Guerrilla War
Arcade
I was a child of the 80's and I had family members that bowled. As a result, I often frequented bowling alley video game arcades. I had two favorite genres of games. There were the Ninja Turtles style side scrolling beat em ups. And then there were the over the top, non stop carnage type shooters. I played nothing else until Mortal Kombat and Lethal Enforcers came along in the 90's and broadened my horizons.
But before they came along, one of my favorite games was Guerilla War. Whenever I would see this machine, I would get excited and pump my quarters into it. I wasn't very good at the game, however. And seeing as how I was never allotted very much spending money, I never came close to actually beating the game. The 80's went away, this game was replaced by new games in the arcades. Eventually the arcades went away altogether. Guerilla War dropped out of my life, right?
We're going to fast forward in time. We're not going to just hit the fast forward button, we are going to stop the VHS tape and THEN fast forward it so it goes extra fast. I have not even so much as thought about this game in years. If I didn't see it on sale on the Playstation Network for $1.80, I may have never thought about it again.
When I saw it on sale - and for so cheap - there was never any question in my mind. I was going to buy this game. And that was that.
Seeing as how it has been so long since I had last played this game (at least 20 years) it took a while for it all to come back to me. I knew what type of game it was. I knew I liked it. I knew you played as a soldier in the jungle and you shot enemy forces. But beyond that, it was like playing it again for the first time.
There is a story line, but I didn't pay it much attention. There is a war. You are a soldier. You must traverse the enemy island rescuing hostages and shooting bad guys. At the end, you must kill the evil dictator responsible for this whole mess. Pretty basic stuff.
The game starts out with you getting dropped by a helicopter onto an enemy beach. The perspective of the game is overhead/slightly over your character's shoulder. You make your way off the beach and into the jungle. You can do three things in this game - you can move, you can shoot, and you can throw grenades.
Grenades are mainly there for destroying barriers and tanks. They also come in handy during boss battles. Mainly you will be firing your regular gun. The gun you start out with has a pretty limited range. The bullets only travel about half the length of the screen. As a result, you have to get fairly close to your enemies to kill them. Over the course of the game you get gun upgrades. These upgrades change the appearance of your shots into fireballs or lasers, which is good because these are wider and can cause more damage than your regular piddly little pea shooter. Some of these upgrades will fire through walls, which comes in handy. Other upgrades will destroy things you normally need grenades for, such as tanks and barricades.
Gameplay consists mainly of running "up". You shoot bad guys. You blow down barricades. You can rescue hostages for points. But if they get hit, whether by you or by the enemies, they die. When I first started playing the game I tried to rescue all the hostages, but I quickly discovered that it wasn't really worth the effort. Yeah you can get points, but you are probably going to get killed in the process of trying to save them. And then you lose said points.
The game play is not very varied. Expect to shoot a lot and die a lot. Every once in a while things get changed up and you can enter a tank. The tank is useful in the sense that it can take more damage than your standard "get hit once and die" mode while on foot. You can also run over enemy soldiers, which is nice. Simply touching them on foot kills you, which is irritating. I always liked getting into the tanks. It is like riding a dragon in Golden Axe. You know you are not going to have it very long, but it is still pretty cool while it lasts.
The game overall is just very, very hard. Your character moves very slowly, and there is often so much coming at you at once that it is impossible to dodge all of it. Certain boss battles consist of just standing in front of the boss and mashing the fire button. You simply have to accept the fact that you are going to get killed a lot. It is no wonder I never made it past the first stage in the arcade. Just playing it at home, I must have died and had to continue at least 6 or 7 times simply making it through the first level. At 25 or 50 cents a pop, this game would have wracked up a small fortune from you if you were to play through the whole thing in the arcade. I believe there are 5 or 6 stages in the game. I probably died, like I said, 6 or 7 times a stage. Some particularly hard stages - probably more than that. It would easily cost you ten bucks at least to make it through the game in the arcade.
Luckily I didn't do that as a kid. It took me a while to figure this out, but the home version of this game tries to emulate the arcade version as closely as possible. Hitting the triangle button is like putting a token into the arcade machine. So if you want to continue, you have to hit triangle and THEN start. The first few times I attempted to play through this, it wouldn't let me continue when I would die and the timer would run out. And then I'd have to start from the beginning. It was pissing me off, to be honest with you. But I figured it out.
Also, because arcade game screens are so big, the game does funny things with the picture and kind of condenses it down and zooms in so you can't see as much of what is happening. Again, like with the whole token thing, this is something not explained when you first start playing the game. Often enemies would pop up on the edge of the screen right in front of me and kill me before I would have a chance to react. I didn't know that the picture had been altered, so I kept playing on. It wasn't until I got to the game's final boss that I knew something was wrong.
The evil dictator that you have to kill is on the rooftop of his villa, surrounded by turrets that rain death from above. But with the picture so zoomed in - you can't see the dictator. You can't see the turrets. All you see is the villa, and if you get too close to it bombs drop from the sky and kill you. There is literally nothing to shoot at, nothing to do. After ten minutes of experimenting and running around shooting at nothing, I finally looked up the final boss battle online. I thought that the game had glitched because all the walk throughs I was looking at described something I wasn't seeing.
I paused the game to exit out to the beginning, when I noticed a setting to change the screen dimensions. I changed it to the classic arcade view. Sure things were a little zoomed out. My character was smaller, and the picture now looked very elongated and awkward. But now I could see everything. I could clearly see the boss and all the turrets on the roof of the building, and I was able to finally kill him and complete the game. I could only think how much easier the whole game could have been from this view. I could actually see enemies and obstacles coming before it was too late to do anything about it.
I went back and played the first two levels for shits and giggles - and yes it was a lot easier being able to see everything. Why this is not the default setting, I have no idea.
The game itself is very short. You can beat it in a half hour easily. I had mentioned that the game was difficult, which is true. You die a LOT. But due to the fact that you have unlimited continues for the home version, the game never really feels too overly frustrating. I can only imagine trying to play this to completion in the arcade though. My god, I would have started pulling my hair out.
There is a two player option for this game, but seeing as how I am pretty much a lone wolf in my household when it comes to gaming, I never got the chance to play with anyone. I can imagine that its a lot more fun with multiple people.
At $1.80, was it worth the money? For sure. I got to relive a little bit of my childhood and fully explore a game that fascinated me when I was younger. It kept me entertained for a good hour or so. I doubt I will come back to this game anytime soon, however. The premise is too simplistic and there really isn't much replay value here. Maybe if I can find someone to play two player mode with me, I will.
Does the game live up to my memories of it? Not really. I can see why I would like this game as a kid. The graphics were good for its time, the game play was fast and furious. But my tastes have evolved since I was a preteen little snot running around in 1980's arcades with a pocketful of quarters. While offering up a nice little helping of nostalgia on a plate, the game didn't really do a whole lot for me. Like I said, I put in my hour, and now I am good. It's not a bad game. But seeing how I barely scraped the surface of it as a kid it doesn't really carry any sentimental weight with me.
I'm glad I finally got to explore this game to its fullest. 7 year old Danny boy can finally rest in peace. That's basically all I am taking away from this experience. I'm sure if I was reviewing this in the 80s I would have given it an A++. But now, I have seen bigger and better things from video games and this game left little to no lasting impression with me.
Overall:
C-
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