Thursday, July 15, 2021

Phalanx (SNES/SFC) Review

 

Phalanx (SFC & SNES) Review

 

Release Date: Oct 1992

Date Played: 7/15/2021


Phalanx is the game most known from its incredibly insane cover art that depicts an old man playing a banjo.  I've read an interview that states that the advertising team behind this knew they had a rather mediocre shmup on their hand and wanted to make the game stand out in a sea of better games.  They made this crazy cover for the game, and the rest is history.  The cover for the Super Famicom version of the game is much more benign and just depicts some hand drawn art of the space ship featured in the game.  It's a cool design and executed well, but nothing to stand out in the U.S. market for sure. With the likes of Rock 'n Roll racing, Bubsy, and all the other games seeping with attitude, the developers knew they had to be zany or be relegated to the bargain bin in no time.

Of course, the advertisers were absolutely correct. The game is pretty generic and while it does have some interesting moments, would (and did) fall by the wayside as other games came to the forefront. While my initial impression of the game was very positive and I was impressed with its striking atmosphere, the more I played it, obvious flaws began to emerge.  Phalanx is a very mediocre game with a few positives that make it stand out. The gameplay is a pretty standard horizontal shmup.  You only have 1 ship to choose from, but it has a variable speed that with three different settings of slow, medium, and fast. You can cycle through these with the R button, but I found myself staying on the fastest setting almost exclusively.  In addition to this, you have 4 powerups that you can collect as well as 3 types of missiles that passively shoot.  The powerups are a laser beam that fires in front and can pierce through enemies, a ricochet shot that bounces off the top and bottom of the screen, a homing shot, and a charge shot.   All of these can be powered up by collecting a Power orb.  This will increase the effectiveness of the shot as well as restore a hit to your life gauge.  That's right, this game has a life gauge.  You can take 3 hits before you die and lose a life; which is a unusual for a shmup (unless you're a euroshmup, of course). Using your bomb in this game "eats" your current powerup before unleashing a powerful attack.  I really like this idea, but powerups are few and far between in this game, so it's generally better just to hold onto them.  In addition to this, lives are given out pretty regularly (10k/30k in the U.S. version, and 20k/50k in the SFC version).  While you may think that this life bar and abundance is a blessing, it's a hallmark of poor game design (still looking at you euroshmups).  Why should a development team spend a lot of time balancing their game and planning enemy and bullet patterns when they can just throw everything at you including the kitchen sink, give you some extra lives, and then call it a day.  Phalanx is no exception in this department.  You're bombarded with enemies that pop up directly above, below, and behind you and give you no chance to react.  You can barely see the shots from the enemies because they are a dark crimson color that blend in with the gritty and grainy graphics and enemies run right up in front of you, pause, and then unleash a barrage of bullets.  The majority of your deaths will come from environmental hazards like spinning rods, mazes you have to navigate, debris, and suiciding enemies.  I don't remember getting hit by a single bullet in my final playthrough, yet I was constantly colliding with things.  It's quite frustrating. Also, the game has a really bad case of Gradius syndrome; where if you lose your powerups, the game becomes almost impossible to progress.  You essentially need to make it all the way through the game without dying so you can stay fully powered up... as it seems like the game was designed around that. Finally, the game is overly long.  There are 8 stages and each one of them is 5-8 minutes long.  That means we have around an hour of total playtime to get through this game, and that's just way too much.  I feel like this game could have been edited back way more. For a shmup, a half hour is a great length to let you memorize everything while keeping the gameplay action packed.

As for the positives, there are quite a few that do make Phalanx stand out.  Firstly, the game has a great atmosphere, awesome art design, and striking graphics.  The first stage starts with you flying over some grey clouds with several layers of parallax scrolling before finally descending into a dark and gritty urban landscape.  This whole section of the game was a stand-out moment and probably my favorite part of the game.  The second level was less already less impressive and consisted of an underwater factory.  Most of the center of the screen has a stream of water flowing through it that pushes you backwards when you enter it.  The rest of the stage is centered around dodging obstacles while dealing with this current of water working against you.  This stage is bland and monotone and feels very flat after experiencing the 1st stage of the game.   The 3rd stage is just an underground cave with more obstacles to destroy and a black background.  Stage 4 has more parallax scrolling as you're flying through deep space, but it's pretty static the whole way through and this stage just has tons of enemies crashing into you from all sides.  Stage 5 is a stand out.  Instead of auto-scrolling through the level, you have free roam enabled.  You have to explore the outside of the mothership before finding 3 hidden entrances, going inside, and destroying all of the parts.  This was the most unique stage of the game by far, and at the time, I thought it was the final level.  Little did I know it's only the halfway point. I feel like the developers could have taken this idea and expounded on it a little more. It added an interesting flair to the game that passed all too quickly.   The 6th stage titled, "Advertisement Area" was very odd and bizarrely funny.  It's an asteroid belt with Kemco (the publisher of the game... and notorious lazy game makers) advertisements everywhere.  It's odd to go through a space scenario and see billboards everywhere.  It really feels like they took the most boring stage of the game and just copied/pasted their company logo all over the place.  What an odd design choice.  I have to commend the developers on having the guts to do something like this. Other than that, this stage doesn't really stand out other than the lame boss that's a space turtle... still lame, but at least memorable.  Stage 7 returns us to hyperspace and feels like a rehash of stage 4.  The finale is stage 8.   You have to battle through a gauntlet of enemies that have ricocheting shots before coming to the final boss of the game that's looks like a giant single-celled organism.  You shoot away its cytoplasm before taking on the nucleus.  This part is so frustrating because there are these lightning quick orbs that move to block all of your shots.  If you don't have the laser or charge shot, you're done for because you can't land anything on the boss' weak point. I really hate when games do this. Why would you give me all these options to play in the style that I want and then penalize me at the ending of the game for not using the EXACT item you want?  Give me a clue or something.  You work super hard to make it this far, and then the game pulls a switcheroo and changes up the rules on you.  It wasn't fun when they did it in Ghosts 'n Goblins and it isn't fun here either. After finishing the game I had my fill.  I was very close to 1 credit clearing the game on Easy mode (default in U.S. version), but had to use a couple of continues at the end. 

While I loved the atmosphere of the first stage, the rest of the game just sort of fell flat.  Most of the enemies were just organic blobs with little to no definition, the gameplay mostly consisted of trying to avoid colliding with stuff, the music was bland and forgettable, and dying makes it too difficult to recover your powerups and make progress.  The extremely draconian length of the game is the final nail in the coffin and relegates this one to the generic shooter pile. It's never fun to spend 55 minutes rehashing the same stages you've played over and over flawlessly just to have another attempt at a tricky part. Yes, I know this is usually the game cycle for a shmup... but then again, most shmups aren't an hour long. I would only recommend this one to huge shmup fans as playing through it wears on your patience.  The cool set pieces help out a bit, but don't bump this one up to a must play.

Final Status: Beaten

Score: 6/10 (A little good)

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