. For sounds and the soundtrack, I've played plenty of Game Boy games by now and I understand its limited sound capabilities. That said, Wario Land is one of the worst sounding games I've played during this challenge and has among the worst soundtracks of games I have played that were professionally made. I assume it's supposed to be a somewhat uglier soundtrack to tell us that we're playing a Wario game, not a Mario game, but man, I feel the need to apologize to my ears for having exposed them to this. None of the tracks I heard in this game ever felt like they had any cohesion in their composition and just sounded like an odd mix of horrible sounds. Usually when I play these monotonous platformers, I have the soundtrack to lean back on and to at least bop my heads to some of the tracks. Here, I wouldn't even know when to bop because way too often there is seemingly no rhythm in these tracks. If this is supposed to be intentional and there truly is that hidden meaning of "Wario is just an uglier version of Mario, so the soundtrack is supposed to show that", than that's fine, but doesn't make the soundtrack less bad sounding.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 5/10
The limitations of the Game Boy are excusable to a point, but we are closing in on the 32 bit gen of video games and from the perspective of anyone not tied down to a handheld system, the games on the Game Boy look pretty bad for the most part. What devs can mainly do visually is to be creative in their visual design of levels and keeping things varied. While Wario Land has some of that variety I'm talking about, it doesn't have a lot of it and whenever things visually do look somewhat different, the gameplay still feels the same. Sprites are also really big here, so they cover for more of the screen than I'd personally like. It negatively impacted gameplay as well, especially during sections with spikes at the ceiling.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 5/10
The game kind of does a good job of presenting us with the 'uglier' version of Mario, as they described Wario at the time, by making a lot about the game ugly as well. Whether it's by design at times and not by design at others, whether the atmosphere the game presents is on purpose or isn't, it's just not something I would consider very pleasant in how it is presented.
CONTENT | 5/10
There are seven worlds with multiple courses each. After each course, you can gamble your money to try to double it or play a mini game to try to get an extra life. There are also 4 treasures you need to find to have a chance at the best ending. Overall, this game is on the longer side of platformers, but I feel like this is one of the few Nintendo first-party platformers that really shouldn't be anywhere near this long. A similar length to Kirby's Dream Land due to the lack of features would have suited this better.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
The length of most levels here is OK, however most of them lack fair and interesting challenge. While the game is generally too easy, whenever it does get difficult, it's more often than not because of the poor controls and big sprites that you have to combat than actually having to show off the skills you've learned while playing this game. That said, when you pass some worlds and come back to them, new areas open up, so there is some reason for players to explore and experiment in this game.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 3/10
This is, at its best, a platformer like you've seen hundreds of times already by the time this game was released. At its worst and, mostly at its normal state, it's the worse version of those platformers due to a lack of variation and slow gameplay.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
The endings add replay value to those who enjoy the game's gameplay, especially the best ending, which will require you to find and open all treasure chests.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 46/100
A good example of a competently made game that just isn't a lot of fun to play, even though it works as intended. Clearly, a lot of people disagree with me based on its sales numbers at the time and its score on a site like MobyGames, but I can't pretend to have enjoyed the very limited offering here just to go with the majority's opinion, at least critically at the time. On top of that, the game was not nice to listen to either, a rare occurence within gaming I feel, at least among known games.
Mario felt so bad after kicking Wario's butt in Super Mario Land 2 that he decided to gift him his Game Boy series. So in his first adventure as the protagonist, Wario figures out a path to obtaining enough money to buy a castle for himself in Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, which initially released on January 21st, 1994 as a first-party Nintendo title exclusively for the Game Boy.
It went on to sell over 5 million units to date and released to mostly positive reviews at the time. Wario would go on to start in plenty more games after this, including Wario Land 2 to 4, as well as Wario World and Wario Land: Shake It! among others. Wario was still a very new Nintendo creation at the time of this game's release, having debuted just a little over a year prior to this as the final boss of Super Mario Land 2. All players knew about him at the time was that he was a bad guy who stole Mario's appearance and castle (he would be called the "wicked imposter" in commercials for that game), and with the release of this game, the manual would go on to describe him as "mean and ugly". You would also quickly come to understand that Wario is quite a greedy individual. You'd think that doesn't sound like the ideal protagonist, but 1) the sales numbers tell a different story and 2) I can appreciate a unique personality for a protagonist in the video game medium, where "Protagonist saves the world" stories are all you have at this point in time.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
Wario lost his chance at his own castle when Mario took his own castle back from the thieving hands of Wario. Wario remains steadfast in his desire to find his own castle howevere, and one day, he hears of a rumor that the giant golden statue of Princess Peach got stolen by the pirates of Kitchen Island. "Mario is looking for it but, if I find it first, I could cash it in for a princess' ransom." Wario is looking to get enough money to buy a castle that is even bigger than the one Mario has.
This little summary of what you find in the manual is pretty much all you get here, apart from the endings, which I think add a lot here. Depending on how many coins you collect through your playthrough, you can get one of five different endings in this game. The thresholds are not known to me, but if you don't reach the first threshold, a cutscene plays where Wario hands a genie one bag of coins and gets ... a tiny birdhouse. Wario looks to the floor in disappointment and as a player, you can't help but feel sorry for him. Get more coins and you can get Wario a ... treehouse, which he also doesn't like. Keep going and you can finally get him his castle at one point. Reach the 99,999 limit of coins and a surprising gift awaits Wario. I thought these were well done and add nice incentive to do well during your playthrough.
GAMEPLAY | 9/20
Wario Land plays like the uglier version of Mario Land, which fits the two characters and therefore, if this was intended, should be seen as a compliment. In reality though, I just couldn't enjoy my time playing this game as much as I would have liked.
The game is functional and overall well made, as is typical for a first-party Nintendo title. The end product does not equate fun to me however. Similarly to many Mario adventures, you see Wario on an overworld and start in World #1 Stage #1. With each stage or 'course' that you beat, you get closer to the boss stage. Beat the boss, and the next world opens up.
Each world is themed differently and each course has its own challenges for the player to overcome through platforming. You have to watch out for enemies, spikes, gravity and something that looks like water but actually isn't and will kill you.
What makes or breaks platformers though is how you engage with these challenges, and in that regard, I think Wario Land falls short in what makes a platformer enjoyable to me. First off, Wario Land's gameplay is really slow and repetitive. Through the first two worlds, most of what I experienced felt pretty much the same, looked mostly the same and played exactly the same. Few enemy types (there are a total of 10 in this game with little variety), low difficulty (apart from many cheap deaths like the aforementioned "water" and jumps having to be a lot more precise than one can comfortably do) and bland power-up choices.
Wario can have a normal size and a shrunk-down version of himself just like Mario. When he is at his normal size, finding a "pot" allows him to become Jet Wario (which lets him fly for a short period of time), Bull Wario (attach Wario to the ceiling with the horns) and Dragon Wario (fire breathing skill). Wario has no speed to speak of and the challenges are just way too one-dimensional to ever really get a fun gameplay loop going in this game.
As far as items to collect go, there are only three. A star like in the Mario games, which I found just once. Hearts, which you find regularly and which give you 10 points to your heart counter (when you get 100, you get 1 extra life) and a key, which you are meant to carry while you search for a treasure room, which you need to find to get better (and the best) endings.
It's all competently made but it just plays like one of the less inspired Nintendo games of its time.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 3/10
No voice acting. For sounds and the soundtrack, I've played plenty of Game Boy games by now and I understand its limited sound capabilities. That said, Wario Land is one of the worst sounding games I've played during this challenge and has among the worst soundtracks of games I have played that were professionally made. I assume it's supposed to be a somewhat uglier soundtrack to tell us that we're playing a Wario game, not a Mario game, but man, I feel the need to apologize to my ears for having exposed them to this. None of the tracks I heard in this game ever felt like they had any cohesion in their composition and just sounded like an odd mix of horrible sounds. Usually when I play these monotonous platformers, I have the soundtrack to lean back on and to at least bop my heads to some of the tracks. Here, I wouldn't even know when to bop because way too often there is seemingly no rhythm in these tracks. If this is supposed to be intentional and there truly is that hidden meaning of "Wario is just an uglier version of Mario, so the soundtrack is supposed to show that", than that's fine, but doesn't make the soundtrack less bad sounding.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 5/10
The limitations of the Game Boy are excusable to a point, but we are closing in on the 32 bit gen of video games and from the perspective of anyone not tied down to a handheld system, the games on the Game Boy look pretty bad for the most part. What devs can mainly do visually is to be creative in their visual design of levels and keeping things varied. While Wario Land has some of that variety I'm talking about, it doesn't have a lot of it and whenever things visually do look somewhat different, the gameplay still feels the same. Sprites are also really big here, so they cover for more of the screen than I'd personally like. It negatively impacted gameplay as well, especially during sections with spikes at the ceiling.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 5/10
The game kind of does a good job of presenting us with the 'uglier' version of Mario, as they described Wario at the time, by making a lot about the game ugly as well. Whether it's by design at times and not by design at others, whether the atmosphere the game presents is on purpose or isn't, it's just not something I would consider very pleasant in how it is presented.
CONTENT | 5/10
There are seven worlds with multiple courses each. After each course, you can gamble your money to try to double it or play a mini game to try to get an extra life. There are also 4 treasures you need to find to have a chance at the best ending. Overall, this game is on the longer side of platformers, but I feel like this is one of the few Nintendo first-party platformers that really shouldn't be anywhere near this long. A similar length to Kirby's Dream Land due to the lack of features would have suited this better.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
The length of most levels here is OK, however most of them lack fair and interesting challenge. While the game is generally too easy, whenever it does get difficult, it's more often than not because of the poor controls and big sprites that you have to combat than actually having to show off the skills you've learned while playing this game. That said, when you pass some worlds and come back to them, new areas open up, so there is some reason for players to explore and experiment in this game.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 3/10
This is, at its best, a platformer like you've seen hundreds of times already by the time this game was released. At its worst and, mostly at its normal state, it's the worse version of those platformers due to a lack of variation and slow gameplay.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
The endings add replay value to those who enjoy the game's gameplay, especially the best ending, which will require you to find and open all treasure chests.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 46/100
A good example of a competently made game that just isn't a lot of fun to play, even though it works as intended. Clearly, a lot of people disagree with me based on its sales numbers at the time and its score on a site like MobyGames, but I can't pretend to have enjoyed the very limited offering here just to go with the majority's opinion, at least critically at the time. On top of that, the game was not nice to listen to either, a rare occurence within gaming I feel, at least among known games.
1993
(This is the 89th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
If you are a fan of video games and of its history in particular, there is nothing I can add to the discourse around the original Doom that hasn't already been said by critics, fans, the original devs, damn politicians even, and you are likely aware how big a deal Doom has been and still is for the video gaming medium. By now, Doom is as old as it is iconic, having released on December 10, 1993 for MS-DOS originally. [Calling it old also makes my palms sweat as I'm typing this, considering how close we are getting to my birth date in terms of this challenge.]
Doom is not the first FPS game ever made, but it certainly is the most influential. I think it would be an apt comparison to think of it the same way you see how Souls-likes are discussed these days. "Soulslike" has become its own genre these days, and while Doom's genre is the FPS genre, for many years after its release, every FPS game would pretty much be looked at as "Doom-clones". Now there is a good reason for this beyond just the first-person view and shooting gameplay, which is that these games would often use the exact same style. UI blocking the bottom row of the screen horizontally, no vertical aim possible, 2.5D sprites and pretty much the same gameplay loop of a boomer / corridor shooter for all of them.
Doom is id Software's next FPS release after Wolfenstein 3D, and it won't take long to notice how much of an improvement Doom is over it in a lot of ways. Doom takes roughly 4-6 hours to finish (if you play the three main episodes) and has stayed relevant for a long time thanks to its mod-friendly nature and the countless fan levels that are available alongside the main game.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
According to the manual, which gives you "the story so far", you are a space marine who got transferred to Mars. The "Union Aaresopace Corporation", your contractor, has been conducting secret projects on Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, like creating portals or "gateways" that allowed for gadgets to be thrown into Phobos' portal and come back in Deimos' portal. Before the game starts, what happened is obvious. The experiments went terribly wrong, and demonic creatures started coming out of these portals, which is why you, later to be called "Doomguy", make your way to Phobos alongside a troop of other combatants, who all die while you're ordered to secure the perimeter of the base. Now you are on your own and need to get off the planet, which is where the game starts.
In-game, as soon as you start a new game, you load in with a pistol equipped and can start shooting. If you can appreciate the beauty of games that throw you straight into the action, that's all you need to know I presume. If you want to play games with stories, Doom doesn't offer much apart from the summary of the game's story setup in the manual I have just given, introducing us to an iconic video game character called 'Doomguy' and giving you another block of text at the end of each of the three episodes summarizing your achievement and telling you what happens next. When the first episode ends for example, the text tells you that you are not done yet and need to go into the depths of hell to fight even more demons and find a way out. During gameplay, there is no dialogue, no real environmental storytelling or anything of the sort.
Suffice to say, this is fine and not the reason people fell in love with Doom for.
GAMEPLAY | 14/20
Doom is THE prototypical boomer shooter. Just like in Catacomb 3D and Wolfenstein 3D, you traverse through a labyrinth / maze-like level, shooting every enemy in your way. You can pick up items that give you health, armor, ammo, a map and weapons, as you go. Most items are in your way and are supposed to be found, while some are hidden in hard to reach or completely hidden secret areas.
Each episode you play contains 9 episodes with a boss fight at the end. The main goal of each level is to figure out the way to the exit, the way to which gets more and more complex as levels become more complex as well. The game has a clever way of trying to get you playing for a lot more than one playthrough however by introducing multiple side-goals. Whenever you finish a level, you see the percentage for how many enemies on the level you killed, how many items you collected and how many secret areas you found. On top of that, there is a "par time" for each level. I didn't stay below that par time once, but it's a great little thing that gives you a benchmark for testing your skill.
The gameplay in Doom is a lot more refined than in Wolfenstein 3D thanks to a faster pace, better sound to the weapons and more weapon and enemy variety. You start out with just a pistol, but soon after will find a shotgun that saved my butt on multiple occasions, a chaingun that plows through pistol ammo at a much faster rate, a rocket launcher, a more basic plasma rifle, the BFG 9000 which shoots a plasma ball that destroys everything in sight pretty much and a chainsaw, if you want to get up close and personal. It's a good variety of weapons and depending on the difficulty you set, you will want to or need to switch often, as some weapons are more advantageous in certain situations and because there simply is not enough ammo to stick with one or two weapons throughout. While I found the variety that these weapons and the enemies presented to be satisfying, I would have liked to have a couple more enemy varities in the game to be honest. Overall, I'm not sure what the exact number is, but excluding bosses, there are less than 10 different enemies in the game.
The boss fights themselves could also have been better. There are three in the game. For the first two, all you need to do is dodge projectiles and fire back until the boss dies. For the third one, I didn't find another way to beat it other than to hide behind a structure at the center of the map and shoot it just as its legs came into sight. The boss has undodgeable, lock-on aim and can kill you in a couple seconds once it starts shooting. This game also has the same issue that the other id Software FPS games had, which is that if you die against a boss, you start on the same level but only have the pistol equipped. With what the level offers you in terms of weapons and ammo, it gets pretty tough to kill the boss without bringing all the other weapons and ammo with you from the previous level, so I recommend saving and reloading for every boss fight, if you do die.
Overall though, I had a lot of fun with the gameplay loop in Doom. It felt a lot more refined than Wolfenstein 3D and has aged well enough to still be a fun time today. Its length is also at a solid level and can easily be doubled, tripled or quadrupled through multiple playthroughs on higher difficulty levels and with a bigger focus on completionism.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
No voice acting apart from some screams. The sound design in this game is great. While you have to judge this relative to sound in 1993, weapons sound a lot more realistic and have a lot more oomph to them and they sound miles better than the sounds of Wolfenstein. This applies to other sound effects as well, such as simply picking up items, which sounds a lot less obnoxious and discreet here than in Wolfenstein. Doomguy constantly moaning when you press space to interact with objects or walls is kind of an odd choice though.
The soundtrack to this game is great as well, with some pretty iconic tracks included that even someone like me who never played Doom instantly was familiar with, such as the Episode 1 Level 1 track "At Doom's Gate". The soundtrack has a few more bangers like this included, but I realized that it was overall a lot more atmospheric than I expected. I was expecting a bigger emphasis on metal music to emphasize the fast-paced demon-slaying that you are doing on-screen, but it was not the case for many levels. While I don't mind atmospheric sounds at all, I found that some tracks didn't fit so well at times.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
What id Software achieved for a first-person game at a time when no one else did is still commendable, even more so since Doom is the game where it visually comes together the best. Unlike Wolfenstein and especially Catacomb, Doom's visuals actually have variety. The game's levels also actually take place outside at times, giving you a view of the horizons. These don't look so great, funnily enough, but it's still something I appreciated. Enemy designs look better, weapon designs look better and the resolution is simply much higher here as well. The UI looks improved and cleaner too, though it's not what you would consider eye candy still. But the visual variety on display here is pretty encouraging after the jump from Catacomb to Wolfenstein wasn't as big as I had hoped. Doom seems like the step in the direction I was more thinking of, and it's a big step at that.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
Thanks to each episode differing in design here, this is the first id Software FPS where there truly is a hint of atmosphere other than just using images from Hitler everywhere in Wolfenstein. You are a badass MF who is on Mars to beat the crap out of demons. That's it. Thanks to the game's visuals and the soundtrack, as well as the gun sounds and fast-paced gameplay, that feeling comes through pretty well.
CONTENT | 9/10
Tons of content here from official content to fan content, which officially found their way into versions of this game. Each main level also offers side-content to try to find, so you can spend a lot of time with this game. If you really click with the gameplay, you probably will.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
3 main episodes as well as one additional one. Each episode has 9 levels, the final one being a boss fight. Levels are actually pretty varied here and it will be rare for two levels to feel all that similar to each other in their design. Texture variety can still be improved and still will lead you to get lost here from time to time, but overall levels are complex enough without making it nearly impossible to find your way around. Finding maps for each level also helps a lot.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
Not much to say here about one of the most influential games of all time.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
Tons of replay value here after your first playthrough. There are 5 difficulty options, a 4th additional episode, endless fan levels and then there is the completionism aspect to the main episodes, where you can try to get 100% enemy kills, items and secret areas, as well as try to beat the par time. A speedrunner's dream.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 79/100
Doom is still a lot of fun to play. It didn't age as well as some other games of its time because the FPS genre simply evolved a ton since these early days, but you can still have a fun couple hours with it. I'm glad I played it and if you are someone who is curious about video game history, I'd recommend you to do the same.
If you are a fan of video games and of its history in particular, there is nothing I can add to the discourse around the original Doom that hasn't already been said by critics, fans, the original devs, damn politicians even, and you are likely aware how big a deal Doom has been and still is for the video gaming medium. By now, Doom is as old as it is iconic, having released on December 10, 1993 for MS-DOS originally. [Calling it old also makes my palms sweat as I'm typing this, considering how close we are getting to my birth date in terms of this challenge.]
Doom is not the first FPS game ever made, but it certainly is the most influential. I think it would be an apt comparison to think of it the same way you see how Souls-likes are discussed these days. "Soulslike" has become its own genre these days, and while Doom's genre is the FPS genre, for many years after its release, every FPS game would pretty much be looked at as "Doom-clones". Now there is a good reason for this beyond just the first-person view and shooting gameplay, which is that these games would often use the exact same style. UI blocking the bottom row of the screen horizontally, no vertical aim possible, 2.5D sprites and pretty much the same gameplay loop of a boomer / corridor shooter for all of them.
Doom is id Software's next FPS release after Wolfenstein 3D, and it won't take long to notice how much of an improvement Doom is over it in a lot of ways. Doom takes roughly 4-6 hours to finish (if you play the three main episodes) and has stayed relevant for a long time thanks to its mod-friendly nature and the countless fan levels that are available alongside the main game.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
According to the manual, which gives you "the story so far", you are a space marine who got transferred to Mars. The "Union Aaresopace Corporation", your contractor, has been conducting secret projects on Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, like creating portals or "gateways" that allowed for gadgets to be thrown into Phobos' portal and come back in Deimos' portal. Before the game starts, what happened is obvious. The experiments went terribly wrong, and demonic creatures started coming out of these portals, which is why you, later to be called "Doomguy", make your way to Phobos alongside a troop of other combatants, who all die while you're ordered to secure the perimeter of the base. Now you are on your own and need to get off the planet, which is where the game starts.
In-game, as soon as you start a new game, you load in with a pistol equipped and can start shooting. If you can appreciate the beauty of games that throw you straight into the action, that's all you need to know I presume. If you want to play games with stories, Doom doesn't offer much apart from the summary of the game's story setup in the manual I have just given, introducing us to an iconic video game character called 'Doomguy' and giving you another block of text at the end of each of the three episodes summarizing your achievement and telling you what happens next. When the first episode ends for example, the text tells you that you are not done yet and need to go into the depths of hell to fight even more demons and find a way out. During gameplay, there is no dialogue, no real environmental storytelling or anything of the sort.
Suffice to say, this is fine and not the reason people fell in love with Doom for.
GAMEPLAY | 14/20
Doom is THE prototypical boomer shooter. Just like in Catacomb 3D and Wolfenstein 3D, you traverse through a labyrinth / maze-like level, shooting every enemy in your way. You can pick up items that give you health, armor, ammo, a map and weapons, as you go. Most items are in your way and are supposed to be found, while some are hidden in hard to reach or completely hidden secret areas.
Each episode you play contains 9 episodes with a boss fight at the end. The main goal of each level is to figure out the way to the exit, the way to which gets more and more complex as levels become more complex as well. The game has a clever way of trying to get you playing for a lot more than one playthrough however by introducing multiple side-goals. Whenever you finish a level, you see the percentage for how many enemies on the level you killed, how many items you collected and how many secret areas you found. On top of that, there is a "par time" for each level. I didn't stay below that par time once, but it's a great little thing that gives you a benchmark for testing your skill.
The gameplay in Doom is a lot more refined than in Wolfenstein 3D thanks to a faster pace, better sound to the weapons and more weapon and enemy variety. You start out with just a pistol, but soon after will find a shotgun that saved my butt on multiple occasions, a chaingun that plows through pistol ammo at a much faster rate, a rocket launcher, a more basic plasma rifle, the BFG 9000 which shoots a plasma ball that destroys everything in sight pretty much and a chainsaw, if you want to get up close and personal. It's a good variety of weapons and depending on the difficulty you set, you will want to or need to switch often, as some weapons are more advantageous in certain situations and because there simply is not enough ammo to stick with one or two weapons throughout. While I found the variety that these weapons and the enemies presented to be satisfying, I would have liked to have a couple more enemy varities in the game to be honest. Overall, I'm not sure what the exact number is, but excluding bosses, there are less than 10 different enemies in the game.
The boss fights themselves could also have been better. There are three in the game. For the first two, all you need to do is dodge projectiles and fire back until the boss dies. For the third one, I didn't find another way to beat it other than to hide behind a structure at the center of the map and shoot it just as its legs came into sight. The boss has undodgeable, lock-on aim and can kill you in a couple seconds once it starts shooting. This game also has the same issue that the other id Software FPS games had, which is that if you die against a boss, you start on the same level but only have the pistol equipped. With what the level offers you in terms of weapons and ammo, it gets pretty tough to kill the boss without bringing all the other weapons and ammo with you from the previous level, so I recommend saving and reloading for every boss fight, if you do die.
Overall though, I had a lot of fun with the gameplay loop in Doom. It felt a lot more refined than Wolfenstein 3D and has aged well enough to still be a fun time today. Its length is also at a solid level and can easily be doubled, tripled or quadrupled through multiple playthroughs on higher difficulty levels and with a bigger focus on completionism.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
No voice acting apart from some screams. The sound design in this game is great. While you have to judge this relative to sound in 1993, weapons sound a lot more realistic and have a lot more oomph to them and they sound miles better than the sounds of Wolfenstein. This applies to other sound effects as well, such as simply picking up items, which sounds a lot less obnoxious and discreet here than in Wolfenstein. Doomguy constantly moaning when you press space to interact with objects or walls is kind of an odd choice though.
The soundtrack to this game is great as well, with some pretty iconic tracks included that even someone like me who never played Doom instantly was familiar with, such as the Episode 1 Level 1 track "At Doom's Gate". The soundtrack has a few more bangers like this included, but I realized that it was overall a lot more atmospheric than I expected. I was expecting a bigger emphasis on metal music to emphasize the fast-paced demon-slaying that you are doing on-screen, but it was not the case for many levels. While I don't mind atmospheric sounds at all, I found that some tracks didn't fit so well at times.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
What id Software achieved for a first-person game at a time when no one else did is still commendable, even more so since Doom is the game where it visually comes together the best. Unlike Wolfenstein and especially Catacomb, Doom's visuals actually have variety. The game's levels also actually take place outside at times, giving you a view of the horizons. These don't look so great, funnily enough, but it's still something I appreciated. Enemy designs look better, weapon designs look better and the resolution is simply much higher here as well. The UI looks improved and cleaner too, though it's not what you would consider eye candy still. But the visual variety on display here is pretty encouraging after the jump from Catacomb to Wolfenstein wasn't as big as I had hoped. Doom seems like the step in the direction I was more thinking of, and it's a big step at that.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
Thanks to each episode differing in design here, this is the first id Software FPS where there truly is a hint of atmosphere other than just using images from Hitler everywhere in Wolfenstein. You are a badass MF who is on Mars to beat the crap out of demons. That's it. Thanks to the game's visuals and the soundtrack, as well as the gun sounds and fast-paced gameplay, that feeling comes through pretty well.
CONTENT | 9/10
Tons of content here from official content to fan content, which officially found their way into versions of this game. Each main level also offers side-content to try to find, so you can spend a lot of time with this game. If you really click with the gameplay, you probably will.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
3 main episodes as well as one additional one. Each episode has 9 levels, the final one being a boss fight. Levels are actually pretty varied here and it will be rare for two levels to feel all that similar to each other in their design. Texture variety can still be improved and still will lead you to get lost here from time to time, but overall levels are complex enough without making it nearly impossible to find your way around. Finding maps for each level also helps a lot.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
Not much to say here about one of the most influential games of all time.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
Tons of replay value here after your first playthrough. There are 5 difficulty options, a 4th additional episode, endless fan levels and then there is the completionism aspect to the main episodes, where you can try to get 100% enemy kills, items and secret areas, as well as try to beat the par time. A speedrunner's dream.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 79/100
Doom is still a lot of fun to play. It didn't age as well as some other games of its time because the FPS genre simply evolved a ton since these early days, but you can still have a fun couple hours with it. I'm glad I played it and if you are someone who is curious about video game history, I'd recommend you to do the same.
1993
(This is the 88th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
After going my entire life without having played a singular Sonic title, I have now played Sonic the Hedgehog 1, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and now have even beaten my first ever Sonic game, Sonic CD. Sonic CD initially released on September 23, 1993 for the, you guessed it (I think), Sega CD. It got ported over to Windows and later to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but it is also available in its original form through the Sonic Gems Collection for the Game Cube and PlayStation 2 (which is where I played this) and in remastered shape as part of the Sonic Origins compilation that released in 2022.
Sonic CD was developed to showcase the capabilities of the Sega CD add-on for the Sega Genesis. Sonic CD would end up being the best-selling game for the add-on, selling over 1.5 million copies. It was supposed to be an enhanced port of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but developed into its own thing over time, giving us the debut of Metal Sonic and Amy Rose, as well as the "time warp" feature.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
A short story in the manual explains the setting for this game. Sonic has a conversation with a "Princess Sally", a character I never heard of and one that apparently never appears in any Sonic game, but is rather introduced in comic books and animated series starting in 1993. She asks Sonic where he is going. Sonic would goo to Never Lake to visit 'the Little Planet'. "The one with the special stones that alter time", Sally says. Sonic mentions how the Little Planet appears of Never Lake on the last month of every year, so Sonic will check it out.
When they arrive there, something is off, as tall trees and bright flowers are replaced with nothingness. As they try to understand what is going on, Princess Sally is kidnapped by Dr. Robotnik and his newest creation, 'Metal Sonic'. Dr. Robotnik is looking to capture all time stones to manipulate time and take over the world and as per usual, it's Sonic's job to stop him.
So, in this game, there are two endings, a good and a bad ending. Each level you visit has three zones and the first two zones can be altered by going to its past and future to destroy 'transporters'. Depending on whether you do this or not, the third zone will either be a "good future" or a "bad future", which is indicated by a change in the song and in scenery, with good futures set in thriving nature and bad futures set in a metallic, dystopian style. If you turn all 3rd zones into good futures, you unlock the good ending. Otherwise, you get the bad ending, like me.
There isn't much 'story' in this game beyond this, but I was surprised with the amount of effort that went into making three distinct versions of each zone of a level and giving us two separate endings as a result. The story is not told through words at any point, but the scenery and the change of tone in the soundtrack do tell a story of their own which represents the actions you take, or don't, which is pretty nice.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Sonic CD plays pretty much the same as Sonic 1 and 2, though due to the small features added in 2, I'd say it plays like the middle-version between the two based on the features it has. There isn't really much I can say here that I haven't already said about the first two Sonic games. If you have played those already, you will know exactly what to expect. If you haven't, you probably know how Sonic games look like anyway. As always, you run through levels with three distinct zones, fight a boss on the 3rd zone and try to reach the finish line in large levels with many open and secret areas to access to make progress.
The unique aspect of this game is the Time Warp feature. You can travel to the Past and Future of a zone to destroy certain transporters to create a Good Future in each level's Zone 3 to unlock the Good Ending at the end. This is done by running through a sign saying "Past" or "Future" and then holding a certain speed will running to initiate a "warp". This is certainly a unique feature and while I didn't get Good Futures in most levels, this offers a nice additional challenge for everyone looking to do as much as possible on each zone.
Another way to get Good Futures on every third zone is to collect all "Time Stones", which replace Chaos Emeralds in this game. This means there is no Super Sonic in this game. I haven't been good enough to ever get him in Sonic 1 and 2, so it's not a big loss for me personally, but worth pointing out. To get all Time Stones, you need to finish levels with more than 50 rings each, which lets you enter a special stage where you have to destroy six UFOs within a certain time limit.
While I enjoyed all of this for the most part, I have the same issues with this game that I had with Sonic 1 and 2, and probably on an even bigger scale here. This game focuses more on exploration within given levels than the other two Sonic games on the Genesis, which means it has a bigger focus on having you slow down and look for different paths on each zone. While exploring paths is optional, this does translate over to each level as a whole, as they are pretty massive in this game and can get pretty complex. This plays into one of my complaints with these Sonic games that I mentioned previously.
Sonic has super-speed as his special ability. Unfortunately, a lot of the times this ability plays like its more of a tease, as there are a lot of obstacles that stop you from gaining top speed for more than a couple seconds. While this makes sense from a game design perspective to add challenge to these games, I feel like Sonic's speed offers more disadvantage than fun to me due to this. Whenever I'm on a straight path, I'm thinking I'll take off and get some top speed going, only to have an enemy pop into screen out of nowhere and making it impossible for me to avoid it in time, which leads me into a 2-second animation of hitting the enemy and losing all my rings. Same goes for gaining speed to fly into the air, which too many times leads to me landing on a platform with an enemy on it, which I fall on top of to lose my rings again. Simultaneously, these games have a lot of areas that force you to pick up momentum near a slope to get up there, which takes a couple seconds each time, there are non-stop obstacles which you run into that stop you dead in your track and there isn't a lot of platforming challenge for me here other than exploring and trying to avoid damaging situations that your speeds puts you into. This leads me to take it slower sometimes, which makes me want to play a Mario game instead.
I understand I'm possibly odd for having this type of criticism, but I think it has more to do with me not being the biggest fan of how these Sonic games are designed rather than me thinking that it is actually objectively bad design. Though I do have to say, running at Sonic's speeds to have enemies appear that give you 0.2 seconds to react is not something that I think is that good.
That said, I do appreciate how large the levels are and how, no matter where you go, there is (almost) always a way forward to the finish line. And finally, while I have some subjective complaints, I can conclude this by saying that if you enjoy Sonic's 2D platforming gameplay, you will enjoy Sonic CD in that aspect as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Well do I have stuff to explain here. Sonic CD is in a pretty unusual spot because it does not have one, but two soundtrakcs. The first soundtrack is used in Japan and PAL regions, while the second is exclusively to NA. Why? I don't know if there is an official reason, but I think it is assumed that the American marketing team at Sega thought that American gamers wouldn't react well to the original soundtrack, which is why they composed their own.
Funnily enough, there are many people who heavily dislike the NA version of the soundtrack and who love the JP version. Not just retrospectively, but even at and around the time of its release. I didn't know about the two separate soundtracks, so I only originally rated this game based on the American soundtrack.
Listening to it, I was pretty surprised at its tone. Instead of the usual up-beat sounds of the other Sonic games, this one sounded a lot more ominous and like it wanted to accentuate the danger that Dr. Robotnik was presenting. It sounded more mature I suppose, or at least as if it was intended for more mature audiences than you would think played this game in the majority. For the most part, I didn't actually mind this. There are plenty of tracks here that are enjoyable to listen to and create a pretty nice atmosphere you can actually chill to. Then there are downright scary ones that I can't believe made it into the game, like the Game Over track and especially the track used for boss fights. I can't imagine being a ten year old back in 1993 playing this for the first time.
After playing this game, I listened to the OST again on YouTube like I always do, and while reading the comments discovered that there was a Japanese version as well. Listening to it, you can immediately tell how much more upbeat it is. Each track is different to the US version, I don't think there are any that were re-used, and the tone of the boss fight most notably is very different. Do I think each track in the Japanese version is better? Actually, I don't. While the lows of the US soundtrack are truly god awful, it's still a good soundtrack overall, and I don't mind that the composers went for more atmosphere than funk at times. I think I prefere the Japanese version overall however.
At the end of the day, I think it's cool that there are two full soundtracks that Sonic fans got with one game, though if you are one of the kids who got traumatized back in the day, you probably feel differently.
There are some pretty iconic themes here as well, such as Sonic Boom and the Japanese Special Stage Theme. Finally, since I haven't mentioned it yet, the Past, Present and Future versions of each zone have their own tracks, which means the total length of both OSTs is absurdly long for this game.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Sonic CD is not a huge graphical jump over Sonic the Hedgehog 2 despite being released for the Sega CD add-on, which I would have expected to offer a little bit more visually. That said, Sonic CD is one of the better looking games for its time regardless.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
Atmospherically, the game suits a Sonic game quite well based on its visuals. What this game does differently though is lean away from the upbeat Sonic style at times to give you a more dystopian glance at the Sonic universe through its bad futures. This is still done in a sort-of funky way through Japan's soundtrack, but you're placed into a downright horrific horror moment through the US soundtrack at times.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game doesn't take too long to beat. It has 7 levels and pretty easy boss fights. Each level is pretty massive though, so you can pad your playtime easily by exploring them more thoroughly. On top of that, looking for those transporters in past and future parts of the zones will add a lot of playtime on top of that, and these versions of the zones also offer different environments on top of that, so the sheer amount of content in this game is pretty wild for a video game from 1993.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
As mentioned, levels are divided into 3 zones and the first two zones are designed three times for the past, present and future, which means there is absurd amounts of work that went into them here. On top of that, levels are truly massive, with tons of paths to explore that will make multiple playthroughs feel fresher than is usual for platformers and even for the first 16-bit Sonic games. Levels are also themed distinctly as always, though I wasn't blown away by any theme here like I was in Sonic 2 and some designs were also copied over from that game. Also, does every first level in a Sonic game start in a green environment? Just noticed that.
Levels being massive is great, but visually, the sheer amount of stuff going on in each visually is just overwhelming sometimes and makes for a messy presentation at times. It's also easy to get lost later on, which I thought was an odd wrinkle to put into a game like this.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
The Sonic team did a great job of keeping this Sonic game feel fresh despite the fact that it's another 2D platforming adventure. The Time Warp mechanic is not only unique to Sonic, but a unique mechanic in general, which I enjoyed to dabble with and which offer a lot of optional ways to tackle this game for each player.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
A ton of replay value here because of the 3 versions per zone that you can explore to your heart's content, because of the Time Stones you can collect optionally and because of two different endings. I don't count the two separate soundtracks in my ranking but for those interested, you can play the game's JP/PAL and NA versions as well to get a different feel each time while playing through the otherwise same levels.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times, though there can be some slowdown here and there depending on which version you play.
OVERALL | 74/100
I've heard mixed opinions about this game online, but I think this is my favorite Sonic game out of the three that released on the Genesis / Sega CD so far. The Time Warp mechanic definitely spices things up, the moment you meet Metal Sonic was pretty scary and memorable, the soundtrack defied expectations for both good and bad reasons and levels are massive, which made for a pretty good Sonic game overall in my opinion.
After going my entire life without having played a singular Sonic title, I have now played Sonic the Hedgehog 1, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and now have even beaten my first ever Sonic game, Sonic CD. Sonic CD initially released on September 23, 1993 for the, you guessed it (I think), Sega CD. It got ported over to Windows and later to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but it is also available in its original form through the Sonic Gems Collection for the Game Cube and PlayStation 2 (which is where I played this) and in remastered shape as part of the Sonic Origins compilation that released in 2022.
Sonic CD was developed to showcase the capabilities of the Sega CD add-on for the Sega Genesis. Sonic CD would end up being the best-selling game for the add-on, selling over 1.5 million copies. It was supposed to be an enhanced port of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but developed into its own thing over time, giving us the debut of Metal Sonic and Amy Rose, as well as the "time warp" feature.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
A short story in the manual explains the setting for this game. Sonic has a conversation with a "Princess Sally", a character I never heard of and one that apparently never appears in any Sonic game, but is rather introduced in comic books and animated series starting in 1993. She asks Sonic where he is going. Sonic would goo to Never Lake to visit 'the Little Planet'. "The one with the special stones that alter time", Sally says. Sonic mentions how the Little Planet appears of Never Lake on the last month of every year, so Sonic will check it out.
When they arrive there, something is off, as tall trees and bright flowers are replaced with nothingness. As they try to understand what is going on, Princess Sally is kidnapped by Dr. Robotnik and his newest creation, 'Metal Sonic'. Dr. Robotnik is looking to capture all time stones to manipulate time and take over the world and as per usual, it's Sonic's job to stop him.
So, in this game, there are two endings, a good and a bad ending. Each level you visit has three zones and the first two zones can be altered by going to its past and future to destroy 'transporters'. Depending on whether you do this or not, the third zone will either be a "good future" or a "bad future", which is indicated by a change in the song and in scenery, with good futures set in thriving nature and bad futures set in a metallic, dystopian style. If you turn all 3rd zones into good futures, you unlock the good ending. Otherwise, you get the bad ending, like me.
There isn't much 'story' in this game beyond this, but I was surprised with the amount of effort that went into making three distinct versions of each zone of a level and giving us two separate endings as a result. The story is not told through words at any point, but the scenery and the change of tone in the soundtrack do tell a story of their own which represents the actions you take, or don't, which is pretty nice.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Sonic CD plays pretty much the same as Sonic 1 and 2, though due to the small features added in 2, I'd say it plays like the middle-version between the two based on the features it has. There isn't really much I can say here that I haven't already said about the first two Sonic games. If you have played those already, you will know exactly what to expect. If you haven't, you probably know how Sonic games look like anyway. As always, you run through levels with three distinct zones, fight a boss on the 3rd zone and try to reach the finish line in large levels with many open and secret areas to access to make progress.
The unique aspect of this game is the Time Warp feature. You can travel to the Past and Future of a zone to destroy certain transporters to create a Good Future in each level's Zone 3 to unlock the Good Ending at the end. This is done by running through a sign saying "Past" or "Future" and then holding a certain speed will running to initiate a "warp". This is certainly a unique feature and while I didn't get Good Futures in most levels, this offers a nice additional challenge for everyone looking to do as much as possible on each zone.
Another way to get Good Futures on every third zone is to collect all "Time Stones", which replace Chaos Emeralds in this game. This means there is no Super Sonic in this game. I haven't been good enough to ever get him in Sonic 1 and 2, so it's not a big loss for me personally, but worth pointing out. To get all Time Stones, you need to finish levels with more than 50 rings each, which lets you enter a special stage where you have to destroy six UFOs within a certain time limit.
While I enjoyed all of this for the most part, I have the same issues with this game that I had with Sonic 1 and 2, and probably on an even bigger scale here. This game focuses more on exploration within given levels than the other two Sonic games on the Genesis, which means it has a bigger focus on having you slow down and look for different paths on each zone. While exploring paths is optional, this does translate over to each level as a whole, as they are pretty massive in this game and can get pretty complex. This plays into one of my complaints with these Sonic games that I mentioned previously.
Sonic has super-speed as his special ability. Unfortunately, a lot of the times this ability plays like its more of a tease, as there are a lot of obstacles that stop you from gaining top speed for more than a couple seconds. While this makes sense from a game design perspective to add challenge to these games, I feel like Sonic's speed offers more disadvantage than fun to me due to this. Whenever I'm on a straight path, I'm thinking I'll take off and get some top speed going, only to have an enemy pop into screen out of nowhere and making it impossible for me to avoid it in time, which leads me into a 2-second animation of hitting the enemy and losing all my rings. Same goes for gaining speed to fly into the air, which too many times leads to me landing on a platform with an enemy on it, which I fall on top of to lose my rings again. Simultaneously, these games have a lot of areas that force you to pick up momentum near a slope to get up there, which takes a couple seconds each time, there are non-stop obstacles which you run into that stop you dead in your track and there isn't a lot of platforming challenge for me here other than exploring and trying to avoid damaging situations that your speeds puts you into. This leads me to take it slower sometimes, which makes me want to play a Mario game instead.
I understand I'm possibly odd for having this type of criticism, but I think it has more to do with me not being the biggest fan of how these Sonic games are designed rather than me thinking that it is actually objectively bad design. Though I do have to say, running at Sonic's speeds to have enemies appear that give you 0.2 seconds to react is not something that I think is that good.
That said, I do appreciate how large the levels are and how, no matter where you go, there is (almost) always a way forward to the finish line. And finally, while I have some subjective complaints, I can conclude this by saying that if you enjoy Sonic's 2D platforming gameplay, you will enjoy Sonic CD in that aspect as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Well do I have stuff to explain here. Sonic CD is in a pretty unusual spot because it does not have one, but two soundtrakcs. The first soundtrack is used in Japan and PAL regions, while the second is exclusively to NA. Why? I don't know if there is an official reason, but I think it is assumed that the American marketing team at Sega thought that American gamers wouldn't react well to the original soundtrack, which is why they composed their own.
Funnily enough, there are many people who heavily dislike the NA version of the soundtrack and who love the JP version. Not just retrospectively, but even at and around the time of its release. I didn't know about the two separate soundtracks, so I only originally rated this game based on the American soundtrack.
Listening to it, I was pretty surprised at its tone. Instead of the usual up-beat sounds of the other Sonic games, this one sounded a lot more ominous and like it wanted to accentuate the danger that Dr. Robotnik was presenting. It sounded more mature I suppose, or at least as if it was intended for more mature audiences than you would think played this game in the majority. For the most part, I didn't actually mind this. There are plenty of tracks here that are enjoyable to listen to and create a pretty nice atmosphere you can actually chill to. Then there are downright scary ones that I can't believe made it into the game, like the Game Over track and especially the track used for boss fights. I can't imagine being a ten year old back in 1993 playing this for the first time.
After playing this game, I listened to the OST again on YouTube like I always do, and while reading the comments discovered that there was a Japanese version as well. Listening to it, you can immediately tell how much more upbeat it is. Each track is different to the US version, I don't think there are any that were re-used, and the tone of the boss fight most notably is very different. Do I think each track in the Japanese version is better? Actually, I don't. While the lows of the US soundtrack are truly god awful, it's still a good soundtrack overall, and I don't mind that the composers went for more atmosphere than funk at times. I think I prefere the Japanese version overall however.
At the end of the day, I think it's cool that there are two full soundtracks that Sonic fans got with one game, though if you are one of the kids who got traumatized back in the day, you probably feel differently.
There are some pretty iconic themes here as well, such as Sonic Boom and the Japanese Special Stage Theme. Finally, since I haven't mentioned it yet, the Past, Present and Future versions of each zone have their own tracks, which means the total length of both OSTs is absurdly long for this game.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
Sonic CD is not a huge graphical jump over Sonic the Hedgehog 2 despite being released for the Sega CD add-on, which I would have expected to offer a little bit more visually. That said, Sonic CD is one of the better looking games for its time regardless.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
Atmospherically, the game suits a Sonic game quite well based on its visuals. What this game does differently though is lean away from the upbeat Sonic style at times to give you a more dystopian glance at the Sonic universe through its bad futures. This is still done in a sort-of funky way through Japan's soundtrack, but you're placed into a downright horrific horror moment through the US soundtrack at times.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game doesn't take too long to beat. It has 7 levels and pretty easy boss fights. Each level is pretty massive though, so you can pad your playtime easily by exploring them more thoroughly. On top of that, looking for those transporters in past and future parts of the zones will add a lot of playtime on top of that, and these versions of the zones also offer different environments on top of that, so the sheer amount of content in this game is pretty wild for a video game from 1993.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 7/10
As mentioned, levels are divided into 3 zones and the first two zones are designed three times for the past, present and future, which means there is absurd amounts of work that went into them here. On top of that, levels are truly massive, with tons of paths to explore that will make multiple playthroughs feel fresher than is usual for platformers and even for the first 16-bit Sonic games. Levels are also themed distinctly as always, though I wasn't blown away by any theme here like I was in Sonic 2 and some designs were also copied over from that game. Also, does every first level in a Sonic game start in a green environment? Just noticed that.
Levels being massive is great, but visually, the sheer amount of stuff going on in each visually is just overwhelming sometimes and makes for a messy presentation at times. It's also easy to get lost later on, which I thought was an odd wrinkle to put into a game like this.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
The Sonic team did a great job of keeping this Sonic game feel fresh despite the fact that it's another 2D platforming adventure. The Time Warp mechanic is not only unique to Sonic, but a unique mechanic in general, which I enjoyed to dabble with and which offer a lot of optional ways to tackle this game for each player.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
A ton of replay value here because of the 3 versions per zone that you can explore to your heart's content, because of the Time Stones you can collect optionally and because of two different endings. I don't count the two separate soundtracks in my ranking but for those interested, you can play the game's JP/PAL and NA versions as well to get a different feel each time while playing through the otherwise same levels.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times, though there can be some slowdown here and there depending on which version you play.
OVERALL | 74/100
I've heard mixed opinions about this game online, but I think this is my favorite Sonic game out of the three that released on the Genesis / Sega CD so far. The Time Warp mechanic definitely spices things up, the moment you meet Metal Sonic was pretty scary and memorable, the soundtrack defied expectations for both good and bad reasons and levels are massive, which made for a pretty good Sonic game overall in my opinion.
2016
Man, beating this was more pure determination than actually enjoying myself, at least on the final stage 9-10, which took me 2 hours to beat (mainly because it's hard, but also because I overlooked one specific thing I'll mention in a bit).
Clustertruck is a platformer developed by Landfall Games and released on September 27, 2016 for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch. Landfall Games are also behind Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, so suffice it to say, they've done alright for themselves. The game goes for 14.79€ without a sale, a price point I wouldn't recommend this game at. I played it through Amazon thanks to their monthly free game offerings through Amazon Prime.
Clustertruck is a Truck-themed platformer in which you jump from moving truck to truck and try to reach the finish line without ever touching the ground or anything else that isn't part of a truck. The main campaign has 9 worlds featuring different themes (steampunk, sci-fi, HELL) with 10 levels each, and they progressively get harder with a few unusually difficult levels sprinkled throughout. I've gotten to the final stage 9-10 in about 3 hours, and apart from about a handful of levels, none took me longer than 10 or so tries individually.
The game lets you restart pretty much instantly, which is great in allowing the game to flow pretty well and not interrupt gameplay at any time. When jumping from truck to truck, the abilities you have are, well, "jumping", sprinting to gain speed before jumping and the ability to move directions mid-air. As you finish levels, you collect points, which you can use in an Ability shop to unlock more advanced abilities to help make things easier. I believe each level can be beaten without an extra ability, but you'd be mad to do so without at least the first ability the game offers you, which is the "Dash" ability. There are many more which are presented to you on two sides, and you get to choose one ability to equip from each side. I didn't know you could equip more than one, so for most of the game, I stuck with Dash only.
Going with just this one ability was more than enough to go through 89 levels, and while you will be frustrated during this time, it rarely will be because a stage appears to be impossible. I'm by no means a skilled gamer and I somewhat smoothly made my way through them. Where it gets ridiculously hard though is on the final level, where you truly understand how many weaknesses the game has in its controls. Usually, the game asks you to just sprint and jump from truck to truck and reach an end point, but on this stage, the game asks you to do traditional platforming in that you climb up a flight of 'stairs' aka trucks. Unfortunately, the game does not have smooth enough controls and should really not be doing this. When you jump, it often is hard to control how far you move to each side, as sometimes you'll just move too far even though you barely move the stick, or even though you move backwards, the game will push you forward as if a truck hit you in the back. The game in general is incredibly sensitive to movement and, again, irratic in output as well, so you'll die a lot just because you're fighting the controls, not the challenges in the levels. You can not touch ground nor walls, so you have to be very careful in your input.
So due to this, I spent two hours on the final stage in sheer pain, until I looked through the shop again and bought an ability that slows down time. This made one specific part of this stage actually possible, and not too long after, I finally beat the game. I'd suggest picking that, if you decide to play this.
One final note I want to make is on the game's presentation. Visually, the game is pretty bland, with little detail in the environments. It gets better as you advance through the worlds and they get different themes, but apart from the final level, 'bland' is all I will remember from this game visually. The soundtrack has hints of vanilla as well with a lot of tracks that sound like your average mobile game platforming tracks and two or three that have some good parts in them. Overall though, I wouldn't really want to listen to it again.
So, all in all, would I recommend you to play this? As a pallette cleanser or just a fun little game for an hour or two with friends, sure, I think there is some fun to be had with the game's physics. Would I recommend you to go all 'thickheaded idiot' at this game just to get that satisfaction of beating it like I did? Not really, I think there are better games to waste 5 hours of your life on.
Clustertruck is a platformer developed by Landfall Games and released on September 27, 2016 for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch. Landfall Games are also behind Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, so suffice it to say, they've done alright for themselves. The game goes for 14.79€ without a sale, a price point I wouldn't recommend this game at. I played it through Amazon thanks to their monthly free game offerings through Amazon Prime.
Clustertruck is a Truck-themed platformer in which you jump from moving truck to truck and try to reach the finish line without ever touching the ground or anything else that isn't part of a truck. The main campaign has 9 worlds featuring different themes (steampunk, sci-fi, HELL) with 10 levels each, and they progressively get harder with a few unusually difficult levels sprinkled throughout. I've gotten to the final stage 9-10 in about 3 hours, and apart from about a handful of levels, none took me longer than 10 or so tries individually.
The game lets you restart pretty much instantly, which is great in allowing the game to flow pretty well and not interrupt gameplay at any time. When jumping from truck to truck, the abilities you have are, well, "jumping", sprinting to gain speed before jumping and the ability to move directions mid-air. As you finish levels, you collect points, which you can use in an Ability shop to unlock more advanced abilities to help make things easier. I believe each level can be beaten without an extra ability, but you'd be mad to do so without at least the first ability the game offers you, which is the "Dash" ability. There are many more which are presented to you on two sides, and you get to choose one ability to equip from each side. I didn't know you could equip more than one, so for most of the game, I stuck with Dash only.
Going with just this one ability was more than enough to go through 89 levels, and while you will be frustrated during this time, it rarely will be because a stage appears to be impossible. I'm by no means a skilled gamer and I somewhat smoothly made my way through them. Where it gets ridiculously hard though is on the final level, where you truly understand how many weaknesses the game has in its controls. Usually, the game asks you to just sprint and jump from truck to truck and reach an end point, but on this stage, the game asks you to do traditional platforming in that you climb up a flight of 'stairs' aka trucks. Unfortunately, the game does not have smooth enough controls and should really not be doing this. When you jump, it often is hard to control how far you move to each side, as sometimes you'll just move too far even though you barely move the stick, or even though you move backwards, the game will push you forward as if a truck hit you in the back. The game in general is incredibly sensitive to movement and, again, irratic in output as well, so you'll die a lot just because you're fighting the controls, not the challenges in the levels. You can not touch ground nor walls, so you have to be very careful in your input.
So due to this, I spent two hours on the final stage in sheer pain, until I looked through the shop again and bought an ability that slows down time. This made one specific part of this stage actually possible, and not too long after, I finally beat the game. I'd suggest picking that, if you decide to play this.
One final note I want to make is on the game's presentation. Visually, the game is pretty bland, with little detail in the environments. It gets better as you advance through the worlds and they get different themes, but apart from the final level, 'bland' is all I will remember from this game visually. The soundtrack has hints of vanilla as well with a lot of tracks that sound like your average mobile game platforming tracks and two or three that have some good parts in them. Overall though, I wouldn't really want to listen to it again.
So, all in all, would I recommend you to play this? As a pallette cleanser or just a fun little game for an hour or two with friends, sure, I think there is some fun to be had with the game's physics. Would I recommend you to go all 'thickheaded idiot' at this game just to get that satisfaction of beating it like I did? Not really, I think there are better games to waste 5 hours of your life on.
1993
(This is the 87th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
I wasn't really all too familiar with or interested in the run and gun / shoot 'em up genre of video games until I played Contra III: The Alien Wars just a month ago. Based on its score, I have it rated as the 2nd best game I've played out of my 1992 playlist, and that score sounds about right, as it is one of the games I most fondly look back on from that year, and will do so in the future as well I'm sure. When I shared my thoughts about that game at the time, I was recommended to make sure that I check out Gunstar Heroes as well, which I had never heard of before but had already been on my 1993 playlist beforehand, interestingly enough.
Gunstar Heroes released on September 10, 1993 for the Sega Genesis and on Game Gear in 1995. It was produced by Mastao Maegawa, and it is the result of him and some of his colleagues at Konami rejecting an idea of a game (presumably similar to this one) that they had, which led to them quitting at Konami and starting up their own development studio, Treasure. Gunstar Heroes is a run and gun video game that players of, say, Metal Slug and of course Contra games will instantly be familiar with. You run forward on a side-scrolling screen and just shoot up dozens of enemies as explosion fill up the screen, until you reach a boss, learn its patterns and defeat it too, which lets you advance to the next stage.
In its basic form, it's the same style of game. If you enjoy a game such as Contra III, you are sure to enjoy this one as well. If you didn't enjoy Contra III or similar games at all, you won't enjoy Gunstar Heroes either.
What makes Gunstar Heroes stand out in this genre in my opinion is its presentation and the variety of weapons you can use. Contra III had about a handful of attacks that you could use and gave you two slots to put attacks onto. Get hit, and you lose an attack but can switch to the other slot. In Gunstar Heroes, you also have two slots, though you don't lose the attack in a slot if you get hit. Plus, these attacks don't just work individually, but you can also choose to use the combined effect of these, which gives you even more powerful attacks, which differ in damage output, range and firing directions. There are over a dozen combination to use this way, all with their own strengths and weaknesses, which adds a lot of replayability to how you want to challenge the tougher fights in this game.
The presentation is also worth highlighting as I mentioned. Some of the bosses look really interesting, like the Bravoo Man, Melon Bread or "Seven Force", which can take upon a variety of forms out of which a couple are randomly chosen whenever you face it. There are also some very cleverly designed levels, such as the final boss rush where the screen is presented as a "TV" on which the bad guys collectively watch you fight their guys. Whenever you defeat one of them, they get mad and you can see the main antagonist sending out the next boss out to face you. Another really well designed level is the "Dice Palace", which reminded me of Cuphead's King Dice boss fight. You roll a dice to see how many platforms you can advance, and each platform has either a boss fight or an item room for you. The bosses vary in difficulty, but most are pretty easy on "normal" difficulty. The second to last platform has you start over (just like in Cuphead) and I had the pleasure to step on it once, losing about 10 minutes of progress. Each major boss you defeat gives you one of four gems, and there is a funny scene that plays with the Dice Palace boss, who, once defeated, throws out what looks like the "red gem" but is actually a bomb. So I had the boss beat, but didn't know it was a bomb, so it hit me and I died, which means I had to start over the Dice Palace. Made me mad at the time, but was hilarious in hindsight.
Graphically, the game looks more than serviceable for the Sega Genesis and makes up for lack of high-tier production values with great enemy design. The game's soundtrack overall is pretty good. It has a few pretty average tracks and is mostly overshadowed by the constant sound of explosions. The highlight for me here though was the "theme of Seven Force", which, as I would like to eloquently say, "slaps".
OVERALL: 72/100
I wasn't really all too familiar with or interested in the run and gun / shoot 'em up genre of video games until I played Contra III: The Alien Wars just a month ago. Based on its score, I have it rated as the 2nd best game I've played out of my 1992 playlist, and that score sounds about right, as it is one of the games I most fondly look back on from that year, and will do so in the future as well I'm sure. When I shared my thoughts about that game at the time, I was recommended to make sure that I check out Gunstar Heroes as well, which I had never heard of before but had already been on my 1993 playlist beforehand, interestingly enough.
Gunstar Heroes released on September 10, 1993 for the Sega Genesis and on Game Gear in 1995. It was produced by Mastao Maegawa, and it is the result of him and some of his colleagues at Konami rejecting an idea of a game (presumably similar to this one) that they had, which led to them quitting at Konami and starting up their own development studio, Treasure. Gunstar Heroes is a run and gun video game that players of, say, Metal Slug and of course Contra games will instantly be familiar with. You run forward on a side-scrolling screen and just shoot up dozens of enemies as explosion fill up the screen, until you reach a boss, learn its patterns and defeat it too, which lets you advance to the next stage.
In its basic form, it's the same style of game. If you enjoy a game such as Contra III, you are sure to enjoy this one as well. If you didn't enjoy Contra III or similar games at all, you won't enjoy Gunstar Heroes either.
What makes Gunstar Heroes stand out in this genre in my opinion is its presentation and the variety of weapons you can use. Contra III had about a handful of attacks that you could use and gave you two slots to put attacks onto. Get hit, and you lose an attack but can switch to the other slot. In Gunstar Heroes, you also have two slots, though you don't lose the attack in a slot if you get hit. Plus, these attacks don't just work individually, but you can also choose to use the combined effect of these, which gives you even more powerful attacks, which differ in damage output, range and firing directions. There are over a dozen combination to use this way, all with their own strengths and weaknesses, which adds a lot of replayability to how you want to challenge the tougher fights in this game.
The presentation is also worth highlighting as I mentioned. Some of the bosses look really interesting, like the Bravoo Man, Melon Bread or "Seven Force", which can take upon a variety of forms out of which a couple are randomly chosen whenever you face it. There are also some very cleverly designed levels, such as the final boss rush where the screen is presented as a "TV" on which the bad guys collectively watch you fight their guys. Whenever you defeat one of them, they get mad and you can see the main antagonist sending out the next boss out to face you. Another really well designed level is the "Dice Palace", which reminded me of Cuphead's King Dice boss fight. You roll a dice to see how many platforms you can advance, and each platform has either a boss fight or an item room for you. The bosses vary in difficulty, but most are pretty easy on "normal" difficulty. The second to last platform has you start over (just like in Cuphead) and I had the pleasure to step on it once, losing about 10 minutes of progress. Each major boss you defeat gives you one of four gems, and there is a funny scene that plays with the Dice Palace boss, who, once defeated, throws out what looks like the "red gem" but is actually a bomb. So I had the boss beat, but didn't know it was a bomb, so it hit me and I died, which means I had to start over the Dice Palace. Made me mad at the time, but was hilarious in hindsight.
Graphically, the game looks more than serviceable for the Sega Genesis and makes up for lack of high-tier production values with great enemy design. The game's soundtrack overall is pretty good. It has a few pretty average tracks and is mostly overshadowed by the constant sound of explosions. The highlight for me here though was the "theme of Seven Force", which, as I would like to eloquently say, "slaps".
OVERALL: 72/100
(This is the 86th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
As is tradition with early 90s Spider-Man video games, Spider-Man 3: Invasion of Spider-Slayers is among the worst games I have ever played, and it possibly tops the list. As per usual, this was developed by Bits Studios and published by Acclaim Entertainment (or LJN at the time), possibly the worst grouping of developer + publisher of its time that actually made professionally developed video games. Spider-Man 3 released for the Game Boy and is the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which, up to this point, I would have called the worst game I've ever played, especially within this challenge I'm doing. That game, and I'll use any opportunity I can to bring it up, got a 98% from Consoles +, a French video game magazine. Spider-Man 3's Consoles + review score is unknown, but it got a 6.1 Moby Rating, which is on the poorer side on the site.
The first level of this game is all you really need to know about. With each iteration in this Game Boy trilogy, the fudges given have gone down more and more, and it's apparent in many ways. The first game was developed by Rare and was awful in most aspects but at least had competent level design and started each level with witty dialogue between Spider-Man and the stage's boss, which gave it some charm. The second game, made by Bits Studios, didn't have this dialogue anymore and was even worse in all other aspects. Its level design was also just dull and lacked any sort of creativity and passion. This third game went down yet another level that I didn't think was possible. Instead of having some sort of love put into an opening 'cutscene' where Spidey reads that he is being framed, like in the second game, this third game just starts with Spider-Man saying that he will take a walk in the park. Then a white image with black text says that you should defeat 20 muggers. That's it. Then you walk around awkwardly from left to right looking for these men.
1) Spider-Man looks and walks as awkwardly as in all of the other 6 Spider-Man games I've played
2) Spider-Man controls as horrificly as in all of the other 6 Spider-Man games I've played
3) The level looks as bland as toast
4) There are nearly no assets on this whole level. The tiny space is only separated by a random wall placed in around the middle part of the level, which you can jump over to get to an area that looks and works exactly the same
5) There is a singular depiction of a man walking around the park endlessly. The challenge on this level is to figure out whether the guy is innocent or a "mugger". You wait for 2 seconds for the man to pull something out of his jacket. If it's a newspaper, he's innocent. If it's a gun, well, you do what Spider-Man does. Kick him in the nuts once and watch him vanish into thin air.
6) If you're too close to the man, your kick just goes through him. You have to stand a specific distance away from the man to kick him, or you'll miss.
7) KIDS ON SKATEBOARDS roam the area and run into you, unless you jump over them. Pressing the jump button comes with input lag, meaning it takes an extra second or two to actually do the jump, meaning you need to time it pretty early. Even then, it's likely you'll touch the back of the head of the kid and still take damage.
8) SPIDERS FALL DOWN OUT OF THIN AIR and damage you, if they fall on top of you
9) THIS IS THE DUMBEST SHIT I'VE PLAYED IN MY LIFE.
It's not even creatively bad. It's the same type of bad platformer that you saw in the thousands in the late 80s and early 90s, it's just among the least competent that was made by an actual professional development studio and backed by a professional publisher, LJN, who, as you might know, have had and still have a terrible reputation. I now know why. People complain about Zelda 2, Castlevania 2, The Zelda CD-I games, ET and that N64 Batman game, and for good reason, but man, I wish I could be playing any of those games instead of these never-ending Spider-Man games that all are of the same ilk and just get worse.
TLDR: Shit.
As is tradition with early 90s Spider-Man video games, Spider-Man 3: Invasion of Spider-Slayers is among the worst games I have ever played, and it possibly tops the list. As per usual, this was developed by Bits Studios and published by Acclaim Entertainment (or LJN at the time), possibly the worst grouping of developer + publisher of its time that actually made professionally developed video games. Spider-Man 3 released for the Game Boy and is the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which, up to this point, I would have called the worst game I've ever played, especially within this challenge I'm doing. That game, and I'll use any opportunity I can to bring it up, got a 98% from Consoles +, a French video game magazine. Spider-Man 3's Consoles + review score is unknown, but it got a 6.1 Moby Rating, which is on the poorer side on the site.
The first level of this game is all you really need to know about. With each iteration in this Game Boy trilogy, the fudges given have gone down more and more, and it's apparent in many ways. The first game was developed by Rare and was awful in most aspects but at least had competent level design and started each level with witty dialogue between Spider-Man and the stage's boss, which gave it some charm. The second game, made by Bits Studios, didn't have this dialogue anymore and was even worse in all other aspects. Its level design was also just dull and lacked any sort of creativity and passion. This third game went down yet another level that I didn't think was possible. Instead of having some sort of love put into an opening 'cutscene' where Spidey reads that he is being framed, like in the second game, this third game just starts with Spider-Man saying that he will take a walk in the park. Then a white image with black text says that you should defeat 20 muggers. That's it. Then you walk around awkwardly from left to right looking for these men.
1) Spider-Man looks and walks as awkwardly as in all of the other 6 Spider-Man games I've played
2) Spider-Man controls as horrificly as in all of the other 6 Spider-Man games I've played
3) The level looks as bland as toast
4) There are nearly no assets on this whole level. The tiny space is only separated by a random wall placed in around the middle part of the level, which you can jump over to get to an area that looks and works exactly the same
5) There is a singular depiction of a man walking around the park endlessly. The challenge on this level is to figure out whether the guy is innocent or a "mugger". You wait for 2 seconds for the man to pull something out of his jacket. If it's a newspaper, he's innocent. If it's a gun, well, you do what Spider-Man does. Kick him in the nuts once and watch him vanish into thin air.
6) If you're too close to the man, your kick just goes through him. You have to stand a specific distance away from the man to kick him, or you'll miss.
7) KIDS ON SKATEBOARDS roam the area and run into you, unless you jump over them. Pressing the jump button comes with input lag, meaning it takes an extra second or two to actually do the jump, meaning you need to time it pretty early. Even then, it's likely you'll touch the back of the head of the kid and still take damage.
8) SPIDERS FALL DOWN OUT OF THIN AIR and damage you, if they fall on top of you
9) THIS IS THE DUMBEST SHIT I'VE PLAYED IN MY LIFE.
It's not even creatively bad. It's the same type of bad platformer that you saw in the thousands in the late 80s and early 90s, it's just among the least competent that was made by an actual professional development studio and backed by a professional publisher, LJN, who, as you might know, have had and still have a terrible reputation. I now know why. People complain about Zelda 2, Castlevania 2, The Zelda CD-I games, ET and that N64 Batman game, and for good reason, but man, I wish I could be playing any of those games instead of these never-ending Spider-Man games that all are of the same ilk and just get worse.
TLDR: Shit.
(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.
1993
Star Fox released on February 21, 1993 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and is a rail shooter that you play in both first-person and third-person perspectives. The special part about it is that this is a 3D game during a time where this was uncommon, and from the get-go you can tell that what Star Fox does is pretty unique, especially for the platform it released on.
It was developed by Nintendo and Argonaut Software and has turned into a pretty popular series, warranting multiple sequels from Star Fox 64 in 1997 all the way to Star Fox Zero and, I suppose it is worth counting, a sequel to this original Star Fox game called Star Fox 2 released alongside the SNES Classic Edition. Star Fox 2 never ended up releasing back in the day, but it did exist, so it got its debut all these years later, which is pretty fascinating stuff.
In this original Star Fox, you control the character 'Fox' and his spacecraft, the "Arwing" in scrolling 3D environments. You dodge obstacles in the environment, shoot enemy spaceships and take on boss battles in each stage. Before you begin, you can select one of three routes to take to the final boss on a planet called 'Venom'. I took the Level 1 route thinking it was just the first level. Turns out, no, the Level 1 route is simple one of three routes that all lead to the same ending. The difference is that each route has a distinct difficulty, which is a system that allowed the devs to forgo any difficulty options. Personally, I like this a lot because it adds a lot of replayability to the game. Each route takes you through different planets and missions and therefore not only plays more difficult, but simply different in terms of the design of the levels. In turn though, the routes individually are not very long. The main reason why you might take more than a few hours per route is the difficulty, which even on Level 1 is no cakewalk.
That's in large part to how the game plays. The game is undeniably impressive and ahead of its time, but one negative that comes with that is that you will have to compromise. Compromise in Star Fox rears its head through low FPS (10-15) and below-average controls. Low FPS for a flight sim was very common in 1993 and the years before it, and those games usually had even less, so it's not the worst thing here. But just like many of those flight sims, this makes the original Star Fox slightly harder to play today and means it didn't age quite as well as some other games of its time. That said, I didn't have a lot of trouble with the low FPS apart from the parts where many effects on the screen would lead to slowdown.
The poor controls on the other hand I didn't quite get used to until the end of my playthrough. I dislike inverse control schemes in general, so that wasn't great when I had to decide to move up or down within a second, but often I felt the controls not be very responsive, I felt that it was hard to judge whether I was far enough away to evade certain projectiles and figuring out where to aim to actually hit something always took me a second of shooting somewhere (and missing badly) and then adjusting from there, which wasn't quite intuitive.
Issues like these were exacerbated by the fact that sometimes so much action would be on the screen, that projectiles would not be visible until they were very close, leading to a hit that would take quite a lot of health, so expect to die quite a lot of times early on due to things like that. Otherwise though, the polygonal graphics looked good enough here and were generally quite a big deal at the time. Having played dozens of games from its time before this, I can attest to not playing many games that were graphically impressive like this from a technological standpoint.
You also do get used to the controls, so there is that, but it's never feeling great, so I'm not sure if that's something one would necessarily deem a lot of fun at this day and age. I think it's fair to say that it's easy to appreciate Star Fox even today, but don't be surprised if you turn it off after the novelty wears off. If you really get into the boss fights however, which for the most part are well done and fun to tackle, you might get hooked enough to want to see one route through like I did, for which I recommend the first one. Whichever route you take though, you start on the planet Corneria, which has a great soundtrack, so look forward to that, while I myself look forward to playing Star Fox 64 one day, which I hope brings a lot more to the table at a time when 3D graphics were much more common and for the fact that it is the best selling Star Fox game to date.
(This is the 83rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
It was developed by Nintendo and Argonaut Software and has turned into a pretty popular series, warranting multiple sequels from Star Fox 64 in 1997 all the way to Star Fox Zero and, I suppose it is worth counting, a sequel to this original Star Fox game called Star Fox 2 released alongside the SNES Classic Edition. Star Fox 2 never ended up releasing back in the day, but it did exist, so it got its debut all these years later, which is pretty fascinating stuff.
In this original Star Fox, you control the character 'Fox' and his spacecraft, the "Arwing" in scrolling 3D environments. You dodge obstacles in the environment, shoot enemy spaceships and take on boss battles in each stage. Before you begin, you can select one of three routes to take to the final boss on a planet called 'Venom'. I took the Level 1 route thinking it was just the first level. Turns out, no, the Level 1 route is simple one of three routes that all lead to the same ending. The difference is that each route has a distinct difficulty, which is a system that allowed the devs to forgo any difficulty options. Personally, I like this a lot because it adds a lot of replayability to the game. Each route takes you through different planets and missions and therefore not only plays more difficult, but simply different in terms of the design of the levels. In turn though, the routes individually are not very long. The main reason why you might take more than a few hours per route is the difficulty, which even on Level 1 is no cakewalk.
That's in large part to how the game plays. The game is undeniably impressive and ahead of its time, but one negative that comes with that is that you will have to compromise. Compromise in Star Fox rears its head through low FPS (10-15) and below-average controls. Low FPS for a flight sim was very common in 1993 and the years before it, and those games usually had even less, so it's not the worst thing here. But just like many of those flight sims, this makes the original Star Fox slightly harder to play today and means it didn't age quite as well as some other games of its time. That said, I didn't have a lot of trouble with the low FPS apart from the parts where many effects on the screen would lead to slowdown.
The poor controls on the other hand I didn't quite get used to until the end of my playthrough. I dislike inverse control schemes in general, so that wasn't great when I had to decide to move up or down within a second, but often I felt the controls not be very responsive, I felt that it was hard to judge whether I was far enough away to evade certain projectiles and figuring out where to aim to actually hit something always took me a second of shooting somewhere (and missing badly) and then adjusting from there, which wasn't quite intuitive.
Issues like these were exacerbated by the fact that sometimes so much action would be on the screen, that projectiles would not be visible until they were very close, leading to a hit that would take quite a lot of health, so expect to die quite a lot of times early on due to things like that. Otherwise though, the polygonal graphics looked good enough here and were generally quite a big deal at the time. Having played dozens of games from its time before this, I can attest to not playing many games that were graphically impressive like this from a technological standpoint.
You also do get used to the controls, so there is that, but it's never feeling great, so I'm not sure if that's something one would necessarily deem a lot of fun at this day and age. I think it's fair to say that it's easy to appreciate Star Fox even today, but don't be surprised if you turn it off after the novelty wears off. If you really get into the boss fights however, which for the most part are well done and fun to tackle, you might get hooked enough to want to see one route through like I did, for which I recommend the first one. Whichever route you take though, you start on the planet Corneria, which has a great soundtrack, so look forward to that, while I myself look forward to playing Star Fox 64 one day, which I hope brings a lot more to the table at a time when 3D graphics were much more common and for the fact that it is the best selling Star Fox game to date.
(This is the 83rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
1992
Final Fantasy games, objectively, are really well done, at least from the fourth-generation games, as I didn't play any newer iterations yet. But let me start of this review by saying that I realize that 3 to 5 so far have not been for me. On the one hand, I think it has a lot to do with how the game has clearly a younger audience in mind, especially in its story presentation, so perhaps I would have fallen in love with the franchise like so many others, if I had played these games at a young age myself. On the other hand, young me was more interested in sports, fighting and platforming games, so I probably wouldn't have.
But having said this, if you are one of those who loves Super Famicom Final Fantasy games, I'm hoping you understand that I think fundamentally, Final Fantasy games are good, I just didn't gell with them yet. Final Fantasy IV I actually did beat, but both 3 and 5 I didn't, so let me go over why in this review.
As with IV, there are pre-named characters in this game's story and there clearly is a lot more attention being paid to it since IV then before. The production values are also off the charts here, and the game has added some QoL features to make life much easier than in III, which was the last game that had the well-known 'job system'. In this game, the job system is actually well explained and you quickly get a grasp of how it works. Many other features of this game are explained as well, making it less important to constantly look up a guide or the game's manual to figure stuff out.
The job system is something I want to quickly talk about here, as I finally understand why people rave about it. In III, I thought the job system was really lackluster and more of a gimmick forced on me than something I enjoyed using, while in V, it's really good. It's actually wild how many options it gives you to customize and mix&match your characters it gives you. From what I've seen, it only gets deeper the further you are in the game.
While that is great, to me it only affected my enjoyment of the game so much, as the gameplay itself is the same as in FF III, meaning it still uses constant random encounters that mostly either are too easy or too hard, though mainly the former, it still asks you to grind, and I don't want to know how much you need to grind for the final few dungeons, it still has a few enemy attacks that just make the gameplay straight up not fun for me (more on that in second) and it still uses the ATB system, which I'm not a fan of.
In terms of enemy attacks, the one in FF IV I disliked the most was the one that allowed your enemies to literally one-hit kill you regardless of your HP or whether you are guarding or not. I don't remember the name, but I found that to be a non-sensical thing, especially because it worked pretty much all the time.
In FF V, the thing that annoyed me the most was the "sap" skill that some enemies apparently have. From what I gathered, you couldn't even tell whether you were inflicted or not, and there is no telling when it would disappear, and I think no way to remove it, especially since it is easily inflicted on all party members at the same time. What it does is reduce the HP of all party members in a really quick way, which means you need to constantly heal against it until the effect runs out.
This issue gets exacerbated by the ATB system. The ATB system basically means that while this is a turn-based game, the enemies will not just wait out your turn. As their attack meter fully charges, they will just steal a turn, if you wait too long. And "waiting too long" is literally a couple seconds of thinking of what to do. To me, this places it between a true turn-based system and real time combat, both of which I enjoy a lot. The ATB system, I do not. Especially when I got sapped, turning on the proverbial jets to pick the skill I want got really annoying. The first boss that does this that you are fighting also has a bar that charges twice as fast, so as your party's HP is rapidly going down, getting hit is not a great thing to happen. There are only so many revive items I can use. And having to 'hurry' is not something that adds literally anything to combat. I either know what to do but can't do it quickly enough, or I don't know what to do and have to look at my options and strategize, which I can't do in a short amount of time. There is an option to turn the ATB system to "wait", but all this does apparently is have the enemy wait if you go into a specific menu like "Black Magic". Staying in the general command screen still lets the enemies steal a turn.
Finally, I want to go over the story. I played roughly 10 hours, so I got about a third of the way through the game I would imagine. So far, all I have seen about the story clearly tells me that it was written for a young audience. I don't mind this at all, that's most people who would play it at the time, and many people got emotionally connected to the cast with this story. Playing this now however, I can't say I enjoyed it simply because I'm clearly not the target audience. The game's way of endearing you to its characters is through multiple contrived events instead of genuine chemistry built up between the characters through its writing, which is understandable due to the Super Famicom's storage space but again, speaks to the target audience of this game's story.
So overall, again, I think this game is good and I can see why many people would enjoy the job system even today, but I can't say I enjoyed this game personally, both in terms of story and gameplay.
(This is the 82nd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
But having said this, if you are one of those who loves Super Famicom Final Fantasy games, I'm hoping you understand that I think fundamentally, Final Fantasy games are good, I just didn't gell with them yet. Final Fantasy IV I actually did beat, but both 3 and 5 I didn't, so let me go over why in this review.
As with IV, there are pre-named characters in this game's story and there clearly is a lot more attention being paid to it since IV then before. The production values are also off the charts here, and the game has added some QoL features to make life much easier than in III, which was the last game that had the well-known 'job system'. In this game, the job system is actually well explained and you quickly get a grasp of how it works. Many other features of this game are explained as well, making it less important to constantly look up a guide or the game's manual to figure stuff out.
The job system is something I want to quickly talk about here, as I finally understand why people rave about it. In III, I thought the job system was really lackluster and more of a gimmick forced on me than something I enjoyed using, while in V, it's really good. It's actually wild how many options it gives you to customize and mix&match your characters it gives you. From what I've seen, it only gets deeper the further you are in the game.
While that is great, to me it only affected my enjoyment of the game so much, as the gameplay itself is the same as in FF III, meaning it still uses constant random encounters that mostly either are too easy or too hard, though mainly the former, it still asks you to grind, and I don't want to know how much you need to grind for the final few dungeons, it still has a few enemy attacks that just make the gameplay straight up not fun for me (more on that in second) and it still uses the ATB system, which I'm not a fan of.
In terms of enemy attacks, the one in FF IV I disliked the most was the one that allowed your enemies to literally one-hit kill you regardless of your HP or whether you are guarding or not. I don't remember the name, but I found that to be a non-sensical thing, especially because it worked pretty much all the time.
In FF V, the thing that annoyed me the most was the "sap" skill that some enemies apparently have. From what I gathered, you couldn't even tell whether you were inflicted or not, and there is no telling when it would disappear, and I think no way to remove it, especially since it is easily inflicted on all party members at the same time. What it does is reduce the HP of all party members in a really quick way, which means you need to constantly heal against it until the effect runs out.
This issue gets exacerbated by the ATB system. The ATB system basically means that while this is a turn-based game, the enemies will not just wait out your turn. As their attack meter fully charges, they will just steal a turn, if you wait too long. And "waiting too long" is literally a couple seconds of thinking of what to do. To me, this places it between a true turn-based system and real time combat, both of which I enjoy a lot. The ATB system, I do not. Especially when I got sapped, turning on the proverbial jets to pick the skill I want got really annoying. The first boss that does this that you are fighting also has a bar that charges twice as fast, so as your party's HP is rapidly going down, getting hit is not a great thing to happen. There are only so many revive items I can use. And having to 'hurry' is not something that adds literally anything to combat. I either know what to do but can't do it quickly enough, or I don't know what to do and have to look at my options and strategize, which I can't do in a short amount of time. There is an option to turn the ATB system to "wait", but all this does apparently is have the enemy wait if you go into a specific menu like "Black Magic". Staying in the general command screen still lets the enemies steal a turn.
Finally, I want to go over the story. I played roughly 10 hours, so I got about a third of the way through the game I would imagine. So far, all I have seen about the story clearly tells me that it was written for a young audience. I don't mind this at all, that's most people who would play it at the time, and many people got emotionally connected to the cast with this story. Playing this now however, I can't say I enjoyed it simply because I'm clearly not the target audience. The game's way of endearing you to its characters is through multiple contrived events instead of genuine chemistry built up between the characters through its writing, which is understandable due to the Super Famicom's storage space but again, speaks to the target audience of this game's story.
So overall, again, I think this game is good and I can see why many people would enjoy the job system even today, but I can't say I enjoyed this game personally, both in terms of story and gameplay.
(This is the 82nd 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 6th Spider-Man game I've played in chronological order as part of a challenge I'm doing. Let me quickly recap: I've played 80 games between 1990 and 1992 before playing this game. 5 of those 80 were Spider-Man games. Three of those Spider-Man games make for the Top 3 Worst Games I've played as part of this challenge. None of the 5 games I'd consider giving anything above 1.5 stars.
Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge, developed by Software Creations and published by 'I'll get the Spider-Man license just to absolutely shit on it' Acclaim Entertainment, released in November 1992 and calls itself an Action-Platformer. While doing so, it's playing fast and loose with the term 'Action', as from the get-go, you realize two things.
First, as per usual, the controls are horrible. That said, the game has the best controls out of all 6 Spider-Man games I've played in this time period, which says more about the state of Spider-Man games than it does about this game. Using the web is possible here, but most of the time you'll have a lower body part touch a platform and fall to your death, as while airborne, you can't activate the web. It's the same handicap that Spider-Man has, as everyone knows.
Second, after a little while, you realize what the actual goal of the first level. Collect some collectable items in some random order that your "Spider senses" direct you towards. This means you just end up awkwardly climbing up and down walls waiting for the Spider sense to trigger once you're close enough, then you run up to the collectable, collect it and go to the next one until the exit opens. Wow.
Perhaps this helps to distract you from the graphics, which, for an SNES (!) game, look horrendous, though again, probably make it the 2nd best looking Spider-Man just behind Spider-Man vs the Kingpin on the Genesis.
The awful controls will dawn on you once you get to the second stage. As per usual, I'm saddened by the state of the license, as continuously releasing god-awful games sounds harder than Acclaim Entertainment and their development studios make it look.
Luckily, there is another Spider-Man game releasing pretty soon in 1993.
(This is the 81st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge, developed by Software Creations and published by 'I'll get the Spider-Man license just to absolutely shit on it' Acclaim Entertainment, released in November 1992 and calls itself an Action-Platformer. While doing so, it's playing fast and loose with the term 'Action', as from the get-go, you realize two things.
First, as per usual, the controls are horrible. That said, the game has the best controls out of all 6 Spider-Man games I've played in this time period, which says more about the state of Spider-Man games than it does about this game. Using the web is possible here, but most of the time you'll have a lower body part touch a platform and fall to your death, as while airborne, you can't activate the web. It's the same handicap that Spider-Man has, as everyone knows.
Second, after a little while, you realize what the actual goal of the first level. Collect some collectable items in some random order that your "Spider senses" direct you towards. This means you just end up awkwardly climbing up and down walls waiting for the Spider sense to trigger once you're close enough, then you run up to the collectable, collect it and go to the next one until the exit opens. Wow.
Perhaps this helps to distract you from the graphics, which, for an SNES (!) game, look horrendous, though again, probably make it the 2nd best looking Spider-Man just behind Spider-Man vs the Kingpin on the Genesis.
The awful controls will dawn on you once you get to the second stage. As per usual, I'm saddened by the state of the license, as continuously releasing god-awful games sounds harder than Acclaim Entertainment and their development studios make it look.
Luckily, there is another Spider-Man game releasing pretty soon in 1993.
(This is the 81st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)