Thursday, November 25, 2021

Re-Review #15: Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
PlayStation


For my original review of this game, click
>HERE!<


I really had no intention of revisiting Resident Evil 3 anytime soon, but on my RetroPie I noticed that there was a Dreamcast version of the game. I fired it up on a whim, wanting to see if there were any major differences that set it apart from the PS1 version. Spoiler alert: there aren’t. Which is why I’m treating this as a re-review of the PS1 game. I guess there is one difference, but I would say it is minor. When you start a new game, you are offered a variety of different outfits to pick from. I ended up picking the classic Resident Evil 1 Jill outfit.

Looking back on my original review, I think I was a bit too harsh on this game. But in my old age I think I’ve finally accepted RE3: Nemesis as a good Resident Evil game. It’s better than Zero. It’s better than Code Veronica. I’d say of the classic games, it is only behind 1 and 2. Some of my original complaints I still agree with. I’d have loved to see multiple scenarios like in Resident Evil 2. Or even different playable characters to pick from that offered a slightly different quest each time you played. Resident Evil 3 is the first game in the series, from my recollection, to only give you one way to play the game. True, there are different paths or different decisions you can make that give you slightly different results mid-game, but what happens with the base story remains unchanged.




I have to say, after recently playing both Zero and Code Veronica – those games, while good, don’t match the classic feel of the original like this one does. As I played through Nemesis, I just kept thinking – man this game is SO good. I definitely didn’t appreciate it properly on past playthroughs. I gave it a C on my original review? That feels so blasphemous to me now. This is a very good game.

It’s definitely going to score a lot higher than a C this time around. I’ve been thinking lately of going through every game I have re-reviewed and coming up with an average score between the two. So if I give this game a B+ (which I’m gonna do), then the game’s average score would be a B-. I still think that’s too low for this game, but at least it would make up for the game getting a C the first time.





I’ll keep you posted. 

But yeah. Great game. The whole classic Resident Evil trilogy – the original game through this one – is fantastic and I hate that I’ve played and reviewed all of them now. Will there be re-reviews for 1 and 2 on the horizon?



Final Score:
B+



All the games I've taken a second look at:


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Video Game Review #314: Batman Forever: The Arcade Game

Batman Forever: The Arcade Game
PlayStation



Nostalgia Factor:

I was a huge Batman Forever fan when I was a kid – both of the movie and the video game for the Sega Genesis. Yeah yeah, I know the game is crap but back then I liked it! Despite being such a huge fan, I never knew that an arcade version of Batman Forever existed. Until now: the year 2021. How in the world did 25 years pass before I even learned of this game’s existence?

As soon as I heard of this game and saw some screenshots for it, I knew I had to play it. And wouldn’t you know it, my brand-new RetroPie made it super easy to play the PS1 port. I kind of… wish I hadn’t wasted my time with it, though. Truly one of the worst games I’ve played in recent memory.

Keep reading for my full thoughts.




Story:

This game loosely follows the plot of the movie Batman Forever. There are a ton of things about this game that don’t make sense, like how Robin could be in the first stage fighting against Two-Face during the bank robbery when in the movie Robin didn’t even exist yet. But when you play games like this, you have to ignore that kind of thing. And luckily the shittiness of the game made that a very easy thing to do.



 
Gameplay:

I wasn’t expecting much from this game. All I was hoping for was a Final Fight-esque beat ‘em up but with a Batman Forever skin. I would say that that is what I got, but this game does not hold a candle to Final Fight, TMNT, or really any other beat ‘em up titles out there. And I should know, I’ve played and reviewed a ton of them lately! In fact, I’d say this game makes Ninja Gaiden and Hook like absolute masterpieces.

Why is it so bad? I say this in almost every review and I’ll say it again: the fun factor. I don’t care how a game looks or sounds or how intuitive it is, if it isn’t any fun to play then what’s the point? And that’s how I felt here. There was almost no point in me playing this game. Right off the bat (pun intended), I could tell I wasn’t going to have any fun here. First off, the game looks like a mess (but we’ll get to the graphics later). Second, the controls and hit detection are a mess. And third, the difficulty, even on the game’s lowest setting, is absolutely off the charts.

The first time I played this game, I took my standard approach of playing using the default settings. Three lives, three continues, game over. Normally, I’d say about 99% of the time I am fine playing on the default setting. The only time I ever give myself more lives is if I am playing Sunset Riders. The only time I lower the difficulty is if I’m playing a Super Star Wars game. I had to do both here. Seriously. I had to play this game on easy in order to beat it – and even then, USING SAVE STATES, I could still barely, BARELY finish the game. It is so hard.

What makes the game so hard? It’s cheap. No way around it. In a standard beat ‘em up, enemy attacks chip away at your health meter. Occasionally you’ll encounter an enemy who packs a harder wallop, or maybe you’ll get stuck in a corner and have a difficult time getting out of the swarm of enemies around you. But for the most part, those games are pretty fair with their difficulty. Not Batman Forever. You can go from having a full health bar to dead in literally one second if an enemy starts railing on you with their fists. I am not kidding. The first time this happened to me, I thought it was just a fluke and it wouldn’t happen again. But then it did. Oh boy, it did. It’s basically unavoidable, too, which makes it even worse.

The first time playing this game I made it to about the 3rd level or so before I had burned through all my continues. That was it. Game over. I waited a day and then came back to the game, upping the number of continues to maximum and using save states to minimize all the cheap deaths. Even then, I barely made it halfway through the game before I had exhausted all of my resources. How the frick was I supposed to beat this game? 

This is when I turned the difficulty down to easy. It was a shameful thing, but I had to do it. But like I said, even with the low difficulty, even with max continues, even with save states, I still was barely able to beat the game. I am not sure if I ever would have been able to beat it without “cheating” and honestly I am not tempted to come back and see.

Even putting aside this game’s difficulty, it is still a complete mess. You can punch, kick, and jump. As far as I know, there is no way to block. Your attacks are limited and often miss your enemies for no reason whatsoever, even when you’re perfectly lined up with them. In order to beat this game, I had to resort to the cheap trick of jump kicking everyone and then bum rushing them as soon as they stood up to knock them back down again. Even playing like this, I still was constantly getting surrounded by enemies and I was still going from full health to dead in a matter of seconds.

The game does give you a lot of power ups, but I’m still to this day not quite sure how they work. The easy ones to figure out are the projectile based items, which you fire using the punch button. There are a few other power ups too, such as “VR Mode” that freezes your enemies and then shatters them when you punch them (what’s that about not killing people, Bats?)  as well as a grapple attack that sends you flying around the screen, taking out all enemies in sight. But the other power ups, like the little Batman icons? I have no idea what they do. There’s a bar on your screen for power, underneath your health meter, which these icons fill up. But when the meter fills up, nothing happens. Every once in a while your character will levitate into the sky and start shooting crazy lightning at everyone, which is a cool screen clearing attack, but I never had any idea what would trigger those attacks. It seemed to happen when I had a full power meter and I’d collect a Batman icon – but only randomly, like once or twice a stage.

Sigh. All of this added up to me having absolutely no fun with this game. At all.


 

Graphics:

I mentioned before that this game looks like a mess, and for the most part that’s pretty true. Bad, digitized characters. Blocky pixels everywhere. WAY too much stuff happening on the screen. But I do have to give it at least some sort of credit for faithfully recreating a lot of the environments from the movie. The gala event and the graffiti filled neon streets were two of my favorite locations in this game. The game’s introduction with the Batmobile is pretty cool too. I always loved the Batman Forever Batmobile. The character select screen looks nice as well.

I guess I’m grasping at straws, here.


 

Sound:

This is probably the best part of the whole game, as sad as that is. They actually use the Batman Forever theme song, unlike the Genesis version of the game. The stage music is catchy. There’s some voice acting from the movie. “Let’s start this party with a bang!” is always a good Batman Forever quote to include in a game. And I like the voice of the game’s “commentator” even though I can’t understand what he’s saying half the time. There’s just something super terrific about the way he says “super grapple” that I absolutely adore.




Overall:

I think I’ve made my thoughts on this game pretty clear. It sucks, and for a multitude of reasons. Maybe it is better playing with two players, but I can’t imagine it. Instead of just making one person miserable, the game would now make two people miserable.

I likely won’t ever return to this game again, and I can’t recommend it to anyone else in good faith. It took me several attempts to beat this game, tallying at least three or four hours. And I had to write this review, which sucked up even more of my time. Time I can’t get back, no matter what.

Piss off, Batman Forever: The Arcade Game. You’re a giant waste of my time.
 


Final Score:
F



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Video Game Review #313: Knuckles' Chaotix

Knuckles' Chaotix
Sega 32X



Nostalgia Factor:

More blog history being made: my first Sega 32X review! Back in the day I wanted nothing more than a 32X for Christmas. The thought of being able to upgrade my Genesis and make it even more powerful was such an appealing thing to me. I’d missed out on the Sega CD and the 32X was my big chance to make up for that. Knuckles Chaotix was one of the games that really sold me on the system. No, the game didn’t actually have Sonic in it, but to me it didn’t matter. I was a big time Knuckles fan and was salivating over playing a game where he was the main character. I never got a 32X, however. Years began to pass and when it became clear I was never going to get to play Knuckles Chaotix, it saddened me. I’d kinda given up on ever having the chance to play this game. But fast forward to the year 2021 – over 26 years since this game originally came out - and here I am playing it for the first time, thanks to my RetroPie.

Would it be worth the nearly 30 year wait?

lolno

But don’t let that deter you from finishing off this review. Keep reading and find out why I didn’t like it!




Story:

Like most Sonic games (and yes I will continue to refer to it as a Sonic game) the story never really played a huge factor in my enjoyment of the game. You play as Knuckles and his gang of pals as they attempt to stop Doctor Robotnik from stealing Chaos Rings (this game’s equivalent of Chaos Emeralds) from your island. How original!




Gameplay:

For the most part this game looks and feels like your average Sonic title (minus the blue hedgehog, of course). You collect rings, you jump on enemies, you fight bosses, and you tackle 3D bonus stages (similar to the ones in Sonic 2). What makes this game different is its tethering system, a major gimmick that this game throws at you right off the bat. I’m not sure what the point of this gimmick is, but literally the entire game is centered around it.

Let me explain how it works. You play as a “primary” character that you can select when you start the game. I always picked Knuckles because, well, the game is named after him and it just seemed right. You are assigned a sidekick character. This character is tethered to you. If you try to play this game like you would any other Sonic game, you’re going to find that your partner is slowing you down dramatically. Unless you are stretching the tether (like a rubber band) and then letting go, propelling both characters forward, you are not going to be able to gain enough momentum to make it through even the most basic loop de loop.

I understand that by this point there had already been four major Sonic titles released, so they might have wanted to do something new with this game. I get that. I also understand that they might have been trying to “fix” two player mode so that the second player isn’t always getting left behind like in previous Sonic games. But basing the entire game around this gimmick was a major mistake, in my opinion.

This game is SO focused around this gimmick that it forgets about everything else. The stages seem barren and empty of enemies, making everything ridiculously easy. You can race through each of these stages in three or four minutes tops – especially after you’ve collected all the Chaos Rings. There’s almost no challenge to be found in this game, aside from figuring out how to use the tether mechanic to make it through obstacles. 

After playing through about three or four stages, this game simply became a case of going through the motions. I’d already seen everything the game had to offer me. It was not challenging. There weren’t a ton of secrets to discover. My whole attitude towards this game was: meh.

The only real redeeming thing about this game is its bonus stages. They take place from a behind-the-back 3D perspective and consist of your character moving through a rotating tunnel, collecting enough blue orbs needed to obtain that stage’s Chaos Ring. This, more than anything else, reminded me of classic Sonic at its best. I would have happily played a whole game consisting of something like this.
 



Graphics:

I have to give this game credit: it looks fantastic. Take everything you love about the visuals of the Genesis Sonic games, and add more color and better animations to the mix. The levels look really nice. So do the characters. Even the game’s introduction looks really cool. Too bad it is a wasted effort on a crummy game.



Sound:

The game sounds really good too. All the classic Sonic sound effects are present, like the iconic jumping noise and all the ring collecting/getting hit sounds. The stage music is great, as always. I really have nothing to complain about as far as this game’s presentation. It looks and sounds really good. If only the gameplay matched its presentation.




Overall:

It’s really hard for me to say anything positive about this game. It has good graphics and good sound design. Everything else is very underwhelming.

All in all I can say that I am happy I got the opportunity to play Knuckles Chaotix. I wish the game was better, but it is what it is. Only the most dedicated Sonic fans need to check this out. Everyone else can safely skip it, and they won’t be missing much.



Final Score:
D



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Video Game Review #312: Earthworm Jim Special Edition

Earthworm Jim Special Edition
Sega CD



Nostalgia Factor:

Earthworm Jim came out for the Sega Genesis when I was in the 7th grade. At the time, video games weren’t really “funny.” Look at stuff like Mario, Sonic, Mortal Kombat, Kirby, Street Fighter, etc – all the big titles coming out in the mid to early 90s. Fun games, but nothing you'd call funny. Earthworm Jim is the first game I can ever recall making me laugh out loud as I played it. The moment I launched that cow into outer space I knew I had something different on my hands.

I never owned the game – I only rented it for one weekend. But what a weekend. I played the absolute crap out of Earthworm Jim, eventually beating the game after sinking about 20 hours into it over a 3-day span. It was a struggle though! The underwater stage in particular kept me up the entire night the first night I had this game. It was SO difficult to me, and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to pass it. 

About six or seven years ago, shortly before starting this blog, I purchased the Earthworm Jim HD Remaster for the PS3 and had a really fun time with that game as well. In the ensuing years, I haven’t given much thought to Earthworm Jim. That is, until I saw all the different versions of the game on my RetroPie. I was tempted to play the Genesis version, since that’s the one I’m most familiar with. But then I thought maybe I’d check out the SNES version to see if it was any different at all. But THEN I realized why should I bother with those versions of the game when I could play the Special Edition for the Sega CD? From what I’d read, this was the definitive version of the game. Some of the stages were made bigger, there was a new level, and the soundtrack had been revamped.

Sold. I was going to play this game and see if the magic of Earthworm Jim still held up after nearly 30 years. Keep reading to see if it did!


 

Story:

I don’t have the instruction manual to this game, and the game itself doesn’t do a great job of explaining what is happening as you play. In fact, it doesn’t do ANYTHING to explain the game’s story. But that’s fine. I don’t need a  good story to enjoy a 2D platformer. Just keep me entertained, that’s all I ask.

If you’re interested, however, the premise of the game is that Jim has recovered this special suit which morphs him from a simple worm into walking and talking Earthworm Jim. The suit’s creator pursues Jim through the stages of the game in an attempt to get his suit back.

There’s also something going on with a… princess? That Jim is trying to, uh, rescue from something? I don’t really know. All I can say is that it doesn’t end well for her or Jim as at the end of the game she is crushed to death by a cow falling from the sky. The same cow you launched at the very beginning of the game.

Oops.




Gameplay:

Gameplay for the most part follows the same formula as your standard 2D 90s platformers. The game is divided into stages. You start each stage at a fixed starting point. Your goal is to reach the end of the stage, where sometimes you fight a boss and sometimes you don’t. Beat the stage and you move onto the next one. Rinse and repeat.

The D-pad controls Jim. You’ve got your standard jump button. There are two buttons used for attacking. Your first attack consists of Jim pulling his long worm body out of his suit and whipping enemies with it. This attack can also be used as a grappling hook when you jump in the air, helping you swing over long gaps that you need to traverse. The other attack consists of Jim firing his gun at enemies.

As you play through each stage, you’ll collect many power ups. This is a challenging game where you get hit a lot by enemies, but I do have to say the game is generous with giving you health items. There’s also extra ammo, extra lives, and special ammo that launches powerful rockets at your opponents 

Stages are huge and they often give you multiple paths to take for you to get to the end. Most of the joy of this game for me came from exploring each stage to its fullest and discovering everything Earthworm Jim has to offer – while attempting to stay alive in the process. That’s the hardest part. As I said, this is a very challenging game. Luckily the Sega CD version gives you stage passwords that you can use to pick up playing where you left off. I don’t remember if the Genesis version had this feature, but I don’t think it did? I vaguely remember having to beat this game in one playthrough.

There are a few stages with wrinkles added to them to keep things fresh. The first that comes to mind are the “racing” stages where you have to outrun the dude that is chasing you. It is pretty standard half-pipe racing fare. Just collect as much stuff as you can and don’t get hit and you should be fine. Other stages have you bungee jumping and attempting to knock your enemies into the wall (while bungeeing) to kill them. Another stage has you escorting a small dog through a series of tough obstacles. That’s a blood pressure raising stage right there! And then there’s the underwater levels where you guide submersibles through the ocean. Bump into anything and the glass starts to crack. Take too many hits, and it’s Coffey time for you! That’s an Abyss reference, in case you were wondering. Bet you didn’t think you’d be reading an Abyss reference in an Earthworm Jim review, did you?

The game is also funny as hell. There’s so much humor and so many small jokes built into this game. Without the humor, I’m not sure Earthworm Jim would have taken off like it did. Because at its heart, this is really just a frustrating, average platform game. Okay, maybe I’m being too tough on the game. It has a lot of great moments, but a lot of flat out annoying ones too. Like when you have to run on those rotating green gem things? Ugh. When you have to use your head as a helicopter to fly through the spike gauntlets? Ugh. Some of the later stages when you have to swing from hook to hook using your head? Ugh. I haven’t even mentioned the submersibles yet. This game is filled with all kinds of challenges – some of them a lot of fun and others that make you just want to smash your fist through the wall like the Kyle that you are.

This is one of those games where when you die, it’s not always your fault. The game begins to feel cheap, and fast. I hate that. The sloppy jumping mechanic and imprecise controls don’t help matters either. This is a tough game made even tougher by some questionable programming choices.


 

Graphics:

For its time, Earthworm Jim was way ahead of the game. I remember loving the character design and the fun animations from Jim when you’d put the controller down. The stages I always thought were bright and colorful. In the early 90s, playing this game was like playing a cartoon come to life.

I don’t know if it is the Sega CD version or just my memory failing me, but I didn’t think the game looked as good in present day as it did in the past. The colors were a bit muted. You could see horizontal lines running through things sometimes. The animations weren’t as smooth. Some of the backgrounds just seemed grainy to me for some reason. I don’t know. Maybe it’s all in my head, but I remember this game looking a lot better than it actually turned out to be. Maybe it is because the last time I played Earthworm Jim, it was the HD remake. Now THAT is a good looking game. This one, however: eh. I mean it’s not bad and it is certainly better than a lot of other things I’ve played recently *cough* Beetlejuice *cough cough*. It’s just not as good looking as I remembered it being, which is a little bit a of a disappointment to be honest with you.




Sound:

On the flip side, I thought the game’s sound was fantastic. Right off the bat, the belching “Earthworm Jim!” you hear at the title screen brought a smile to my face. The stage music is good, the sound effects are appropriate. I just think the soundtrack on the whole really brings the game to life. The crown jewel of the game’s soundtrack absolutely has to be the “Night on Bald Mountain” riff from the stage titled What the Heck. It’s so good. So good.


 


Overall:

Earthworm Jim is a fun game with a fantastic sense of humor and an even better soundtrack. That’s not to say it’s a flawless game, however. As I said, the difficulty can be quite extreme and you are going to find yourself suffering very many cheap deaths as you play. This is a game that will make you want to chuck your controller across the room, it can be so brutal at times. If you persevere, however, this game is ultimately beatable. It’s tough, but I wouldn’t say it’s 100 percenting Celeste tough or anything like that.

The thing about this game is that its fun meter rises and falls depending on the level. At its peak, this is an A game when everything is clicking and you’re progressing smoothly from level to level. At its lowest, this game can be a chore to play, filled with cheap deaths and “what the hell do I do now???” types of moments. This makes it a little hard for me to grade.

I’m going to have to let nostalgia affect my score a little bit here. I want to give this game a C something based on my recent playthrough, but I don’t think that score justifies the sense of wide-eyed awe I felt the first time I fired this up as a kid. This was an absolutely brilliant game upon its release. Nearly 30 years later, I’ve seen and played a countless number of side-scrollers like this before, and Earthworm Jim doesn’t do a whole lot to separate itself from the crowd. But for those of us who were there when this game first came out, we all know that Earthworm Jim is so much more than that.

Can’t wait to play this game’s sequel – a title I am FAR less familiar with – and see if my opinion has changed on that one at all. Hope you keep following along!


 
Final Score:
B-



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Thursday, November 11, 2021

Video Game Review #311: Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice
Nintendo Entertainment System



Nostalgia Factor:

Despite the fact that I used to own this game as a kid, I don’t remember it very well. I remember getting it shortly before I got my Sega Genesis, which could explain why this game was so quickly cast to the side by me. I remember liking it, though, which is why I was a bit taken by surprise when I looked the game up online a few weeks ago and saw all the negative reviews for it.

“Worst Rare game ever! The LJN curse lives on! A disgrace to the movie!”

I don’t remember it being that terrible. Like I said, I kind of enjoyed it.

Now that I have a RetroPie, it was an easy decision that I was going to sit down and revisit this game. Would it be as terrible as the reviews made it out to be? Let’s find out!



 
Story:

This game very loosely follows the events of the movie. And when I say loosely, I mean loosely. Remember the part in the movie where Beetlejuice stomped on a bunch of bugs and then used the dead bug carcasses as currency to buy weapons? Neither do I.

This is one of those kind of movie based games. The kind that takes a lot of liberties with the source material.

I hope I’m not venturing into spoiler territory on a 30 year old game, but before we move on to the next segment I have to mention how abruptly Beeteljuice ends. Remember the part in the movie where Beeltejuice is in a waiting room, waiting for his number to be called? That’s the last stage in the game. You run around the final stage collecting what looks like numbered tickets. When you collect five of them, the game just ends.

No fanfair. No buildup. It just ends. If the game was following the events of the movie, as it had loosely done up to this point, there still would have been a few levels after this. But no. That’s it. It’s like they suddenly ran out of time when making this game and had to cut things off short. No séance, no model town, no showdown with Otho.

Very strange.




Gameplay:

This is a 2D side scroller with a pretty steep (at least at first) learning curve. What you are supposed to do isn’t evident right away if you don’t have the instruction manual. Touching or jumping on enemies kills you. You don’t have any weapons to speak of. You can enter shops which sell things, but you don’t have any money. What are you supposed to do?

Simple: kill bugs. No really – kill bugs. As you play you’ll notice holes in the ground with tiny bugs jumping out of them. You have to stomp on these bugs to earn currency, which you use at the game’s shops to buy “scares”, which are basically projectile weapons you use to kill bosses and stage enemies. The bugs are color-coded. The yellow bugs, which are more difficult to catch, give you more currency. The red ones, which are slower moving and easy to stomp on, give you a tiny amount of currency. The blue ones are in between.

You can jump down the pits that the bugs are coming out of to compete in mini battles against random enemies. These enemies you CAN kill by jumping on their heads. Clearing out the room gives you a large amount of currency you can use at the shops.

Okay, you’ve got enough currency to buy some stuff. What next? Well, entering the shop seems like the most obvious place to begin, so we’ll start there. Each shop gives you a choice of three different “scares” to purchase. The higher priced items tend to give you multiple projectile attacks while the cheaper ones just give you one shot. I can understand why a game where you have to buy your attacks with currency might seem like a bad idea to some people, but I didn’t mind it here. Shops are plentiful and you come across a ton of them as you play. There are many opportunities to earn currency, and I rarely found myself having to grind for more. But I can see why people wouldn’t like this idea at all.

Once you’re armed up with all the projectiles you need, you can start advancing through the game’s stages. Where you are supposed to go is pretty ambiguous for the most part. The game doesn’t do a great job letting you know where to head to next. You have to really look everywhere and try to find areas where the screen scrolls with you. I remember a part early in the game where it seems like you have to keep going right, but there is a dead end. What you have to do is turn around and climb onto the roof of a nearby building. Once you start doing so, the screen moves with your character as you head the opposite direction.

One annoying thing about this game is that if you touch the bottom of the screen, you die. So if you are on top of the building I mentioned and you decide you want to return to the ground level to catch some more bugs, you can’t just jump off the building. You’ll hit the bottom of the screen and you’ll kick the bucket. What you have to do is jump onto a nearby tree, wait for the screen to come down with you so you can see the ground, and then jump onto the ground. The screen only pans with you if you have your feet on the ground, so if you just try jumping off the building directly you die. Instead of the screen just following you as you fall, you have to climb down little by little until you can actually see the ground. This  resulted in a lot of annoying deaths as I played, because it literally goes against every single thing I’ve ever learned in a video game before.

Most stages end with a boss fight. Again, how to defeat them isn’t made evident by the game. What you have to do is pepper them with projectiles until they slam into the wall behind them. Do that, and the boss is dead. The problem with this is that a lot of the projectiles are short range, so you really have to get up in the boss’s face in order to kill him, which results in you taking a lot of damage that is very difficult to avoid.

I’d have to say my biggest complaint with the entire game is how you have to pause the game to select your attacks. So if I’m using the skull and I run out moves, I can’t just hit select or some other button to pick the next weapon in line. No no. I have to pause the game and pick it from a menu. I found myself having to pause and interrupt the action constantly. It really disrupted the flow of the game for me.

One thing I had forgotten about Beetlejuice is its inclusion of top-down stages. In these stages, you have to explore the Deetz’s house to find items for each member of the family. These family members are blocking your way and won’t move aside until you find what they are looking for. These stages have a nice maze/puzzle like quality to them and I really found myself enjoying them as I played. Easily the highlight of the game for me, which is funny because as a kid I couldn’t stand these stages.



 
Graphics:

I’d be kidding myself if I said this was a great looking game. It’s not. It is very primitive looking, and not in a positive or charming way. This isn’t something like the original Super Mario Bros. that you could make an argument still stands the test of time. It doesn’t.

Garish colors, plain backgrounds. Meh. That said, the top-down stages look a lot better than the side scrolling ones – so at least the game has that going for it.


 


Sound:

Really not much to appreciate here either. The music and sound effects are filled with your generic NES bleeps and bloops. There are absolutely no catchy tunes you’ll find yourself humming after walking away from this game. And the noise the game makes when you die... ugh. The sound is about as mediocre as you can possibly get.



 
Overall:

Even after finishing this game I still didn’t quite understand why people hate Beetlejuice so much. I had a fun time with it! It wasn’t until after writing my own review and looking over it that the game’s flaws really started to jump out at me. 

Little effort was put into this game’s presentation. As far as graphics and sound go, this is probably one of the weakest NES games that I have reviewed to date. I personally don’t care as long as the game is still fun to play, but I know that a lot of people out there probably can’t get past how ugly this game looks and sounds. Then there’s the learning curve. If you don’t have an instruction manual, you’re really going to struggle finding out what you are supposed to do in this game. Another strike for new players. Then there’s all the weird stuff the game does, like killing you if you touch the bottom of the screen. You might be saying – why didn’t I complain about this when I reviewed Contra? Simple – in Contra you keep moving in one direction with no need to double back at all. In this game, you HAVE to backtrack and go up and down to make it through levels. That’s why this flaw is so annoying.

With all this said, I STILL like this game. I don’t know why. Yeah, it looks primitive and it’s racked with flaws that would probably turn off most gamers – but I don’t care. I had a good time with this game. I won’t say I was jumping out of my seat over it or anything, In fact, I will probably never return to it again in my life. But it accomplished what it set out to do: it kept me entertained for a little while.

Beetlejuice, this is probably the best online review you’ll ever get. Take it and enjoy it!

 

Final Score:
C+




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Video Game Review #310: Ghost House

Ghost House
Sega Master System



Nostalgia Factor:

When I was a kid I had exactly one friend who owned a Sega Master System - Patrick Kirschbaum (if you are reading this, Patrick, hi!). I used to visit his house quite frequently and every time I’d come over I’d want to play his “Sega”, which is what we called the Master System. I had an NES and I was super curious what this mysterious other system was all about. Unfortunately, he only owned one game for the Master System, and it was this game: Ghost House. I got the feeling he didn’t like the game very much, because his reaction was always negative whenever I’d want to play it. He always wanted to ride bikes or do something else instead. When we did play, he’d always pause the game after a few minutes of playing it and yell “commercial break!” We’d then run around the house playing with toys and doing other little kid stuff. I’d say cumulatively I only played this game about 20 minutes over the countless number of trips to his house.

As the years have passed, I’ve always wanted to come back and find a way to play that Master System game from Patrick’s house. The only problem was I couldn’t remember its name! I searched through Google. I looked through a countless number of screenshots from Master System games. Nothing looked familiar to me one bit. I’d say I’ve been looking for this game for at least five years now. A couple years ago I thought I lucked out and found it when I played Alex Kidd in Miracle World (you can read the review at the bottom of this page) but it turns out that wasn’t the right game.

Well, just a few days ago I accidentally stumbled upon a screenshot of Ghost House. As soon as I saw that blue background and the vampire coffin and the protagonist with the emo haircut, I knew this was the game I’d been looking for all these years. I immediately made it a goal to play Ghost House and review it for this blog. So here we are.

Would the game actually be any good, or should I have listened to Patrick all those years ago? Let’s find out.




Story:

You play as Mick, a vampire hunter out to wipe the vampire scourge from the face of the planet. Throughout the course of the game you visit six houses, each of which contains five vampires. Destroy all the vampires in each house, you win the game.

That’s really all there is to this game’s story. I don’t have its instruction manual, so maybe there are more details in there. But that’s all I got and that’s all that is explained in-game. So you’re just going to have to deal with it!


 

Gameplay:
 
This game has a bit of a learning curve. Nothing is explained, you’re just dropped straight into the action. It can be very confusing if you don’t know what your goal is. Here’s what happened the first time I played.

I started the game in a house. I could go left and right or use ladders to go up and down to different levels in the house. In this house were standard enemies that I killed by punching or jumping on them. The first enemy I killed dropped a key. At this point I didn’t know what the key was for but I remember thinking: “oh, that was easy.” Every once in a while as I explored this house, swords and arrows would come flying from off the screen in the direction of my character. I just jumped over them or avoided them. 

Every once in a while, I’d encounter a box lying on the ground. Sometimes when I’d walk by them, a vampire would pop out and attack me. Other times, nothing happened. I quickly learned to avoid these boxes because I was no match for the vampires. They killed me pretty easily.

As I explored and explored this house, I started to think to myself: “okay, now what?” There seemed to be no exit to the house. No obvious destination. If I walked far enough in one direction, things started to loop over again. I explored every inch of that first stage and could not for the life of me figure out what I was supposed to do. I don’t know how it happened but suddenly I noticed that my character had a sword in his hand. Did I get it from jumping and landing on the sword that came flying across the screen? I must have!

With this sword in my possession, I wondered if I could kill one of those vampires now that I had a sword. So I tracked down the nearest coffin, the vampire popped out, and…. bam. I was killed again. The vampire moved too quickly for me, and I could not hit it with the sword no matter how hard I tried.

But now I was on to something. Maybe I had to kill all the vampires in the house before I could move on. I started wandering around the house, waiting for a sword to come flying across the screen so I could jump on it and collect it for my own. But they just weren’t coming. I explored three levels of the house and couldn’t collect a single sword. They just weren’t appearing for me, and when they did appear I wasn’t ready to jump on them and collect them.

It was around this time I discovered that if I jumped into a hanging ceiling light, it would freeze all enemies on screen for a few seconds. I decided to test something out and see if this trick would on a vampire. And it did! When the vamp was frozen I ran up and punched it a bunch of times before it broke apart and died.

I did it! I killed a vampire!

I went around the house and killed a couple other vampires in a similar fashion. All right. I was getting the hang of the game. I went to track down and kill another vampire when all of a sudden the “light trick” wasn’t working anymore. I had a limited number of times I could use this in one stage. Of course. I knew it was too easy!

After dying, I knew that the only way I could kill the remaining two vampires in the stage would be if I could get my hands on a sword. I ran around the house a few more times, but there seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to what triggered these swords to come whipping across the screen. That’s when I broke down and finally turned to the internet for help. Apparently walking in front of a fireplace triggered the appearance of these swords, for some reason. So I sought out the nearest fireplace, walked past it, and lo and behold a sword came flying across the room.

With this knowledge in hand, I was able to defeat the remaining two vampires in the house and move on to the second level of the game.

Phew! That was hard!

You ain’t seen nothing yet, buddy. The next stage was even harder. More enemies, harder to find vampires, fewer opportunities to use the freeze attack or find swords. And the vampires were faster, too! It was a struggle (and yes, I cheated and used save states), but I was able to beat the second level after an hour or so of playing. 

And then it was time to move on to the third level. Again, the difficulty ratcheted up. The vampires were super fast now, and all the light fixtures I would use to freeze them were placed in very inconvenient spots. I couldn’t even get TO these light fixtures to activate them without getting killed by a vampire. Some of the vampires even respawned after I killed them, and I’d have to kill them all over again. Whaaaaaattt? At this point, save states became my best friend. I tried, and tried, and tried. Over and over again. Must have died and reloaded a countless number of times. Eventually I was successful.

Then I was on to the fourth stage. And the fifth. And the sixth. After passing the sixth level, the game was officially over. I had done it. I’d beaten Ghost House. Patrick Kirschbaum would have been so proud of me. I wonder if he didn’t like this game because of the difficulty? I think I might be on to something here.

But that’s really the whole point of the game. Explore these six houses and kill all five vampires in each house. If you can do that, you can beat the game. Oh yeah, those keys that I didn’t know what they did? They unlock vampire coffins. That’s why sometimes they’d open when I would walk by and sometimes they wouldn’t. If I had a key, they’d open. If not, well then I would have to find one.


 

Graphics:

Honestly, this game doesn’t look like much. The characters are detailed enough and some of the background colors are fun, but the game is very simple looking. That said, compare this to literally any NES game and you can see why I was so interested in playing it as a kid. It looks better than most titles that came out around the same time in the 1980s.

Overall the game has a fun, cartoonish vibe to it that I can’t help but appreciate. It can't really say it aged particularly well, but at least it does not look ugly like some other games of its time.


 

Sound:

The game sounds good overall. The main tune that plays through each stage is catchy, if repetitive and “bleepy and bloopy”. I like how the music takes a dramatic turn each time a vampire comes out of its coffin. Before I knew what I was doing in this game, I used to dread that damn music.

Sound effects are nothing special – pretty much what you’d expect from a game like this. I don’t have much else to say here, so I am going to move on.



 
Overall:

I’ll admit, I was having a pretty rotten time with this game until I figured out its mechanics. Once I figured out that you had to kill vampires, how to get my hands on swords, and how to kill enemies using the light freeze trick, it was awn! I started to think of this game less of an action/platformer and more like a puzzle game. Figuring out the game and taking advantage of its mechanics is key to your success. If you are like me, you’ll quickly get hooked on this game once you figure out how to play it.

All in all, however – the game is really short. Just six stages that can each be beaten in five or ten minutes once you’ve got the hang of things. The difficulty level makes the game seem longer, however. My major gripe is  that the difficulty becomes pretty cheap and unfair the deeper you get into the game. There were several vampires that I simply could not get away from. They home in on you the second  they come out of their coffin and just batter you incessantly. I’d get trapped against a wall or a platform and I would not be able to move because they would keep swooping in and hitting me repeatedly until I died. I couldn’t get to a light. My sword would disappear. I couldn’t even freaking move. That’s just poor game design to me. How can you give your player NO chance to get away from the enemy and plan out a proper attack? Thank the lord for save states, because I don’t see how I ever would have been able to beat this game without them. Certain vampires killed me about 30 times before I could take them down. And when they’d respawn and you’d have to kill them again? Fuck no.

How many lives does the game give you per continue? Three.

HOW? How is anyone supposed to be able to beat this game without save states? I’m not sure it is possible. I consider myself to be “decent” at video games, and it would take me weeks and weeks and a lot of really good luck to be able to make it through this game without saving and restarting. That’s if I would even be able to do it at all.

I supposed I’m glad I played this game. Gave me some closure on my childhood. It is a fun game, but the difficulty just really drags it down too much for me to be able to consider it something I would return to again. I doesn’t help that it is repetitive, and there really isn’t much to see or do besides kill vampires. Ghost House is fun for maybe an hour or two, especially after you figure out its mechanics, but then the game quickly wears out its welcome. I can see why Patrick never wanted to play this game with me. On the whole, I liked it. But just barely.



Final Score:
C




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Saturday, November 6, 2021

Video Game Review #309: Mystic Defender

Mystic Defender
Genesis



Nostalgia Factor: 

One thing I really want to do going forward with this blog is to step out of my comfort zone and play some games I’ve never played before. Mystic Defender is one such game. Despite being a Genesis owner as a kid, I had never played (or even heard of) Mystic Defender my entire life. I recently watched a random SNES Drunk YouTube video about the game, and I thought it looked pretty decent. I thought why not? Let’s give it a try.

Continue reading for my thoughts on the game!


 

Story:

Taking place in an ancient Japanese fantasy setting, you play as a… well… mystic defender as he tries to stop a bad guy from using human sacrifice to resurrect an even badder guy with world domination on the mind. You fight through a series of stages filled with demonic enemies until you make it to the end of the game, where you rescue the woman who is about to be sacrificed (naked titties and all). After saving her, you defeat the final boss and save the world from utter ruin.

Yay.

As you can see, nothing special to report here. Except for the naked titties part, maybe. But we’ll get to that soon enough.


 

Gameplay:

Mystic Defender is a 2D side-scrolling platformer where your main method of attack is launching spell-based projectiles at your enemies. The best comparison I can make with this game is that it feels a bit like a weird hybrid between Shinobi and Kid Dracula. Shinobi seems like the most obvious comparison. It’s a slower paced game. The jumping mechanics are similar. The way you fire projectiles ahead of you is similar to how you toss shurikens in Shinobi. You have to move slowly. You have to proceed cautiously. There’s some precise platforming action. You fight bosses at the end of each stage. Yeah. Shinobi.

It compares to Kid Dracula not necessarily in its base gameplay but in its weapon progression system. You start out with your basic pea-shooter spell magic. You hold the shoot button to charge up your attack, and releasing it launches an extra powerful blast at your opponent. As you play, you’ll pick up different spell scrolls which allow you to diversify your attack portfolio. Examples of these other spells are a useful flame attack which allows you to fire in all directions, and a spherical attack that launches bouncing shards of magic across the screen in a random pattern. I guess this brings Kid Dracula to my mind because in that game, like this one, you have to constantly hold the attack button and charge it up otherwise your weapons either do nothing or are relatively useless without that little extra jolt.

This is a pretty tough game. I played on the default difficulty setting, and by the end of the second level I had already burned through all of my lives and all three of my continues. The second level! Patience is your main key to success. You can’t play this game like you would other 2D platformers. You can’t try to rush through levels, absorbing enemy attacks like a sponge. No, no. You only get three hits before you are killed. You have to move cautiously, and you have to plan your next move in advance. You never know where an enemy is going to come from, so you always have to be alert. The more you play and the more you die, the more you’re able to memorize things, so the game does get easier the more you play it. But like I said, you have to be patient.

There are some power ups to collect as you play. The main one is your standard health item, which restores one bar of health. There’s a blue item that improves your speed when charging one of your attacks, which is nice since by the end of the game you basically have to charge every single attack if you want to make it through your enemies. There are 1-ups. And then there is the dragon scroll, which acts as your basic 2D side-scroller staple that wipes all enemies off the screen. I only encountered two or three of these as I played, so try to hang onto them and only use them if absolutely necessary.

Before we move on to the next segment of the game, I have to mention what I consider to be Mystic Defender’s biggest flaw: the platforming. Your character is pretty stiff and hard to maneuver when he’s in mid-air. Normally this isn’t a problem, but there is a stage past the halfway point of the game where you have to jump across rock pillars floating in lava (with flying enemies attacking you every step of the way). The jumping is SO imprecise that it resulted in more deaths than I can even imagine. The knockback you suffer when getting hit by an enemy doesn’t help things either. All I can say is thank god for save states. I can just picture myself playing this as a kid, playing through the whole game extra cautious and safe, only to waste every single one of my lives and all of my continues on this one spot. No thanks!

While I’m griping, I’d also like to point out that you can’t charge your weapon when you are moving. If you aren’t standing still, that meter ain’t filling up. During boss fights when you are constantly on the run from enemy projectiles, it makes it VERY hard to charge your attack and in turn VERY hard to defeat that enemy. Who thought that was a good idea?




Graphics:

This game doesn’t necessarily look like anything special, but you have to take into account that this was one of the first Sega Genesis titles ever released, coming out in the year 1989. The graphics certainly don’t look bad, giving you some rich colors and some nice atmospheric stage effects. The demonic characters you fight against are weird and creepy if you really stop to look at some of them. This game easily looks like it could have come out at the end of the Genesis’ life cycle, not at the front end of it.

Some of the story sequences and cutscenes look really cool. Like the castle rising out of the water? Amazing. I like how in between stages it shows a little animation of your character charging up an attack and firing it at the camera. That looks pretty sweet, too. It reminds me of how indie game developers go out of their way to try and make games look old, but still cool at the same time. Mystic Defender pulls off that look perfectly.




Sound:

“I don’t really remember anything about this game’s sound, good or bad. If it was bad, it would probably stick out or I’d remember it. So it must not have been that terrible.”

*sigh*

Long time readers of this blog will know why I’m sighing. New readers won’t get the joke. I’ll let you figure out where you land on that spectrum.


 

Overall:

Mystic Defender is an interesting piece of Sega Genesis history, for sure. Looking at this game, you would never guess it was one of the first Genesis titles ever released. It looks and feels much better than many games that came out for the system, some of those games years and years later. What I really care about is if it is enjoyable or not, and all I can say is that this is an okay game. I wasn’t too thrilled about it, but I didn’t hate it either. I think if the game had better controls and if it had eased up on its platforming sections just a bit, I would have had a much nicer time with it. Will I ever come back to this game someday? Probably not. But I can say I am glad that I played it.

If you like Shinobi style side-scrollers, you might like Mystic Defender. If you come into it with low expectations, you may be pleasantly surprised. Just don’t expect it to be as good as Shinobi – or really any of the games that you may think it looks like from the screenshots (Contra: Hard Corps, Castlevania, etc). It is certainly not on par with any of those titles. It’s good. It’s decent. It’s slightly above average. I think the grade it’s about to get sums it up perfectly.


 
Final Score:
C+



PS: because I said there would be more to come on this later, here you go:






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