Tower of Guns (PS4) Review

Tower of Guns (PS4) Review

Release Date: 4 March 2014

Date Played: 29 November 2021

Tower of Guns is one of those games that jumped onto the rogue-lite train back in the middle of the 2010s.  It seemed like every indie game that was being released back then had to worm its way into that category in order to grab a little hype or be relegated to the forgotten games purgatory every developer fears. Being a huge fan of rogue-lites I'm not one to complain. Several of my favorite games of all time are rogue-lites and I find them engaging and really like their mechanics. In case you didn't know, rogue-lites (or rogue-likes) are games that take inspiration from the old-school ASCII game, Rogue, and have similar features like randomized levels, items, weapons, enemies, and stats that reset every time you start over with a new game.  Often they also have a perma-death mechanic where if you die, you lose all progress and have to start from scratch each time.  Rogue-lites tend to be less severe with these mechanics and incorporate unlockable skills, items, and abilities that can be collected in a new run to give you an edge.  Yes, each run is new, but the pool of items available to you gets stronger each subsequent time you play.  I think this more forgiving spin on the "rogue" formula really helps with the frustration of losing your progress and gives even "failed" runs a sense of progression.  After a crushing defeat it's a lot easier to pick up the controller for another run knowing that you might be able to grab that awesome weapon you unlocked last time you played.

Grip Games, the developer of Tower of Guns, decided to take these mechanics and combine them with the twitch based first person shooter genre to create something that hadn't really been seen previously in the glut of 2D rogue-lites that were saturating the market. It steps away from the side scrolling action games, dungeon crawlers, and strategy games that dominated the genre and instead opts for intense and twitchy gameplay like Quake or Unreal Tournament to get its point across. Does it succeed?

Not really...  The first give away that Tower of Guns may not be a top-tier game is that it was published by Soedesco.  To me, they are the current equivalent of LJN publishing from the NES days.  Almost every game I've played that they published felt like a total cash grab and is usually a warning sign to stay far away. Their games are full of  all of the hallmarks of a budget title with subpar gameplay, cheap graphics, bugs, and unoptimized performance.   Unfortunately, Tower of Guns is no exception.  While the game does control well and is thankfully bug free, it doesn't offer much more to entice you to sacrifice your time to it.

You begin each run by selecting a gun with a silly name like "Peas 'n Carrots" or "Portable Pizza Oven."  At first, there are only these two guns to choose from, but as you make more and more progress with your runs, you can unlock eight more to round out the arsenal.  In addition to this, you also select a perk to give you a little bonus (or hinderance to your gameplay).  These range from things like starting with a triple jump, negating fall damage, etc.  There are plenty to unlock and they can drastically change the game. Also, there are several modes of gameplay available from the onset like Endless mode where you keep looping the game until you die, Dice Roll, where you get a random effect applied to you in every room, Hotfoot, where the floor is lava, and several more that change up the gameplay.  After you select this loadout, you dive right into the game and set out to defeat the titular Tower.

You'll notice that the art style of the game relies heavily on cell-shaded graphics with a gritty industrial look to them.  This can often been a wise choice when playing a game because this graphical style tends to hold up well over time and not look so dated years down the road. You can feel that this was the developer's intention and they really wanted people to play this game for years without it showing it's age.  And, just like the rogue-lite gameplay bandwagon, they also jumped on the cell-shaded graphical bandwagon. Ironically, once all developers learned this, it seems like it was a feature of every game for about a decade and in hindsight seems to date the games even more from that time period rather than guard them against the aging graphics they all so desperately feared.  Anytime I see a cell-shaded FPS game these days, I feel like I'm playing something from 2010... and I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. Not that that's a bad thing, per se.  It's just that what once made something stand out from it's peers soon began to make it blend in with the crowd.  Other than the cell-shaded graphics, the Tower of Guns also relies on a cartoony and exaggerated art style that give a bit of a whimsical feel and serves the tongue-in-cheek attitude the developer was aiming for. This kind of clashes with the gritty and metallic look of everything and makes the game a bit harder to take seriously.  In my opinion, a bright and colorful aesthetic would have suited the game much better and helped it stand out from it's peers. 

As for the gameplay, it's pretty basic.  You enter into the Foyer, which almost always serves as the first floor of the tower.  Each floor is populated by a handful of rooms that you have to traverse in order to progress.  These rooms act like a series of gauntlets that give the game an arena-shooter feel.  You'll have to run, dodge, strafe, hop, and shoot your way through each progressively tougher room.  The sheer number of enemies and bullets can often be overwhelming and comically over the top.  Some rooms will have upwards of 350 enemies in them and you can get swarmed and cornered pretty easily.  Luckily, you don't always have to kill them all and can instead sprint for the door to the next room, shoot it to unlock it, and then dive into the next arena.  As you kill enemies, they will drop coins, healing items, gun XP, active item fuel, and the occasional stat increase.  The gun XP serves to level up your weapon (to a max of 5) to give you a bit more firepower.  Getting hit causes you to lose gun XP, so you'll want to stay on your toes and try to avoid getting hit as much as possible.  With the crazy amount of bullets and enemies flying around the levels, this isn't exactly and easy task and you'll need to have quick reflexes to mitigate all the damage coming your way.  The stat upgrades you find can be what makes or breaks a run.  These include things like adding an additional jump height, armor, damage up, luck up, xp increases, and more.  Collecting these is essential and you'll need to get lucky with what drops as well as have some decent skill to string together a successful attempt. You'll also encounter items to purchase for the coins you've collected.  These are usually great and you'll want to grab as many of them as possible.  This is usually easier said than done as the "shops" are hidden in difficult to reach areas or tucked away out of sight.  Keep an eye open, or you'll miss them.

As a sort of cruel joke, the developers decided to include a Difficulty UP stat increase to buff your enemies.  Picking up one of these can often kill a run and derail your attempt.  With all of the chaos going on during the game, it's quite easy to accidentally grab one of these as your trying to collect all of the items that drop from your fallen enemies.  Honestly, It's very frustrating and caused me to fail an attempt that was otherwise going extremely well up to that point.  These feel like the developers are giving you a big middle-finger as an insult and the game would have been much better without them. In a fast paced game like this, you want to keep moving and grabbing all the items the enemies drop before they disappear.  You can't do this and focus on killing the copious amounts of baddies when you have to constantly be on the lookout for a powerup that serves no purpose other than to troll you when you accidentally grab it. Yes, I know these sorts of items are found in lots of other rogue-lite games.  But, it doesn't suit this sort of gameplay well and detracts from your enjoyment rather than giving you some sort of crazy item that you have to make due with. It doesn't add a challenging mechanic, or wavy shot, or some other effect that throws a wrench into your gameplay but is potentially able to be overcome. Often these items have the chance to have crazy synergies in other games that can make a memorable and extremely fun run in the right circumstances.  That's not the case here.  Tower of Guns has no synergies I've seen and this item only makes the enemies take more damage and deal more damage.  It's a lazy item and shouldn't be in the game.  

After clearing a floor, you'll face off against a giant boss that is, just like every single other enemy in the game, a combination of gun barrels and spikes.  They usually involve the same strategy of strafing around and avoiding their shots while blasting them away.  Often, they are pretty cool looking and can have some interesting mechanics to them; but after a few runs, they all seem to blend together.  Once you kill one of these bosses, they'll drop an active item that you can use.  Unfortunately, these are usually quite underwhelming and often have a very narrow usage like insta-killing a specific type of enemy or making you shoot faster but be unable to move. Sadly, each time you grab one of these active items, it replaces the previous one.  So, each time you kill another boss, you only get a new choice of item rather than adding another item to your arsenal and getting stronger. As for the repetitive nature of the bosses, the same can be said of the general enemies in the game.  They are usually just turrets that fire different projectiles at you, floating enemies that home in on your location in large numbers to point-blank shoot you, or some form of tank.  It's only slightly funny that everything is a gun, because it is a Tower of Guns, after all.  But, I think the game could benefitted greatly by adding some additional variety rather than put all of it's money on the meme-like nature of the everything is a gun concept.

Eventually, you'll fight your way up to the top of the tower and face off against a final boss.  This takes about an hour to complete and each run usually gets a lot easier as your progress and collect more and more upgrades... if you make it that far.  The game could use some more balancing and you'll either find yourself very underpowered and don't make much progress.  Or, you'll be so overpowered that the game feels like it has no challenge at all and you'll just blow through room after room with little effort. Even then, though, you never feel... awesome.  I think part of the issue with making the player never feel empowered is a result of the guns themselves.  They don't really feel substantial or exciting and usually have very slow shot speed.  It's very frustrating to fire a gun and see the bullet slowly move towards its target for several seconds only to have the mark mindlessly move out of the way at the last second.  I almost always felt like the guns were working against me instead of for me and I was finding myself having to get right up in the enemy's face to make my shots connect.  This, of course, led to me taking additional damage.

As for the story, there really isn't much to say.  Every run, I guess you're playing as one of several characters that's trying to ascend the tower for some sort of revenge purpose.  The dialog is not very interesting and it's difficult to keep track of what the character is saying anyway due to all the busy chaos going on during gameplay. I mostly ignored it, honestly. It's nice that the developer tried to put a little effort (though poorly executed and misplaced) into the game to give it some sort of flair.  But, that effort could have been better spent elsewhere.  To pair with the lackluster story, we're also given a very lackluster soundtrack of mostly drones and ambient sounds.  It stands in stark contrast to the high intensity gameplay and really brings down the overall energy of the experience.  The game really could have done with some pumping and catchy music to keep you engaged during the countless attempts the developer intends for you to play.  It's a huge letdown and was a grievously missed opportunity.

So, what's my final conclusion.  Tower of Guns is a good idea that is just executed poorly.  It's not really a bad game, it's just very boring and unimaginative.  I don't even know how you go about creating a game that has hundreds of bullets firing at you from all angles while you dodge and move out of the way (all while returning fire) and yet still makes the experience feel...deflated.  All of the levels of the tower and all of the enemies look and act the same. You'll encounter the same enemies in the last room of the game that you encounter in the first room. There are probably 12-15 enemies that are just recycled for the entire duration and it's very noticeable before very long. Also, The guns feel weak and unfun to shoot and the upgrades are usually underwhelming.  The unlockables you get for your loadouts feel uninspired and too familiar.  And finally, the graphics, art style, and music are too derivative of things gamers have seen over and over again that it's almost impossible to describe without saying something like, "Imagine Borderlands but with no characters."  All of this just adds up to an underwhelming experience that really isn't worth more than a couple of hours of fun at most.  After you've conquered the tower for the first time, it feels like you've seen everything the game has to offer... and that's the worst thing a rogue-lite could possibly do.  

Final Status: Beaten 

Final Score: 5/10 (Mediocre)

 

Task Force Kampas (PS4) Review

 

Task Force Kampas (PS4) Review

Release Date: 29 February 2019

Date Played: 20 November 2021

Task Force Kampas is a vertical shmup developed by Casiopea Wave (great name by the way) and published by East Asia Soft.  Since I consider myself a huge fan of the genre, I knew I had to grab this game when it was released physically for the PS4.  Luckily, I didn't have to wait very long to play the game (which isn't usually the case with my gigantic backlog) and was bouncing with anticipation to dive in.  You can tell right from the onset that the developers know what they're doing when it comes to evoking a strong retro aesthetic.  Whether it's from the throwback style gameplay of a shmup, from the pixilated graphics with a colorful 80's color scheme, or from the awesome new/synthwave soundtrack, Task Force Kampas comes out with all guns blazing and really hits the mark.

After booting up the game, you're greeted by a beautiful 16-bit inspired title screen.  Selecting play will take you to the character select screen to chose from 1 of 3 starting characters that all have a slightly different strength for your style of play.  Midori begins with an extra bullet in her spread shot, Psychobaby begins with a narrower but more powered up supershot, and La Yaya has more HP.  The two unlockable characters have some interesting gimmick upgrades that make them serve as the hardest and most powerful character respectively.  I won't spoil them for you, but you'll definitely want to spend some extra time with these two. All of the characters, except for one, seem feasible for getting a clear in the game and you can have a lot of fun playing with them all.

Once the game begins , you'll see your character sprite zipping around the screen with a glorious vapor trail behind them.  Although the character sprite isn't very impressive, the vapor trail gives them a nice touch that I've not seen before.  Unfortunately, all of the 5 characters share the same sprite design and are only pallet swaps of each other. This was a bit of a missed opportunity to add some more flavor into an already spicy game. Immediately, you'll start seeing meteors, eyeballs, rockets, spaceships, and a handful of other enemies begin to bombard you by raining down a hail of bullets or by crashing into you.  There are only a few enemies in the game and they are repeatedly used throughout the game's very short 3 stages.  There are no set patterns or waves in the game and all enemy placement is randomized, so this game is all about your skill reacting to what's being thrown at you.  The bullets themselves always fire directly down, so you'll have to bob and weave through them rather than bullet herding or tap dodging your way through the assault like in a standard shmup. You'll also notice the background is almost always entirely black with the occasional tiny planet scrolling by. At first, I thought this was lazy game design, until I realized you really need a solid background to be able to make heads or tails of all of the chaos on the screen. This chaos is only intensified by a very severe and noticeable screen shaking effect that occurs anytime a bullet of yours collides with an enemy.  For almost the entire playthrough, you're going to be experiencing this constant jostling. Luckily, it doesn't really detract from the gameplay and serves to ramp up the intensity whole experience. I actually really liked the effect and think it brings a lot to the game. The play control is very fluid and responsive and the game runs at a nice framerate.  Your character is a bit chunky and it can be difficult to squeeze your way through some of the denser bullets in the game, but it never feels impossible.

As for the gameplay itself, it's about as basic as it comes.  You hold down a button to shoot and you can also dodge.  That's it.  As you kill enemies, your shot will upgrade itself to become more powerful.  You can track this by the gauge on the right bottom of the screen.  Opposite from this on the bottom left is the health gauge.  Taking a hit from an enemy will deplete the gauge and give you a few seconds of invulnerability.  After this refractory period wears off, your health will regenerate as long as you're not firing.  This can be quite dangerous because the screen can fill up with enemies very quickly.  So, it's a measure of risk vs. reward if you want to try to refill the health bar.  One of the neater aspects of the game is that after you lose half your life, the graphics of the game darken and look even more lo-fi.  This not only gives another boost to the cool factor of the game, but serves to alert you that your health is getting low without having to glance over at the health gauge in the middle of all the chaos around you.  Recovery is very possible and you'll quite often use this healing mechanic to your advantage. Dodging piles of bullets and enemies while not firing; all while praying you don't accidentally crash into something just to refill that last little bit of health is where the intensity of the game really shines.  As you kill more and more of this army of foes, little dinosaur tokens called Cocos will appear and float toward the bottom of the screen.  You can collect these for bonus points and for a nice and meme worthy, "Thank" message.  If you collect enough of these little guys, you'll eventually get one as a pet that is tethered to you and follows you around.  This serves as your option and will shoot upward to help you out and can be a real boon when things get tough.  This is especially true when you're not shooting and trying to heal and the only damage output and protection you have is your little friend shooting down the occasional enemy as it tags along behind you.

Halfway through the stages and right before the boss fights you're given the chance to select an upgrade from two choices. These are always randomized just like the levels themselves and you'll never know what you're going to get. There's a double shot which does as described, a super shot that makes your bullets do more damage, and a health upgrade.  All of these upgrades are very useful and can really help you clear the stages.  Unfortunately, for the player, these disappear after defeating a boss and you go back to your basic shot.  The exception to this is the health upgrades which seem to carry over for the duration of your run.  You'll want to focus on upgrading your health as much as possible because the game is very short and builds up intensity quickly.  You need as much health as you can get to survive.  On harder difficulties, 2 hits might give you a game over.  Picking up a couple of health upgrades might get you an entire extra hit and could be the difference between success and failure. As mentioned earlier, the game is only 3 stages long with 3 boss fights.  There are no continues so you're relegated to having to 1 credit clear the game in order to beat it.  After this, it loops infinitely and gets more difficult every time through.  This makes the game feel like more of a score attack where you're trying to see how many points you can grab and how long you can survive.  On each loop you'll face the same handful of enemies as before with no new attack patterns. They just shoot faster, move quicker, and come in larger numbers.  It's a bit of a disappointment and a missed opportunity to add some longevity to the game, in my opinion.  The three stage bosses are very campy and awesome.  First, you'll face the Squid, then the OGGCC (a giant crab), and finally the Marine Mantis.  All of these are very fun and have great attack patterns and designs.  Sadly, they don't seem to get any more difficult or have any additional patterns on subsequent loops or higher difficulties.  Only their HP seems to increase. To shake things up a little bit, there are five different difficulties to the game ranging from Easy all the way to Ultra Extreme.  This helps add a little more to a game that is suffering from a lack of content.    

As for the aesthetics, this game stands heads and shoulders above it's peers.  The art style is very 80s inspired and has a sort of brown, orange, yellow, and pink look to it that is so quintessential to that time period.  If you saw the artwork from this game painted on a van in 1982 it wouldn't feel out of place at all.  It's very nostalgic for me and I love the art direction they went with.  In addition to that, the music is fantastic.  It has a synthwave feel to it that verges right on the cusp of feeling like a new wave song from the 80s and elevates the game even more.  The boss music for the crab is heart pumping and exhilarating and is my favorite in the whole game. The music on the final boss is another standout because it's fully voiced and has some laid back and smooth vocals with a great hook. Surprisingly, the lyrics drop a giant F-bomb several times in the middle of the chorus which makes an otherwise family friendly game receive an M rating.  This is a bit of an odd choice, but you can tell the developers don't really compromise and picked a song that they really love.  

As glowing as this review has been thus far, there are some negatives about this game that keep it from being one of the greats.  Firstly, it's way too short.  You can play through the first loop and basically beat the game in 8 minutes.  Obviously the game is designed to be short and is focused on surviving as long as possible and earning the highest score you can while going through more and more difficult loops.  I watched several people play online and read a few reviews and they were all talking about how difficult the game was and that it would take you a while to make any progress.  They claimed it was, "though as nails," and "hair pullingly hard."  Personally, I didn't find this to be the case at all and was able to clear the game on my second try.  On my third attempt, I bumped up the difficulty to Normal and made it through 3 loops of the game with a high score of 6,804,450.  Then, I cleared it on Hard, Extreme, and Ultra Extreme (2-ALL 4,299,660) in about 35 minutes.  I noticed that I was unlocking a lot of trophies and looked at the list and the only one I hadn't unlocked yet was for dying 5 times.  Meaning, I completed all of the content of the game in half an hour and only died 4 times.  I went ahead and suicided to get that 5th death and unlocked the platinum trophy at around 40 minutes with the game.  So, if you're a trophy hunter, this game is for you. Secondly, there needs to be more enemies as you progress through the difficulties and loops and the other enemies and bosses need to vary their attacks.  The only enemies that ever really felt like a threat were the missiles that cascade down the sides of the screen and home towards you.  If you're too close when you shoot them, they explode and deal you damage.  After several hours with the game, I would say 80% of my deaths were caused by these missiles.  For a game that throws so much at you all at once, it seems very lacking for actual threats.  Finally, although you do unlock some screen filters, a couple of extra difficulties, and 2 extra characters, the game could use more content to work toward.  Everything came way too easily.

So, my final conclusion is that Task Force Kampas is a really fun and awesome game that has a wonderful style; but, is lacking severely in length and content.  Everything about it just needs... more.  The gameplay is addictive, but after clearing 2 loops on the hardest mode without much trouble and unlocking all of the trophies, I felt like I had seen everything the game had to offer.  That's pretty disappointing because I wanted to keep playing. I hope this developer decides to make more shmups because I'm a huge fan of what they did here.  

Final Status: Completed (beaten on hardest difficulty and all content unlocked)

Final Score: 8/10 (Great... but too short)

Dimension Drive (PS4) Review

 

Dimension Drive (PS4) Review

Release Date: 7 December 2017

Date Played: 19 November 2021

Dimension Drive is a vertical shmup developed by 2Awesome Studio that really tries to innovate on the same old formula we've seen again and again in shooters.  They took the tried and true method that has worked for the last 3 decades and threw it out of the window to usher in a challenging and brain melting new concept that is actually more of a puzzle game than a shooter. 

It's the year 6545 and you play as Jack, an orphaned girl from a destroyed planet, who has fled her pursuers by jumping to a different dimension.  These pursuers called the Ashjul are warmongering villains who will only be satisfied by not only conquering the known universe, but ALL universes.  They have recently jumped into the dimension where Jack is currently living and begun their campaign.  Jack, who is armed with a special ship, the Manitcore, that can jump at will between two dimensions sets out to fend off and destroy the Ashjul empire while protecting her friends along the way.  

You may have noticed that I spent more time talking about the story in this shmup far more than I normally do. The reason for this is because the developers have really tried to create a fully fleshed out story with interesting characters.  This, of course, is an oddity for a shmup and is rarely attempted and usually glossed over.  The reason for this is because the story in a shooter often feels forced and serves as nothing more than a distraction from the focus of the game... which is the gameplay.  Unfortunately, this is also the case for Dimension Drive.  Between every stage, we're given an animated series of static screens with dialog in the form of text at the bottom of the screen.  These cut scenes go on for far too long and really feel like more of a nuisance more than anything.  I personally didn't find the character's art style or their personalities to be that engaging or interesting and I eventually lost interest in the plot all together.  If I were to describe it, I would say it has the depth of a Saturday morning cartoon.  

As for the gameplay...  oh, the gameplay.  I'm not going to beat around the bush, I hated almost every second I spent with Dimension Drive.  I don't know if I'm just too stupid to get the hang of the gameplay or if it's just poor design; but, I could never get into the flow of playing this game and eventually rage quit and almost threw my controller.  I'm shocked this happened and I don't remember ever getting this frustrated or angry playing a game EVER.  Now, I'm not the best gamer of all time and never claimed to be. But, in terms of similar games, I have 1 credit cleared Ikaruga, Ketsui, and Mushihimesama Futari (all considered to be some of the hardest shmups ever made) and I never came close to being as frustrated with those games as I was with this one. So, what's the issue with this game? Basically, it's just that the mechanics are so mind scrambling that I could never get the hang of them. Let me lay it all out for you in a way where you can get a glimpse into what it's like to play this game without actually having to play it yourself.  I would never want to subject anyone to such a curse.

The screen is split into 2 separate playfields; one on the right, and one on the left.  You essentially have to play both screens at the same time.  Your ship exists on only 1 screen at any given moment, but the enemies and hazards for both screens are always progressing whether your currently on that screen or not. You press a button to jump from one screen to the other and this is the main mechanic of the game.  The screens don't match and there are different enemies, bullets, and barriers on the two screens at the same time. You have to try to focus on the screen you're currently playing, but you need to be mindful of the other one at the same time because you never know when you're going to have to warp over there. You'll be constantly flipping back and forth between the two dimensions to maneuver your way through the hails of bullets and to sneak around barriers that will cause you to crash. The whole experience is like trying to carry on two conversations at once.  You try to focus on listening intently to one person while also trying to catch the gist of what the other person is saying.  Anyone who's every been to a party an experienced this nightmare knows exactly what I'm talking about. It isn't fun, and no one ever wants to do it. You may ask yourself, "what's stopping you from mainly staying on one side all of the time and ignoring the other side?"  Well, you have an energy gauge that depletes as you shoot. When it's empty, you can no longer fire.  The only way to refill it is by collecting green orbs from fallen enemies or by switching to the other dimension for a little bit while the gauge for the other side recharges. So, if you stay one one side for too long, you're forced by the game to jump to the other side. Having to keep track of this energy bar becomes a huge focus of the game and sucks the life right out of the whole shooting experience.  Luckily, it doesn't even matter that much because shooting the enemies and dodging their bullets isn't really the focus of this game.  Instead, the developers decided to make the meat and potatoes of the game be centered around avoiding walls and other obstacles by having to carefully position yourself in the correct dimension so you can circumvent a collision in the wrong dimension.  This makes the game feel like Velocity X2 , another similar game that had you teleporting around the screen to avoid obstacles.  It, too, felt more like a puzzle game than a shmup and I didn't care for it either.  But, at least in that game, you could focus your eyes on the same screen without having to dart your eyes back and forth to see what's going on like in this game.  Having to deal with teleporting between the two different dimensions was miserable and I didn't like it at all. You're given some shields that negate a few hits from bullets and laser beams, but they don't help when you broadside a wall.  If you want to know what it feels like to do this, toss a ball up and down repeatedly with one hand while trying to type at a keyboard with your other hand.  Keep your eyes focused on the ball while trying to type out the lyrics to your favorite song.  But, every time you type the letter R, you have to switch your eyes over to look at the keyboard for 5 seconds while keeping the ball tossing going and never missing a beat on the keyboard.  Try it, I dare you.

In addition to this, as you progress into the game, you unlock EVEN MORE mechanics that throw additional wrenches into the gears of any fun you may have.  The first of these is the ability to slow down and flip your ship around to shoot behind you.  At first, I thought that this might make things easier and would work like slamming on the breaks before you crash into another wall.  But, instead the game starts adding in this remarkably stupid mechanic of having to shoot switches that are scattered around the levels and that unlock doors blocking your way.  Often you'll be focused on playing in one dimension and you'll come to a dead end where you'll be forced to teleport over to the other side, turn backwards, shoot the switch, turn back round, then teleport back to the other side to continue.  This sort of thing is constantly going on and it's so brain scrambling to me that I was constantly panicking and making careless mistakes. 

Let's talk about these mistakes a little more.  Truthfully, I don't think I EVER died to an enemy or an enemy shot.  Instead I would constantly die by teleporting to the other screen while my ship was in the middle of a wall or something which results in instant death and sends you back to a checkpoint.  Or, I would quite often think I was playing on one screen while I was actually over on the other one and I would accidentally crash into a wall.  Many other times, I would be in the middle of a situation where I'm having to perform a bunch of teleports and ship flips while fending off enemies and I would accidentally press the teleport button instead of the flip button (or visa versa) and crash into another wall.  I could NOT keep the controls straight and I could never get the hang of things.  Even after HOURS of playing this game, I only marginally improved.  Just when I thought I was getting better, the game would throw another new mechanic at me and all of my hard work would be thrown out of the window.  I know there are people out there who really enjoyed this game, but I cannot figure out why. Also, I know there are a lot of people out there that really didn't stick with the game for very long and became just as frustrated as I did.  How do I know this?  Well, after I finished the 5th of 20 stages (just a quarter of the way through the game), I unlocked a trophy for making it that far and only 8% of the people who had ever played Dimension Drive had also progressed up to this point and unlocked that same trophy.  How long did it take me to unlock this trophy?  About 30 minutes. That means that 92% of the people who played this game didn't even make it half an hour into it.  If that doesn't tell you something about how frustrating this game is, I don't know what will.

As for the aesthetics, like I mentioned earlier, have a very Saturday morning cartoon look to them. This is especially true for the still frame cut scenes.  The gameplay itself is pretty uninspired and is just basic 3D models with nothing that really stands out.  There's nothing in terms of visuals to give the game any character and the whole art design falls very flat.  This is in direct contrast to the game's soundtrack which is actually outstanding.  Stages 1-2 and 1-4, in particular, have some rocking and catchy melodies and hooks. It's nice to hear some guitar based music in a sci-fi game instead of the typical EDM music that's been so prevalent recently.  I'm glad the game came with a copy of the soundtrack because I actually want to listen to these songs again outside of the game.  In my opinion, quality of the music is the only positive I have to say about the game. 

I made it about half way through the game before rage quitting.  I got stuck at one spot and I tried over and over to get past it without success.  The problem is that I knew EXACTLY what I had to do to succeed and I just couldn't muster the coordination to do it.  I would keep looking at the wrong screen, accidentally press the wrong button, or brush against a wall causing my ship to explode.  I was frustrated with myself at first, but more and more I became frustrated with the game developers for taking an interesting mechanic and using it in the wrong way.  They should have make the game about timing incoming waves of enemies and flipping back and forth between the screens to keep a chain multiplier going or something like that.  Instead, they turned the game into a puzzle game about positioning and grabbing collectables.  You know the old saying, "easy to learn and difficult to master?"  Well, this game is difficult to learn and difficult to master.  It asks too much of the player too quickly and focuses on the aspects of the game that are frustrating and instead of the ones that are fun.  I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone and would advise you to steer far clear of it.  

Final Status: Played (... and rage quit)

Final Score: 3/10 (miserable to play)

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

 

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (Switch) Review

Date Released: 29 August 2017

Date Played: 18 November 2021

I can't even believe this game was made. I wonder how the meeting was at Nintendo when Ubisoft approached them about using their beloved Mario franchise in a crossover with the Rayman Rabbids franchise to do a turn-based tactical shooting game similar to the Xcom games. I'm surprised Shigeru Miyamoto didn't laugh them out of the room. Nintendo loves to keep most of their Mario game development in house, so handing over their cash cow to Ubisoft seems like a potential disaster. Regardless of how the sales pitch went down, Nintendo greenlighted it and the game actually got made.  Any you know what?  The game is really good and a lot of fun.

Because of their crazy antics and general disregard of decorum the Rabbids have misused a young inventor's newest creation and have accidentally transported themselves to the Mushroom Kingdom.  One of the Rabbids continues to misuse the invention and begins causing havoc everywhere by merging his Rabbid buddies with various objects and characters from the surrounding areas.  Bowser Jr. sees this and decides to kidnap the chaos causing Rabbid and use him for his own evil deeds.

Mario teams up with the usual cast of characters; Luigi, Peach, and Yoshi as well as Rabbid versions of the same characters.  This lively cast then has to set out through 4 worlds to try to save the day. There is very little dialog, but the crazy Rabbids and familiar Mario cast more than make up for any lack of voice acting with their familiar and unique personalities. As Nintendo knows, a lot can be conveyed with a simple twirl and thumbs up.  They are the same characters we know and love and it's very nice to see them in a new and novel situation as well as a different style of game.

The graphics look very... Mario... and are very colorful and bright, just like you would expect.  Playing in handheld mode on the switch lowers the resolution to 720p and locks the framerate to 30fps which is standard, but does slightly detract from the full presentation of the game in docked mode. Still, for gaming on the go you can't complain. Exploring around Peach's castle which serves as a hub area is a lot of fun and there are plenty of secrets to find as well as plenty of humorous and eye catching objects around the scenery.  I appreciated the display on the time travel washing machine that is taken directly from Back to the Future. It's the little touches like this that helps a game stand out. From here you can branch off into each of the four worlds as they become available.  The first is the grassy Ancient Gardens which looks like your standard first area in any 3D Mario game.  After that, you'll be visiting the Sherbet Desert which is a mashup of the standard desert and ice levels you always seem to encounter.  Thirdly, is the Spooky Trails area that brings out the haunted mansion complete with Boos that are another hallmark of the series.  Finally, is the Lava Pit which is exactly like you would expect.  All of these areas are very unique and have a lot of different personality and exploring around them in between the battles is some of the most fun you'll have with the game and serves to give a well needed cool down between the combat portions.  

Of course, magnificent music accompanies you on your journey that range from well know pieces from previous Mario classics to brand new fully orchestrated works that fill in the gaps.  Like you would expect, these are memorable, unbelievably well composed, recorded and mixed expertly, and just add so much to the overall experience that they are basically enmeshed with the Mario franchise by this point. You can't have a Mario game without great music; and this game is no exception.  Even though it borrows heavily from previous games in the series, it presents them (along with the new tracks) in such a deft and mindful manner that it truthfully elevates the game to a new level. On more than one occasion I found myself humming along to the music while I was focused on exploring an area.  This is good thing and shows how well Nintendo understands the importance of a great tune with a catchy hook.

While on the aesthetic side of things, let me discuss the animations of the characters.  All of the standard Mario cast and it's Rabbid counterparts have unique animations and personalities that are manifested by their movements.  Seeing Rabbid Luigi stop, drop, and roll after getting lit on fire is hilarious and so well done.  Rabbid peach being addicted to social media and constantly taking selfies at the worst moments, Mario's jumps and twirls as he lands on an enemy, the way Peach lobs a grenade, and so many other unique touches gives a lot of heart to this game.  I never tired of seeing these and though you can fast forward through a lot of the combat steps to save time, I rarely ever did it because I loved watching the animations of the characters so much.

Ok, so that's a lot about the setting and aesthetics of the game.  What about the gameplay?  I'll come right out and say it.  It's really good and very addictive.  It's broken up into two phases.  Firstly, you explore the areas in the game in typical 3D Mario fashion while solving puzzles, finding hidden areas, taking in the scenery, and collecting coins and other unlockables. As mentioned earlier, these sections are a lot of fun and do a good job of breaking up the repetitiveness of the game. They also add a bit of a platforming feel to the experience and serve as a somewhat familiar component in the game in contrast to the wild departure of the combat phase. I think this was a wise decision and was needed to ground the game and make it feel more like it belonged in the Mario universe. As you are exploring around, you'll come to a battle area where combat will break out.  At this point, the game turns into a grid based tactical strategy game.  You get to chose a team of three characters and you'll take turns moving around the map while taking cover, shooting at your enemies, buffing/debuffing your team, and all the other things you expect in this sort of game. You have special abilities that are on a cooldown that can give you an edge over your foes. Hiding behind different types of cover will give you varying degrees of protection from enemy shots and holding the high ground against your opponents can often give you the advantage you need to win the day. The combat is more simplified than you're normally used to seeing in this sort of game, but it adds some interesting mechanics that give it some remarkable depth. Each character only has a small handful of skills and abilities to aid them. These are all tied to specific characters and there's no real room to change up how a character plays.  If they are designed to be a healer, they're a healer.  If they're designed for a close combat melee character, there's no way to get around that. In addition to these specific skills, all characters whether friend or foe can dash into enemies for a free attack if they are close enough.  They can also bounce of the heads of allies to give them a boost to travel further or to reach a higher elevation. Doing these actions are a huge component of the game and you'll find yourself doing these with every character on pretty much every turn. You'll also have to outmaneuver and flank your enemies to have a chance of winning and having a sound attack plan is essential. As you may have noticed from the peanut gallery of the internet, this game is pretty tough and can be relentless at times.  Often, it feels like you're overwhelmed, or that the enemies are overpowered, or even that you're put in a less than favorable tactical position from the onset.  You'll fail a lot of battles (especially at the beginning) and sometimes you'll have to repeat certain ones several times to succeed.  Luckily, the game takes pity on you and gives you the option to get a heal and health boost before each combat scenario and this can really help and essentially serves as the game's, "easy mode."

In addition to having to master the tactics and mechanics of the game, you'll also need to upgrade each character's skills and weapons.  These can be unlocked overtime and purchased with skill orbs or the coins you collect from exploring the maps and winning battles.  Each character has a different skillset and you'll have to select a good team for Mario to help him best his foes.  I say it like that because Mario (who is pretty much my least favorite character in the game) HAS to be on your team.  So, you're stuck with selecting two other characters to serve along side him.  I find the roles that they have assigned to the different characters to be hilarious.  For example, Peach is a healer (like you would expect), but she also wields a huge shotgun and grenades.  Luigi... is a Sniper.  Rabbid Mario is a chaingun wielding psycho.  It's all very clever and I appreciate what the development team did on this front to inject even more humor into the game. Of course, the bosses are all epic, challenging, and have some really interesting mechanics that evolve over the multiphase battles. They can be quite challenging and you might have to attempt them a couple of times. So, it's really wise for them to have memorable and fun character design so you don't get bored with them or dislike them too much.  Be on the lookout for these bosses because the "Rabbidized" versions of some of your favorite Mario characters make an appearance that is often very delightful.

As you upgrade and unlock more characters... and hone your combat skills, the game does begin to get a little easier.  I found myself smashing through battles with full health and wiping out handfuls of enemies on my first turn towards the last half of the game.  This is in direct opposition to the first half of the game where I was just barely scraping by with only one or two characters barely alive at the end of a battle after failing it previously and having to retry. Knowing that both I and my team were getting better over time was a strong motivator and helped me push through some of those frustrating parts.  I could see someone getting quite irritated with this game and rage quitting.  Sadly, I wish I could tell them to hang in there because it gets better.

As for my final conclusion...

This is a really good and unique game that I would recommend to any fan of turn based strategy or tactical games.  I'm not sure that I would necessarily recommend it to a Mario fan unless they were actively trying to find something different from what they are used to.  It has all of the characters, scenery, music, and personality from a Mario game, but that's where it ends.  The gameplay is just so wildly different that it might be a deterrent for the platforming fans.  Personally, I like the game a good deal but didn't really fall in love with it.  I'm not sure if it was the difficult combat at the beginning of the game or what, but it took me three and a half months to beat this game.  I would play it for a few hours and have a pretty good time with it, but when I turned off my console, I didn't really have a craving to come back to it and sort of had to force myself to load up the game and play it.  Yes, the combat can be a little draconian at times and man would see that as a negative, but I enjoyed having to overcome those challenges and found it refreshing for a game that looks so "kid friendly."  The only negatives I have about the game is that I wish you had more control over your party selection.  I didn't like being forced to use Mario in my party and wouldn't have used him at all if it wasn't required. Also, the co-op mode is locked behind single player completion. Meaning that if you want to play an area in co-op with a friend, you have to finish that area solo first. I wish there had been a separate solo and co-op campaign so you could experience the game with a friend for the first time together rather than your friend having to tag along on an area you've already completed before.  Also, Mario games are typically pretty friendly for children; and while this game doesn't have anything offensive about it, the difficulty may be off putting to some younger kids that want to play. My daughter watched me play and really wanted to join in but couldn't get the hang of how the game works. Other than that, the game was fun and I look forward to seeing what the development team will do with the next entry in the series.

Final Status: Beaten (90% completion)

Final Score: 8/10 (Great)

Sky Jaguar (MSX) Review

 

Sky Jaguar (MSX) Review

Release Date: 1984

Date Played: 11/16/2021

Sky Jaguar was released by Konami back in 1984 in the arcades and ported to a few select consoles.  This is the MSX port of that game that was released that same year.  Personally, I'm not sure how the game did in the arcades or with its console sales (since I was 2 years old when it came out), but I can tell you that the MSX port, while being primitive, is still a lot of fun and addictive.

You play as a plane in a primitive 8-bit vertical shmup.  You'll notice right away that the colorful graphics look very chunky and are reminiscent of Xevious. This isn't a bad thing and makes the game stand out for its time. As with all MSX games, the scrolling is essentially nonexistent and the background moves forward in pretty distracting segments.  If you focus on them too hard, it can mess with your brain a little bit.  So it's better to keep your eyes on the enemies.  When I say focus, I really mean it because a large majority of the enemies will either dive straight towards the bottom of the screen hoping to hit you or will scroll sideways until they spot you and then kamikaze directly towards you while firing off a hail of bullets.  This, and the way the enemies come in waves, reminds me a lot of Galaga.  The screaming sounds as the enemy combatants fall towards the bottom of the screen only helps to make that comparison since it sounds like it was pretty much stolen from Midway's sound engineers.  Speaking of enemies, there are a lot of different types for a game of this era.  Some are simple ships while others are abstract shapes like barbells and triangles.  Some enemies turn invisible and others fire in unique patterns that you have to memorize in order to pass them. It adds some nice variety and learning the enemy behavior is the big draw of mastering the game. Despite the abundance of different types and behaviors, almost every enemy in the game is a popcorn enemy and dies in a single hit.  The difficulty comes from the game throwing more and more enemies at you that also fire more frequently.  

As for the gameplay itself, the game controls well and it's a lot of fun sweeping back and forth taking out the waves of enemies. Since most enemies fire and attempt to crash directly into you, bullet herding is a very sound and effective strategy.  Sweeping back and forth across the bottom of the screen draws bullets and enemies to one side while you juke to the other. Occasionally, an enemy will drop a powerup.  The first of these that you collect will give you a double shot that really helps with aiming and connecting with the bad guys.  The second one you pick up might allow you to fire more rapidly, but it's difficult to tell.  These powerups might be one of the earliest examples of a powerup in any game ever.  I would be curious to know more about that. As for the stages themselves, there really aren't any and the game just continually "scrolls".  The game tracks your progress over time with a rising counter called "scenes"  but these are tied more to the number of waves you complete rather than a individual stage.  That being said, the backgrounds do change as you move along.  At first you're over a city.  Then, you progress through a canyon, a forest, a desert, and the ocean.  At the ends of scene 3 and 8, you'll encounter a fortress to destroy that serves as a sort of boss encounter but these only take a few shots at their weak points to dispatch.  They are also heralded by the only music in the game which is a nice change and is greatly needed in a game with no soundtrack. This music is sinister and really lets you know something big is coming up.  After scene 8, the game loops and has the same enemy patterns and types.  Only their speed and number of shots increases as you finish each additional loop.  

The game can get a little tough and overwhelming after a few scenes and this is especially true if you die and lose your powerups.  Luckily, the game tends to replenish your power ups relatively quickly and it also awards extends at 10k and then every 40k after that.  There are no continues, but you should be able to make it pretty far with a little practice.

Like I said, the game is very primitive but is still a good time even today.  It holds up a lot better than many of its contemporary peers and makes you want to chase a bigger high score every time you play. I would recommend this game to any shmup fan out there.  I think it's a shining example of how to make a game that stands the test of time.  It's also a great example of a really good early attempt at solidifying the shoot-em-up genre.  Konami did well with this and I have to give them a thumbs up.

I was able to make it to about a third of the way through the second loop before getting a game over on my best run so far.  This gave me a score of 105,740 at scene 11.  

Final Status: Completed (1 Credit Cleared / 1-ALL)

Final Score: 7/10 (Good and still fun today)

Cotton 2: Magical Night Dreams (PS4) Review

 

Cotton 2: Magical Night Dreams (PS4) Review

Date Released: September 2021 (PS4 Port)

Date Played: 11 November 2021

I'm not going to beat around the bush.  Cotton 2 is a really fun and unique cute 'em up that is worth your time. It's beautiful, colorful, and not quite like anything else out there. However, this PS4 port is abysmal and has 10 frames of delay and input lag.  It essentially makes the game unplayable in any serious manner.  If you are interested in playing the game and learning its ins and outs, try a better version.

Cotton 2 is the fourth game in the Cotton series.  It is a horizontal shmup and you and your fairy companion have to travel through 7 stages and defeat a ton of bad guys and bosses so you can retrieve some candy or some other foolishness. The story is all in Japanese, but that's what I was able to glean from it.  You're greeted by a cute anime cut scene that shows our witch protagonist becoming frustrated before setting out on her journey.  These cut scenes are also present between the stages as well as the ending credits.  They are well done and suit the whimsical and childish nature of the game very well. It's difficult to know what's happening because I don't speak Japanese, but it looks like your typical frustrated anime girl sort of fare.  I don't really know what else you would expect from this game.

You'll find yourself traveling through a haunted forested area, an old castle, underwater, through a cave, through a spooky swamp, and finally through a chapel before facing off against the main character's arch nemesis.  All of these stages feel very unique, have really good enemy placement and some tense sections, beautiful artwork, and magnificent music.  In terms of presentation, there is nothing bad to say about Cotton 2.  It's one of the most interesting and memorable shmups I've ever seen in terms of it's aesthetic and I have to give the art designers of this game kudos.  It's bright and colorful while maintaining that spooky Halloween vibe.  The graphics have that retro feel from the Sega Saturn era that was so delightfully charming. The excellent soundtrack goes along perfectly with it and is full of memorable and fun themes that will keep you humming along long after you put down your controller (or joystick in my case). 

As for the gameplay, Cotton 2 is a bit complicated (as are most of the Cotton games) when you delve into its mechanics. This is a real surprise because the game looks so childish (for lack of a better word) and many people are caught off guard by it's depth. You have only one life, but that's supplemented by a life bar.  Usually, that's a sign of poor game design, but that isn't the case here.  Enemy patterns are well thought out and routing is as fun as ever.  You fly around on your broom while destroying enemies and trying not to get shot yourself.  All the while, you gather crystals that fall from enemies.  These crystals are differently colored and picking them up determines what type of shot you have.  These range from fire, wind, water, etc. attacks that can really help you on your way.  By pressing the magic button, you are able to discharge your shot into a powerful magical attack.  This can wreak havoc on your enemies, but sadly exhausts your collected crystal and lower your standard shot attack power.  Up to 3 of these crystals can be stored at a time and you'll want to hang onto them until you really need them. I often find myself saving them for the boss fights and using a few of these in a row can shred the boss' life bar in no time.  As the crystals float around on the screen, you can shoot them to make them change colors until you find the one you desire.  If you shoot them several times, they will turn yellow and these crystals can be gathered to increase your level.  Each level will increase your attack power (up to a maximum of 5 levels) and getting hit will cause you to loose some of this shot power.  In addition to this you can also grab enemies when they are close enough and throw them back at their comrads.  This is especially useful in tight quarters or if some enemies take too many shots.  Finally, there are several special attacks you can perform a la Street Fighter controller commands.  These are the standard movements like charge back forward, or quarter rotations, etc.  These can be a little difficult to pull of when things get hectic and you're trying to dodge, but are a nice addition that give the game some flair and help it stand out apart from its graphics and music. At the end of each stage is Tea Time (like all of the other Cotton games) where you collect tea cups the fall from the top of the screen and these increase your score and restore some health.  All of these elements combined together make a really fun and challenging experience that has some great replay value.

As for scoring, it's one of the best parts of the game.  If you do one of the special attacks mentioned above on an enemy and then grab it, you can toss it at enemies and re-catch it to build up a chain.  Each time this counter increases, so does your score multiplier.  It's a ton of fun and it's really cool to see the counter get bigger and bigger. Before long you'll be chaining for large portion of stages and trying to figure out how to keep it going as long as you can.

Cotton 2 is a really fun and addictive game and I would recommend it to any fan of the genre as well as any newcomer.  

As for the PS4 port of the game, it is absolutely terrible.  It has English translations in the menus and some save state and rewind features that are nice additions.  But, apparently this port is nothing more than an emulator running the Sega Saturn version of the game (which already has like 6 frames of lag).  This bumps up the total input delay on the game to 10 frames of lag which is totally unacceptable and practically unplayable for anything other than the most casual player.  There is a noticeable delay on your movement, dodging, firing, and everything else that makes the game feel like it's just not accepting your commands.  You'll get hit and die from an enemy bullet before you even see it appear on screen.  You'll try to do a quick dodge only to see your character sit there for half a second before finally moving. It's an absolute shame what City Connection did when porting this game.  They were extremely lazy in their port job and I would advise anyone who wants to try this game to find a different way to play it.

I was able to beat the game using the continues provided on the easiest mode... just barely.  I was also able to unlock all of the trophies for the PS4.  However, I really wanted to work on a 1 credit clear, but I just don't think it's possible on this version of the game.

Final Status: Beaten

Final Score: 3/10 (because of the botched port job.  Cotton 2 is actually an 8/10 game)

  

Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum (NES) Review

Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum (NES) Review

Date Released: February 1990

Date Played: 10 November 2021

Dash Galaxy is notorious for being an absolutely terrible game.  Time and time again I've seen it on lists of the Top 10 worst NES games and is often mentioned with disdain.  Having a bit of a penchant for playing terrible games, I was actually a little excited to try it out.  The truth is that I've never actually met anyone who has played this game in real life and hoped that maybe all of the hubbub on the internet is more of a meme than reality.  

You play as Dash Galaxy, who is a throwback to the campy sci-fi movies of yesteryear.  Right from the onset the artwork and title screen give you really strong Flash Gordon vibes... and I think that's a good thing for a video game. A little flavor can carry a game a long way and help it overcome some of its faults.  After pressing start you're given a short cut scene of Dash entering a towering rocket ship which I guess is the alien asylum mentioned in the game's title. It looks pretty decent and sets up the game for something that never actually happens. It makes me think that the developers chose "Alien Asylum" for the title because it sounded a lot cooler than Dash Galaxy and the Too Talk Rocket.

Once the game starts, you're not greeted by a high action side scrolling stage.  Instead, you're in an overhead view that is nothing more than a block pushing puzzler. You have to slide these blocks out of the way in methodical fashion to avoid blocking yourself in order to gain access to the rooms scattered around the 25 floors of the asylum.  There are several rooms on each floor and in addition to moving blocks out of the way to reach them you'll also have to disable laser traps and unlock doors to gain access.  When you enter one of these rooms the game turns into a side scrolling collectathon that looks pretty terrible even for an NES game. Dash is oddly proportioned and the color pallet is very muted and everything feels dull and flat. There's very little texture to the sprites and they look more primitive than they should. Once inside, the door shuts behind you and you have to collect all of the blue switches in the area to reopen it.  In addition to that, you are searching for keys, bombs, oxygen tanks, and other items to help you along your way.  Finding these other items are essential to progressing in the game and missing one of them can spell disaster. You can easily find yourself in a position where you can't continue because you failed to find... or wasted one of the bombs. Dash's health is represented by his oxygen level that continually depletes as you play thus giving the game an timer that helps to ramp up the stress level to an uncomfortable level.  Scattered around these rooms are the enemies and obstacles that range from bats, robots, flamethrowers, slides, and other hazards to impede your progress. The enemies usually just slowly roam back and forth and the slides usually only cause you to lose a few seconds of progress and serve more as an annoyance than a real challenge to overcome.  Coming into contact with these objects will cause Dash's oxygen to deplete extremely rapidly and before long, you'll die.  Instead of killing the enemies, or dodging attacks, you'll usually just stand by and wait for them to slowly pass you at a snail's pace as you watch your oxygen deplete anyway.  Also scattered around the levels are trampolines that you have to repeatedly bounce on over and over to build increasing height to get the hard to reach items or to land on a tall platform.  These trampolines are a huge component of the game and you'll spend a large amount of time doing basically nothing while you character bounces up and down while slowly gaining height and as roaming bats slowly fly into you and use up all of you oxygen while you're unable to do anything about it. It's very annoying, and can suck your spirit to play the game after repeated occurrences.  All of this is frustrating, but isn't anything out of the ordinary for a game of this time. At this point, the game feels like many other mediocre platformer of the day; unpolished and clunky, but playable. Unfortunately, nothing is as it seems... and you'll realize from the very first step you take in one of these platforming sections that something is very, very off.

Dash Galaxy has some of the most awkward, floaty, and counterintuitive controls I have ever seen in a game.  When you press the D-pad to move, Dash slowly begins to walk in that direction and after a few steps he will all of a sudden start running at a breakneck pace (I guess that's where he got the name Dash).  It's extremely jarring and it feels like his speed increases by about 300% after a few steps.  Much of the platforming of the game involves timing this speed increase to awkwardly hop over gaps in the floor, from platform to platform, to reach a trampoline, or to avoid an enemy. You'll find yourself constantly careening towards the edge of a pit only to stop right at the edge almost as often as you find yourself accidentally crashing into an enemy, falling of a platform, or missing your target. It feels like you never really get the hang of it.  You'll find yourself constantly trying to tap the D-pad to inch up to what you think is the perfect place to make your leap of faith or backtracking to get more of a running start.  You're never really sure if you picked the right spot to start your run and you have to just pray that your instincts are right. To make matters worse, when you are dashing the height of your jump becomes basically nonexistent and you can only jump to platforms that are on the same level or lower than your current ones. Once again, it feels like you never get used to how this feels and you'll be terrified that you're going to fail every jump that you make this way.  When you're not dashing, holding the jump button causes you to soar almost straight up into the air.  As you slowly fall back down, you'll have to carefully maneuver your character to hit your mark.  There's some strange mechanic where you can't really jump as you're walking and will often have to come to a dead stop, jump, then press forward to clear the gap.  It, much like the dashing mechanic, is difficult to describe without feeling it yourself.  The best way I can word this is that the game feels clunky... and slippery at the same time and I don't recall ever being quite this uneasy having to control my character in a game before. Also, as you walk towards the edge of the screen, your character doesn't stay centered and you'll often find yourself positioned over to one side of the screen and unable to see what's coming up ahead of you.  This will often lead to you not knowing where you're supposed to jump, where items are, or if there's an enemy directly in your path. This is a common occurrence in a lot of subpar NES games so it's not really a surprise to find it here as well.  But having this flaw piled on top of the myriad of other issues only serves to put another nail in the coffin of this disaster of a game. Even after you begin to get a hang of how the game controls you'll encounter many enemies that stand right in your way and you have no choice but to take damage.  When you add the oxygen timer and the ultra repetitive and tense music, Dash Galaxy becomes a recipe for a rage quit.  Still, even with all of these issues, I was fine just plugging along at the game for a while and thought that it was pretty bad, but not as terrible as everyone would have you believe.

After clearing all of the platforming sections of the first floor, I jumped on the elevator and moved on to the second one.  Then, the 3rd, and so forth.  I slowly began to realize that most of these platforming rooms that were giving me fits didn't have any bombs, keys, or other useful items in them and were basically just a waste of time. At first, I thought it was strange that the game is making you clear all of these rooms for no reason before you could progress. Then, around the 5th floor I decided to only clear one room before getting on the elevator to ascend to the next floor.  And guess what?  It worked. I was shocked at this as I realized all of the time I had wasted doing these useless and frustrating rooms.  Realizing that you don't have to do every single room in the game, I decided to not clear any of the rooms on the 6th floor just hopped right back on the elevator... and it worked again. So, you don't have to clear ANY rooms?!?  What is going on with this game? Apparently, you can climb up the asylum without doing any of the rooms. So, I decided to start clearing a few rooms here and there and worked my way all the way up to floor 10.  It wasn't very fun, but it was doable.  Almost half way to the top of the asylum... maybe I can beat this game on my first go.

I tried to hop on the elevator on the 10th floor and it didn't work.  I cleared all of the rooms and still couldn't get on the elevator. Classic...  just like an NES game to put you in a position where you end up not knowing where to go or what to do. It's a tale as old as time and something I've experienced over and over again since I was 5 years old. Back when I was a kid, I would grab a Nintendo Power to help me out, but these days I decided look at an online walkthrough to figure out what I was doing wrong. After watching for a few minutes, I was appalled to learn that you're apparently supposed to find question mark items in certain rooms on specific floors to open warp points to let you skip several levels ahead in asylum.  This is totally fine for a secret or a speed run.  But it turns out that finding these warps is actually REQUIRED TO PROGRESS. If you don't find the warps, the game just soft locks you on certain floors and won't let you go any further.  It also doesn't even have the common courtesy to tell you outright that you've failed. There are no clues in the game or and indicators to know where the warps are without trial and error... and to make matters worse, you have to find EVERY SINGLE ONE of these warps in order to beat the game.  Since the game has no passwords and no save system learning where these warps are located would take a huge amount of time. I can't even imagine the amount of work it would take to slowly learn where these warp points are located. I'm not going to do it.. so I decided to watch someone who did.

As it turns out, once you know what rooms to enter, what items to collect, and where all of the warps are you can beat the game in 10 minutes! What a colossal waste of time. This essentially means this is a 10 minute long game that is padded out with dozens of hours of filler, dead ends, and distractions.  It's not like Super Mario Bros. where you can warp to the end and finish the game very quickly because the levels you skip over do have merit if you decide you want to play them.  In Dash Galaxy, none of the rooms have any merit and the developers not only want, but REQUIRE, you to skip over the content they've made.  They must have known they had a real stinker on their hands.

Where does that leave us, gamers?  It leaves us with a game that is nothing more than an exercise in trial and error.  If you're going to build a game around a mechanic like this, you better make the experience fun and addictive.  Obviously, the developers failed immensely in this task and created an amalgam of bad decisions.  This game doesn't even fall into the, "so bad it's good" category and deserves all of the ridicule it has received over the decades.  The only positives that I can say about this game is that it is an actual game and it does function.  

Final Status: Played (for a few miserable hours)

Final Score: 3/10 (Terrible)

Wings of Wor (Genesis) Review

 

Wings of Wor (Genesis) Review

Date Released: 8 September 1991

Date Played: 11 November 2021

Wings of Wor is a horizontal shmup created by the developer Masaya.  You may know them for their homoerotic themed shmups in the Cho Aniki series.  This game predates them by a couple of years, and although it isn't as off-the-wall insane as those games, there is still a very bizarre, unique, and compelling experience to be had with Wings of Wor.  

You play as a super fit and jacked angel (foreshadowing of things to come in Cho Aniki) who has to fend off an invasion of Heaven by all sorts of insane creatures and bosses.  While the cover art of the game is magnificent and is apparently a commissioned piece by Boris Vallejo (way to go Sega!), the character sprite in game is very flat and not very interesting to look at.  The same can't be said of the game's enemies.  There are dozens of different enemy sprites that range from fish, zombie heads, vampires, spiders, snail men, demons, robots, severed hands, and a ton more that I can't even remember.  It's truly impressive and fits the game's art style perfectly.  The game's aesthetic is such a strange mashup that I wasn't even able to describe it with my own words.  So, I'll use Hardcore Gaming 101's description, "It's a mixture of ancient Greek, gothic horror, steampunk, mixed with bio-horror (like H.R. Giger)."   Wow, that's some variety... and is especially impressive for a 16-bit game.  This mish-mash of different elements helps the game to stand out and is certainly the main contributing element in the game's reputation.

You're greeted on the title screen by our hero posed in magnificent fashion while some awesome fanfare music plays.  As you start the game (easy mode is default... and still brings quite the challenge) you enter the first stage which is a flooded underground cavern.  You'll notice right away several layers of parallax scrolling and detailed scenery.  You'll also notice that the graphics are kind of dark, dingy, and muddy.  I'm not sure if this was intentional on behalf of the developers, but I think it's a bit of a turn off.  Everything is so muted in its colors and brightness, that it's difficult for things to pop out at you and catch your attention.  As you progress through this level, you'll soon encounter an earthquake that causes a nice screen rotation/wobble effect in the game.  It's pretty striking and helps the stage stand out and is a testament to the skills of the developers. They wanted to flex their knowledge of the hardware (flexing will be another feature in their future games) as well as their creative prowess and it shows.  The music for this stage starts off pretty upbeat with lots of horns and fanfare that I think suits the game well. I found myself humming along to this track after my first few times through the game.  After the mid-boss, this music takes dark turn and becomes quite sinister that serves to foreshadow the stage boss which is some sort of steampunk tank with a human face. He's taken down easily and is a good icebreaker to the rest of the game.

The next stage begins with you flying over the surface of the water for a bit before finally submerging yourself into the depths for the rest of the underwater stage.  You'll soon realize that a big graphical feature of this game is scenery in the foreground.  There are large columns of algae that obstruct your view and you'll soon notice that bullets and enemies tend to get lost in the scenery.  You'll also notice that the stage tends to drag on and on with large sections of popcorn enemies where nothing really happens.  Fortunately, the stage ends with my favorite boss of the game.  A ship sails into the screen and you have to attack the figurehead on the front of it to bring it down.  After that, the whole ship rises to reveal that it's actually the hat of a giant pirate that was waiting below the water.  Blast him in the face until he's no more and celebrate a victory well earned.  Super cool.

Stage 3 has you entering a gothic castle with gargoyles, vampires, statuettes, ghost knights, and all other manner of spooky foes.  The music that accompanies this stage is baroque through and through and is by far the best music in the game. I would love to whistle along to this, but that can be quite the challenge.  It's not so easy to bring out the elegance of contrapuntal organ, harpsichord, and strings by blowing air across your lips. I really do love how this track changes  the atmosphere of the game and brings it around to the gothic horror style. Hopefully the music will keep you entertained while you once again notice that the stage goes on for far too long and you'll keep heading down several long corridors that look exactly the same as you ascend to the top of the stage. You'll finally meet the steampunk boss who is another giant head (I'm noticing a theme) and you'll have to dispatch him while avoiding a barrage of bullets and puffs of almost impossible to see smoke.  He feels a lot like the stage 2 boss, but less interesting and more annoying.

Stage 4 takes place in a steampunk factory and begins with a fast paced section where you have to maneuver down tight corridors (much like the similar stages in Gradius).  The music here is upbeat and has some really fun clapping sections that I enjoyed.  After this speedy section, you'll come to almost a crawl as you shoot your way through wave after wave of fast moving enemies and ground units.  Once again, there are pipes and structures in the foreground that obscure a lot of enemies and shots and resulted in quite a few deaths on my part.  The boss of this stage is the most frustrating in the game and is a dismembered body that sprays a large amount of red blood cells into the air for you to dodge.  His heart is his only weak point and it floats behind him and is impervious to damage until it decides to dart out.  After you finish him off, it's time to move on.

Stage 5 takes place in some sort of giant body.  The entire stage has a wavy background that is a cool effect.  The ceiling and floor also bring back the effect from the earthquake of the first level and makes the whole screen look like it's undulating and pulsing.  It's pretty cool, but can get distracting before too long.   There are also once again obstructions in the foreground (red blood vessels this time) that really obscure a lot of bullets (mostly red to blend in with the surroundings...) and fast moving enemies that appear from behind, above, below, and sometimes from nowhere.  The music in this level is nothing to write home about, and the stage goes on forever.  I timed it, and it was around 9 minutes... which is way, way too long.  It's either very boring, or overly intense and could have used some more balance. The boss of this stage is... um.... notorious for being a giant bald man with a huge, mutated, and monstrous...umm  genitalia... that covers the entire bottom portion of the screen.  It's once again a fitting precursor to the Cho Aniki series and I have no earthly idea how this got by the censors at Sega during the early 90s.  Blast him in the face until he's no more.  I got to this stage without ever getting hit many times, only to die 9 times on this stage alone... and then used 5 continues and still couldn't beat it.  After a few rounds of practice, I was able to clear it regularly with only a couple of deaths.  It's an annoying stage and is my least favorite in the game.

Moving on to the final stage, you'll find yourself flying through the clouds with gorgeous rays of light beaming down in the background.  You'll also note that there is a pretty large blanket of clouds on both the top and the bottom in the foreground that obscure about a third of the screen... sigh.   This whole stage is a boss rush of the game's mid-bosses.  I actually really like this with the exception of one thing.  They bring back the final boss of stage 4 and when he lobs up his bunch of red blood cells, they are obscured terribly by the clouds in the foreground and you can't see where they are coming from.  I was never able to get passed this boss without dying several times and it was extremely frustrating to not be able to see what you're doing. It got on my nerves pretty badly and made me want to quit the game. After this, you meet the final boss who is a giant embryo... and a giant disappointment.  He really only does one thing; spewing out orbs that randomly float around the screen.  You have to maneuver between around 12-20 of them at any given point while keeping constant damage on the boss who can only be hit about once every 8-10 seconds.  The boss never changes up his patterns and it's just a long battle of attrition until he falls. Like most of the stages, it takes far too long and you'll be begging for it to be over. Then, the credits roll and it's time to play through the game again on a second and harder loop.

As for the gameplay, it's normal for a horizontal shmup.  You collect blue orbs which increase your shot spread and red orbs which increase your firepower.  You can also collect feathers that increase your speed but be careful not to get too many of them, or it's too difficult to dodge accurately and will lead to you crashing accidentally into a wall, enemy, or stray bullet. There are also orbs that can change your forward shot from a spread to a focused attack with some upward and lower defense and even a rare forward and backward facing shot.  Having the correct type of shot is essential to your survival and luckily the game seems to provide the correct type of shot when you need it. You're given no bombs in this game and instead are able to collect different magic scrolls to aide you.  You can collect up to 3 scrolls at any time and you activate them by pressing the A button.  These range from lightning bolts, guardian angels, homing attacks, ground attacks, and more.  They all have limited ammunition and if you happen to collect more than 1 of the same scroll at the same time, it will increase its ammunition and effectiveness.  These magic attacks are sometimes essential to finishing a level unscathed, but more often than not are pretty much useless and you end up ignoring them.  Also to help you on your way are extends every 200k points and secret 1Ups hidden around some of the levels.  I was able to find one of these in stage one right before the mid-boss, and 2 of them in stage 4 during the speedy section.  They were essential to my success and I wonder if there are more hidden around the rest of the game to help you out.  There is some slight Gradius syndrome to the game where when you die and power down, it can be quite difficult to overcome the strength of the enemies.  But, it isn't nearly as bad as a lot of shmups out there and with enough practice you should be able to succeed even after dying a few times.  There are an abundance of powerups in the game and recovery is usually pretty painless.  Scoring is pretty straight forward and basically hinges on just grabbing as many powerups as possible. 

So, there's an overview of the game.  How do I feel about it?  Well, it has some awesome style and is super unique in its design.  This is especially true of the huge amounts of enemy models and various bosses. The graphics are pretty outstanding if a little muddy and muted and really have that "Genesis" feel to them.  The music is frequently outstanding but can get a little unmemorable on some tracks.  It also has some scratchy sounding midi samples...but isn't that what you're supposed to expect from a Genesis game?  The powerup system is well thought out and fun and I enjoyed it immensely.   The game controls well and it a lot of fun to play.  If you left it at that, this would be one of the best shmups on the Genesis, honestly.  But, the game is brought down... way down by some glaring issues.  Firstly, the levels are way too long and drag on, and on, and on.  There are whole sections where not much happens and you can just sit in one spot and hold down the fire button and nothing will touch you.  Some of these stages are around 10 minutes long, which is insane.  The whole game clocks in at around 45-50 minutes and I fell like that should be shaved down to around 30 minutes or so.  Secondly, the scenery in the foreground constantly blocks your view of the enemy bullets and the enemies themselves.  I'm guessing 80% of my deaths came from not being able to see what was going on by these obstructions.  They appear in pretty much every stage and while they do add some nice atmosphere, they are a marked detriment to the gameplay.  The game is often  a test of attrition rather than skill.  Very rarely will the game actually force you to dodge difficult patterns and rather relies on throwing hidden stray enemies and bullets at you in the hope of "sucker punching" you.  Instead of routing and learning intricate patterns in the levels, the game just throws slightly annoying patterns at you until it gets lucky and brings you down.  With the extremely overlong lengths of the stages, the game has lots of chances to get lucky with these shots and will inevitably succeed.

These two problems bring down what is otherwise a really good, fun, zany, and unique experience with a great premise and awesome atmosphere to a frustrating and middling shmup that is still worth playing, but isn't worth putting in a lot of time to master.  I was close to being able to get a 1-credit clear on the default settings, but would always have my runs derailed by an obscured bullet.  In the end, I settled for simply beating the game and decided to move on to something new.  

Final Status: Beaten (very close to 1CC) around 1million high score.

Final Review: 7/10 (good... with 2 huge flaws)