Video Game Review #341: Tron

Tron

Arcade

Nostalgia Factor:

Mop Up Duty continues with my third and final 1982 video game review. Again, since I’ve never played this game, I don’t have much to say about it as far as nostalgia goes.

I didn’t like the movie Tron, but after hearing positive things about this game I’m hoping my thoughts on it are different. Let’s go find out!

Story:

I’m sure there’s a story to be found in here somewhere, but as I’ve said in my last two 1982 game reviews, a solid storyline was simply not an emphasis back when these games were created. All I know is that this game takes place during the movie Tron. I didn’t understand what the hell was going on in that movie, so I guess I’m glad the story was completely ignored in this game because I wouldn’t have understood what the hell was happening here either!

 

Gameplay:

Tron consists of a series of four mini games that you have to complete. Once you complete these mini games, you move onto the next “stage” of the game, where you have to complete these mini games again – except this time they are slightly more difficult. Beat them again and you move onto the next stage of the game. Same four mini games, once again more difficult this time around. This was pretty common back in 1982 – looping gameplay where you are basically doing the same thing over and over again, the difficulty increasing with each full turn of the wheel.

Even though this game has just 12 stages (meaning 12 rounds of mini games) it can’t be completed. Once you get to the highest level of difficulty it loops forever. Honestly, I was not able to make it to that last stage. By the time you hit stage five or six these mini games become ridiculously hard to complete. In the original arcade version of the game when you lose all of your lives you go back to the beginning of the game. I’m sure there are some freaks of nature out there that were able to beat this entire game on three lives, but that person is not me. Even using save states to try and cobble together a perfect game, I couldn’t make it past stage 10 or 11. It’s SO hard. You’d have to be a freaking machine to pass these stages.

Anyway, since the meat and potatoes of this game is the mini games, it is time to talk about them. The light cycle mini game takes place from an overhead perspective. You can move your cycle up, down, left, and right. When you move it leaves a trail of light behind you which creates a wall that will kill you if you touch it. It’s your goal to make the opposing racer (or racers as the game gets more difficult) crash into one of these “light walls.” If you hit one of them, you die and lose one of your lives. Once all your enemies crash into them, you win. This mini game in particular can be completed in a matter of seconds depending on your skill level, or lack thereof.

The next mini game also takes place from an overhead perspective. You move a tank around on a Pac Man-like grid where you have to shoot and destroy the other tanks.

The next mini game places you in a space suit inside of a large cone shaped object. You have to blast away at a rotating wall of destructible panels as you attempt to escape the cone.

The last mini game you are once again in your space suit. You have to blast through increasing crowds of spider-like creatures to reach a safe zone in the middle of the screen.

That about covers how these mini games operate, so let’s move onto the graphics, shall we?

 

Graphics:

This is probably the best looking 1982 game I’ve played. Everything looks pretty basic and oftentimes the backgrounds are just plain black, but that’s okay. While this game isn’t eye popping by any stretch of the imagination, it’s filled with all kinds of vibrant colors. The mini games are well designed visually. In particular I liked the cone stages the best. Again, this game doesn’t look like much by today’s standards but I can imagine in 1982 all the kids were huddled around Tron because of how much better it looked than everything else.

 

Sound:

No stage music seems to be a theme with these older games. There is a little jingle that plays when you insert a quarter or do something notable, but it’s nothing to write home about. Sound effects are your standard beeps and bloops that were so popular in the early 80s.

Meh.

Overall:

This is probably the best of the 1982 games I have played for Mop Up Duty so far. That’s not really saying a whole lot as nothing I have played from this year has gotten me too excited, but the sheer variety in the gameplay in regards to the four mini games is something that keeps Tron feeling fresh. Whether I was cruising around in my light cycle or blasting away at tanks, I found myself having a pretty good time with this game.

Tron’s fatal flaw is the same as the last two games I reviewed: it gets repetitive fast. Although there is more replay value to be found here than in Satan’s Hollow or Pitfall, I still found myself tiring of the game rather quickly. It also can’t be beaten, which is another complaint of mine. Maybe if the game had ended after 12 stages I would have pushed on and tried to complete it. But it doesn’t, and I can’t state this enough: I don’t care about high scores. I will never get the highest score. I will never be the best. And even if I do get an absurdly high score for some reason, I really don’t care nor do I know anyone who would. Just let me beat the game and move on. Sadly, you can’t do that here – nor with any of the 1982 games I have played and reviewed.

Hopefully 1983 brings us to bigger and better things.

Overall:

C+

40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:

1982 Reviews:

Satan's Hollow

Pitfall!

Tron (the review you are reading)

Coming up next, 1983's

Kool-Aid Man

For a complete index of all my past posts and game reviews, click

>HERE<

Video Game Review #340: Pitfall!

Pitfall!

Atari 2600

Nostalgia Factor:

Here comes another game from 1982: Pitfall! for the Atari 2600.

Believe it or not, I’ve never played a game in the Pitfall series before. I’m someone who normally won’t touch established video game series unless I’ve been playing them from the beginning, so this is a perfect opportunity for me to get my feet wet with the Pitfall series.

Read on for my thoughts!

 

Story:

Unless I’m mistaken, this game doesn’t really have a story. You play as a guy named Pitfall Harry. It’s your goal to run through the jungle and collect treasure. 

That’s all I got for you.

 

Gameplay:

Pitfall! runs on a 20-minute timer. It’s your goal to collect as many of the game’s 32 treasures as you can within the time allotted. You start with three lives. If you use them all up, the game ends and you have to start over. If the timer runs out, the game ends and you have to start over. I will make this abundantly clear right away: like many games of its time this is another “high score” game. You aren’t expected to actually be able to collect all of the 32 treasures. I mean, I’m sure there are people out there who have, but I’m also sure there are exponentially more people who have not. Really your main goal is to rack up the highest score possible.

You start with 2,000 points. Each treasure you collect gives you anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 points. Be careful, however. Touch one of the game’s rolling log obstacles or fall down a hole and you lose points. Since this is a high score game, you don’t want to do that. Finding treasure can be difficult to do. Treasure only appears once about every ten screens or so. To get through these screens to get to the treasure, you have to traverse the game’s obstacles. Aside from the rolling logs, this game throws the following things at you: pits, fire, snakes, scorpions, and crocodiles. All of these things will kill you if you can’t get past them properly. The fire, the snakes, and the scorpions are easy: just jump over them. It’s the other obstacles that can be a bit tricky.

There are two types of pits: the pits you can see and the pits that disappear and reappear. The pits you can see are easy to get by. Just wait for the rope to swing by, jump on it, and swing yourself to the other side. The other ones are a bit tougher. If you enter a screen and you don’t see any obstacles in front of you, don’t go blindly charging forward. I died many times doing this. You want to hang back a second and wait to see if one of the appearing/disappearing pits will show its face. If there is one of these pits, quickly run across it when it disappears or swing across it using a vine. If there is no pit – you’re good to go. You don’t want to hang back and wait too long, because as you remember this game is on a timer and every second counts.

The last obstacle you must surmount are the game’s crocodiles. If there’s a vine swinging above you, USE IT. Otherwise you have to jump across these crocodiles like stones in a river when you see their mouths close. They don’t stay closed for very long, so you really have to hurry across. This is probably the part of the game that kills the most people. Your timing has to be perfect. Your speed has to be perfect. One small mistake and you are dead.

This is a very simple game. You pick a direction (I always went to the left), you run, you jump over obstacles, you swing from vines, and you look for treasure. Each time you hit the edge of the screen the action pauses for the briefest of seconds while the game takes you to the next screen. This isn’t like Mario or any other 2D platformer where the screen scrolls with you. This is only 1982. We’re not quite there yet!

I’ve heard that you can use the underground tunnels to traverse the jungle faster, but all the dead ends were annoying to me and I quickly decided that it wasn’t worth it. I pretty much stuck to the top the entire time I played.

Graphics:

This is a pretty primitive looking game, but in comparison to some of the other 2600 titles that were released around this time it doesn’t look bad at all. The jungle is clearly a jungle. The crocodiles are clearly crocodiles. The logs are clearly logs, etc. You aren’t just running through a barren area where everything is composed of detail-less shapes. I like Pitfall Harry’s design, in particular his haircut. I referred to him as “Buzz” in my mind as I played this game.

There really isn’t a whole lot to see here, but I think you have to factor in that this game was released 40 freaking years ago. Visually, Pitfall! accomplishes everything it sets out to do.

Sound:

There’s no stage music in this game, so expect to listen to eerie silence as you are playing. Pitfall Harry makes noises when he jumps, gets hurt, dies, etc. I love the Tarzan-like sound effect that plays when you swing over a rope. But this game is very, very primitive in the audio department. The silence makes the game feel so empty and quiet.

 

Overall:

Clearly this game is a bit outdated by today’s standards, but I tried to open up my mind and put myself in the shoes of someone in 1982 who was playing this for the first time. I can imagine they must have been quite impressed. I’ve played a handful of 2600 games in my life and there’s nothing out there that is quite like Pitfall! It’s fun, it’s challenging, and the game feels like it has an actual purpose and a goal for you to obtain – collecting all the treasures. I find it has more depth and replay value than other “high score” games of its time.

If I was a gamer back in 1982 I am sure I would have loved this game. But let’s be real. This is 2022 and there’s not a whole lot that Pitfall! has to offer anymore. It’s fun for a little while, but then it quickly gets repetitive. I’d say I made about 5 attempts to beat this game. The first several attempts ended in me dying before I could even collect three treasures. The fourth attempt went pretty well. Got a decent score. The fifth attempt I used save states and tried to get all of the treasures, but I still wasn’t good enough.

After those five attempts, I feel like I don’t really need to play Pitfall! anymore. I’ve seen everything the game has to offer, and I don’t feel like doing the same thing over and over anymore. I’m ready to move on.

I appreciate Pitfall! and I realize it was an important game in the history of video games in general. I’m excited to play other games in the series and see how they build on the original. But will ever return to this game again in my life? Probably not.

 

Final Score:

C

40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:

1982 Reviews:

Satan's Hollow

Pitfall! (the review you're reading)

And coming up next:

Tron

For a complete index of all my past posts and game reviews, click

>HERE<

Video Game Review #339: Satan's Hollow

Satan's Hollow

Arcade

Nostalgia Factor:

 

If you can believe it, my 40th birthday is coming up in approximately five months. In an attempt to do something fun, and perhaps broaden my video game horizons in the process, I’ve decided to go back and play through and review a handful of games from each and every year that I’ve been alive. The catch? These have to be games that I have NEVER played before. Should be fun! Most of my retro reviews are from things I’ve already played, so it will be nice to come back and perform “mop up duty” throughout the years and check out some titles that I am unfamiliar with. First year up: 1982. The year I was ejected from my mother’s womb.

When paging through Wikipedia looking for games that were released in 1982, one title in specific jumped out at me: Satan’s Hollow. Not only had I never heard of the game before, but the screenshots made this game look like something well ahead of its time – apart from other very generic looking titles like Pole Position or Joust, or anything that came out in the early 80s. I also decided I’d check out Pitfall! for the Atari 2600 and Tron for the arcade, so be on the lookout for those reviews coming soon. But for now, what would I think of Satan’s Hollow? Let’s get this show on the road.

 

Story:

I’m not quite sure if this game even has a story. Nothing is ever explained in the game, and I can’t find anything story-related when I google it either. From what I’ve gathered, you’re some dude on a quest to infiltrate Satan’s hideout and um, kill him.

Deep stuff here, but then again we are talking about a game made in 1982. Giving the player a satisfying storyline just was not a giant focus back then.

Gameplay:

You take control of a small ship that moves along the bottom of the screen. There are only three things you can really do: move left and right, shoot, and activate a shield. Enemies fly around in patterns on the screen above you, like something you’d see in Space Invaders or Galaga. It’s your job to shoot and destroy these enemies. When you’ve killed a handful of them, a little white “bridge piece” will appear on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. You have to zoom over to the left, make contact with the piece (it will automatically attach itself to your ship), and then zoom over to the right side of the screen where you automatically lay the bridge piece down across a gap that you have to cross. It’s your job to kill enemies, avoid getting hit (one hit kills you), and slowly build this bridge one piece at a time. Once you have completed the bridge, cross over it and the game takes you to a separate screen where you engage in what I guess you could say is a boss fight. You have to kill a little red demon that zips aroud the screen launching pitchforks at you. Kill him, and the game moves you on to the next level, where you square off against tougher enemies and have to build a bigger bridge. 

Don’t expect to be able to beat this game. It doesn’t have an ending. It just loops repeatedly. Kill enemies, build a bridge, cross the bridge, kill the demon guy, and then go back to building a bridge again. Rinse and repeat. Each time you start a new cycle, it gets a little bit more difficult. More enemies, more projectiles being flung your way, a longer bridge to build, and fewer places to hide. The game also gets darker, too, as the sun goes down. This makes enemies harder to spot – and ultimately harder to both kill and avoid. You play until you run out of lives, and then you have to start the whole game over again. There’s no continuing or picking up where you left off. You’re simply playing to see how far you can make it each attempt, and how many points you can rack up – the ultimate goal being to get the highest score you can attain.

Making things a little easier is the ability to use a shield that grants you temporary invulnerability. Tap the shield button for a short shield burst, or hold it down to keep your character invulnerable for a second or two. The shield has a very short charge-life, so don’t expect to be able to hold that button for very long. You get, as I alluded to, a second or two of invulnerability, if that. When your charge runs out, you have to wait for it to recharge before you can use it again. Fortunately, it does not take very long at all to charge back up again.

At its best, Satan’s Hollow is an intense, fast moving shooter that constantly keeps you on your toes. Between shooting at enemies, avoiding their fire, picking up and depositing bridge pieces, and strategically using your shield for either offensive or defensive purposes, you rarely have a moment to stop and take a breather. And that’s okay, as this can be a bit of fun!

Unfortunately, there’s a limited amount of replay value to be found here. I’ve never been keen on high score-based games that keep looping repeatedly. I want an ending. I want to see credits roll. I want to be able to say that I “beat” the  game. To me, there’s nothing satisfying about trying to nab the highest score. There’s always going to be players out there that are better than me or more dedicated to getting that high score. As I said, I want an ENDING, or the whole thing begins to feel a bit pointless from my viewpoint. And that’s what happened here. After playing this for a little over an hour, I’d already seen and experienced everything that the game was going to offer me. I turned the game off and moved on to something else.

 

Graphics:

If you’re looking at still screenshots of this game, it looks more advanced than other games that came out back in 1982, or the early 80s in general. Once you start playing, however, you realize that it’s just the colorful backgrounds that are making the game stand out. Really, the enemies you face and the little ships you destroy are pretty run of the mill for this era of gaming. I do have to give it props for how the game gets darker and darker as you play, eventually getting lighter again. I imagine this must have been a pretty innovative thing for 1982. Heck, I remember being blown away by the day/night cycle in Ocarina of Time, and that game came out 16 years after this one. So kudos for that.

Also, some of the special enemy designs, like the little goblins and demons you fight, really fit the atmosphere of the game well. The big Satan head that blows fire at you? Love it. I can imagine that the theme of this game, coupled with its freaking title, must have been very controversial back in the 1980s. Uptight pearl-clutching when it comes to things involving Satan or his minions has always been a prevalent thing, even moreso nearly 40 years ago. I bet the soccer moms did NOT want their kids playing this game at the local bowling alley.

 

Sound:

There isn’t much for me to say about this game’s music and sound effects. They are very primitive. Beeps and bloops are all you will hear for sound effects, and the stages are filled with empty silence rather than music. Occasionally you’ll hear a “Flight of the Valkyries”-type jingle play when you do something important, but aside from a brief moment of “oh hey I know that song” there isn’t anything too impressive about it.

Overall:

Satan’s Hollow is by no means a must-play title, but I do have to say that I am glad I played it. It’s a game that caught my eye with its unique visual style, it came out the year I was born, and now I can say I am able to cross it off my bucket list. That said: this isn’t a great game. It does a lot of great things, but it is not a great game. The theme is cool. The graphics are decent. The gameplay is fast and intense. I love the bridge-building and the shield mechanics. Once I realized just how shallow this game is, however, it quickly fell apart for me. You can only do literally the EXACT same thing for so long before you start to get tired of it. And that’s what happened here. I have a feeling this is going to be a theme for a lot of these early 80s games, but I’m going to stick with it. Broaden my gaming horizons, remember?

Maybe if this game had an actual ending, I would have spent a longer amount of time with it. But I’m just not a “high score” guy. I put a little over an hour into this game, and then I was ready to move on. There’s so many quality games out there, that I’ll likely never come back to this one again. I can’t really recommend it to anyone either when there are so many other great shooters, or heck – great games in general, that are out there to play. Overall, though, Satan’s Hollow is an interesting piece of gaming history and although I may not have had the most satisfying experience playing it, I’m still glad I did.

 

Final Score:

D+

40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:

From 1982:

Satan's Hollow (the review you're reading)

And coming up next:

Pitfall!

For a complete index of all my game reviews, click 

>HERE!<

Video Game Review #338: Die Hard Arcade

Die Hard Arcade

Sega Saturn

Nostalgia Factor:

The first and last time I played Die Hard Arcade was back in 1996, when my family was on vacation in Orlando, Florida. Our resort had this game in its arcade and I would go down there and play it almost every day. Beat ‘em ups were one of my favorite types of games back then, and this was one of the first titles to bring that genre into the third dimension. Not only was this game groundbreaking in that regard, it was also chaotic and a lot of fun to play. Plus it was also made by Sega. I was a giant Sega loyalist back then so anything they put out,  I was going to support. In fact, I often ignored other “better” beat ‘em ups like The Simpsons or X-Men just to showcase that support. 

Despite playing this game a ton while I was on vacation, I never checked out its home port. I never saw it on the store shelves, nor did I encounter it when renting games. Saturn games, even in the system’s heyday, have always been hard to find – so I am sure it was just bad luck that Die Hard Arcade never made its way to any of my local stores.

I haven’t so much as even thought of this game until the last few weeks when I started looking into Saturn emulation technology. I used to think emulation was immoral, but then I realized that without it I probably never would have been able to play games like this again in my life. 

Easy choice for me.

Story:

This game loosely, and boy do I mean loosely, follows the events of the first Die Hard movie. You play as John McClane as you are sent into a large building that looks suspiciously like Nakatomi Plaza, although the game never comes out and actually says that is what it is. Your goal is to rescue the president’s daughter from a group of terrorists that have taken over the building. 

This group is led not by Hans Gruber, but by Wolf “White Fang” Hongo – an old Asian man with a white beard. Battle through all of the stages and defeat him at the end of the game, and you win. Yay!

There’s not much to this game’s storyline, obviously, but seeing as how this is a simple beat ‘em up we should know better than to expect much in that regard.

Gameplay:

You can play this game either solo or with a friend. As always, I played through this game solo for this review – as I currently don’t have anyone in my life who would even remotely be interested in playing this. Channing, I can’t wait for you to be old enough to play video games with me! Gah!

Anyway, when the game begins you automatically assume control of John McClane. If you have a second player with you, that player will take control of Kris Tompsen – John’s never before seen partner. I would have liked the option to select which character you want to play as in single player mode – but unfortunately that’s not allowed. 

The premise of this game is very, very simple: beat up and destroy everyone who gets in your way. You’ll do that in a myriad of ways – but mainly with your fists and your legs. As you progress throughout the game, you’ll gain access to weapons. And this is where the game gets crazy. Nearly everything you see can be used as a weapon, from the usual beat ‘em up staple of barrels to other things like TV monitors, mops, and  grandfather clocks. If you see it, you can probably pick it up and throw it.

The action is chaotic and pretty much nonstop. Don’t expect anything too dynamic, however. Action normally consists of beating a bunch of enemies in one room – at which point the screen fades to black and you take on another group of enemies in a different room. You can’t really travel freely from left to right like other beat ‘em ups such as Final Fight or the TMNT games. As a result, this game just feels like a series of battles that take place in one room after another – which is really not too far from the truth.

The one wrinkle thrown at you is the ability to perform Quick Time Events. Tap the button flashing onscreen as you are watching a cinematic and you can escape certain battles altogether. Fail, and it’s off to the battle arena for you.

You’ll face a series of normal enemies, but most areas end with a fight against a boss character. Remember in the first Die Hard movie when John McClane got into a fight with a bunch of robot spiders? What about the part where he massacred a group of sumo wrestlers with a rocket launcher? Yeah, yeah. I know it doesn’t happen in the movie. But it sure happens here.

I’ve read reviews where the main criticism of this game is that it is too easy. When I first fired this game up, I expected to cruise through it with no problems. But you only start with four credits, and that is not nearly enough to be able to beat this game. You lie, online reviewers! In order to have a fair shot at beating this game you have to earn more credits. You do that by playing an old Sega arcade game called Deep Scan. In this game, you are a warship and it is your job to drop bombs on submarines in the water below you. You nab one extra credit for every 200 points you earn. And if you die, you don’t lose those extra credits. You can fire Deep Scan right back up again and look to add to your credits total.

I earned 19 credits and when I played the actual game, I ended up beating it with just one credit left. I played through it a second time and it only took 13 credits. I’d say if you are looking to beat this game for the first time, try to earn somewhere around 20 credits in Deep Scan before diving into the actual game.

 

Graphics:

Part of me thinks this game looks awesome and another part of me thinks it does not. Growing up in the 90s, I am used to these early experimental 3D graphics. I know a lot of people say that games from this era haven’t aged well, but I beg to differ. I think the characters in this game are just oozing with charm. The lifeless expressions, the flickering polygons. I love it.

 

But at the same time, I couldn’t help but laugh at the graphics from time to time. The animations in the cutscenes are just SO BAD. I can’t tell if Sega made these scenes intentionally bad or what was going on. I won’t even mention the voice acting, which I’ll get to in my next segment.

The in-game environments are filled with fun details. If you can see it, you can probably destroy it. The fire truck stage is one of my favorites. A little touch that I found humorous is when you are fighting in the bathroom and as you are slamming people into things, you can make out toilet paper rolls flying around or rolling along the ground. I had a good chuckle at that.

Sound:

This is one of those games where you aren’t going to remember ANY of its music when you are done playing. Not that this game has a bad soundtrack. It doesn’t. In fact it fits the fast-paced onscreen action pretty well. That doesn’t make it memorable, though. The sound effects are fine, filled with all kinds of satisfying punch and kick noises.

That voice acting, though. My god. It makes the notoriously bad voice acting in the original Resident Evil look terrific. I can’t even describe how bad it is. Fire up some clips of this game on YouTube and see (or I guess, hear) it for yourself.

 

Overall:

I’m a little torn on this title. It’s short. It’s shallow. It has no replay value. The cinematics are laughably bad. I don’t have a whole lot of sentimental feelings for this game and it will probably be a very long time before I revisit it again.

But at the same time I also can’t help but admire this game. In an era where beat ‘em ups were a dime a dozen, Die Hard Arcade broke the mold with its 3D graphics and highly interactive environments. There are so many things you can use as weapons and so many creative ways to defeat your enemies. And while the game is short, it’s also undeniably fun at the same time - particularly if you are playing with a second person. I challenge you to play this title with a friend and tell me you didn’t have a good time. Another plus for this game is just how “Sega” it is in every  facet of the game. The graphics, the controls, the presentation. This game is a microcosm of many of the things that mid-90s Sega tried to do. All it is missing is cheesy singing for the stage music!

Look, I understand that this isn’t a great game. It has a lot of flaws. But I don’t care. I’d recommend this title to anyone who is into beat ‘em ups or cooperative two player games. You just have to appreciate this game for what it is: a flashy, over the top, shallow, and SHORT beat ‘em up title. If you know what you’re getting into, you’ll probably have good time with this game. Enjoy it while it lasts, though, because once you’re done with it there is little reason to come back.

"Guilty pleasure" perfectly describes Die Hard Arcade.

 

Final Score:

C+

 

If you liked this review, check out some of my other game reviews:

Alien vs Predator

X-Men

The Simpsons

Streets of Rage

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time

Video Game Review #337: Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time

PlayStation 4

Nostalgia Factor:

I’ve only played and reviewed one Crash Bandicoot game so far for this blog: The N-Sane Trilogy for the PS4. I was not a massive fan of that title, as evidenced by its C- review score.

To be honest, I’ve never been a giant fan of Crash Bandicoot. I don’t hate the series, but I’ve never been too overly excited by it either. When I first heard that they were making a Crash 4 back in 2020, I knew that I would play it someday – but I was in no rush to do so. Well, here in 2022 that day has finally come. Would this game change my thoughts on the Crash series as a whole?

No.

But read on to find out why!

Story:

This game acts as a direct sequel to Crash Bandicoot 3, ignoring any and all subsequent entries in the series. The villains from Crash 3 have broken out of their prison via a multidimensional rift. Now given access to Crash’s version of the multiverse, these villains set their minds on (you guessed it) taking control of all of the universes out there. Crash is pulled out of retirement to put an end to these nefarious plans. To defeat the bad guys, he needs to collect all of the Quantum Masks, each one controlling a different aspect of space and time.

Long story short, at the end of the game you beat the bad guys and save the day. Of course you do. I’m not going to go into too many specific details, but your journey takes several twists and turns along the way, leading you not only through different dimensions but different timelines as well. In fact, one of my favorite parts of this game’s storyline is when Neo Cortex goes back in time to stop himself from ever creating Crash Bandicoot to begin with.

To be honest, though – I wasn’t enamored by this game’s storyline. There’s just too much going on. The storytelling is quite incoherent, to the point where I had no idea what the hell was happening half the time. Very quickly into the game I stopped paying attention and I stopped caring about what was going on. I didn’t care about the characters. I didn’t care about this game’s weak attempts at humor. I just wanted to play the game.

Which leads us to the next complaint-filled section of this review…

 

Gameplay:

Initially I enjoyed my time with Crash 4, for the first hour or two at least. On the surface this game is everything you’d expect from a traditional Crash Bandicoot game: behind-the-back gameplay, boxes to break, fruit to collect, enemies to kill, obstacles to jump over, and bonus stages galore. All the series staples are present, like TNT boxes, nitro crates, power-up masks, your spin move – that kind of thing.

As I first started playing this, I was like alright. This isn’t bad. Maybe this would finally be the Crash game that would make me a fan of the series. But that all fell apart, and fast too. I’ve never experienced a steeper difficulty spike in a game before. I went from dying two or three times in a stage to dying over thirty times each stage – and that’s not an exaggeration.

Now, I am okay with challenging games. I even pointed this out in my N-Sane Trilogy review – I’m a child of the NES era. I was raised on difficult games. But Crash 4 takes things to new, and frustrating, extremes. Extremes that often felt cheap and unfair. You’ll be about to jump on a platform and – uh oh. It moves out of the way at the last second, sending you plummeting to your death. Let’s just kill this enemy over he- it suddenly starts shooting electricity everywhere (without warning) and now you’re dead.  Let's just run over this bridge- a block comes swooping through and pushes you off the bride to your death. Enemies hit you from off screen. Routine-looking jumps send you falling to your doom. You’ll think you’re at a safe enough distance from a TNT box’s explosion, but oops – you’re not. You’ll memorize the pattern of some moving platforms and obstacles and platforms in front of you, but the second you step into the playing field the pattern changes and you die. The hits just keep coming all game long, and once they start they do not stop.

Around the time I started dying 30 times per stage, I decided that I was going to slow down a bit and proceed through each level at a snail’s pace. I’d be cautious. I’d take my time. Nothing would surprise me or sneak up on me. I’d cut that number of deaths from 30 down to three or four. But no. That didn’t happen. Even playing at the most methodical pace imaginable, I would still find myself constantly dying. A nice thing about this game is that you have infinite lives, however – so that’s somewhat of a relief. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to beat this game if I started off with just three.

Once you make it to the later levels in the game, expect your frustration to be at an all-time high. I’m normally a relatively chill dude but some of these stages had me screaming at the TV. There’s one stage in particular where you are falling through the air and have to jump from piece of wreckage to piece of wreckage until you make it to the end of the stage. One false step and you die. Let’s just say I false stepped a lot here. A LOT. Let’s not get me started on the second to last stage of the game, where you have to use the game’s masks (which I’ll get to shortly) to navigate a series of obstacles that brings you to the game’s final boss. I died, I shit you not, 122 times on this level. 122 fucking times. I was so upset with this game I am surprised I didn’t wake up the baby who was sleeping in the next room over.

Normally in a Crash game, one of the things I like to work on is collecting all of the boxes in each particular stage. Crash 4 sucks all the enjoyment out of that task. I would start out each stage with the full intent of collecting all the boxes, but then I would die 30 seconds later, go back to the beginning of the stage, and I’d have to collect them all over again. Checkpoints in this game are so few and far between, and you die SO OFTEN that I quickly gave up going after all the boxes and trying to break them. Otherwise I would just be breaking the same boxes over and over and over again, only to have my progress wiped out each time I would die. What a waste of time. No thanks. Just get me to the end of this damn stage so I can get this game over with as quickly as possible!

The thing this game does that I like the most is its implementation of the aforementioned masks. These masks give Crash special powers, like the ability to slow down time or turn into a tornado. In small bursts, some of the segments where you use these masks can be fun. But the game definitely overdoes it, and very quickly these segments turn from a fun break in the action to tedious and frustrating. Seriously, this game NEVER relents in its difficulty – to the point where I simply didn’t find it fun anymore. I like to be challenged, but please do it in a fair manner. Mega Man? Dark Souls? Those games are tough, yes, but FAIR. Too many times as I played Crash 4 did I find the “rules” and the physics of the game change on a dime JUST to fuck me over. And that’s not cool.

 

Graphics:

I have to give credit where it is due: this game looks really nice. Bright, cartoony graphics. Wonderfully animated characters, bosses, and enemies. Each stage is filled with so many details that are an absolute marvel to look at. I said this with the N-Sane Trilogy and I will say it again – it is almost as if you are playing through a wonderfully animated Saturday morning cartoon. I absolutely cannot say a bad thing about this game’s visual presentation. It is stunning. 

It’s just too bad, however, that this game is absolutely no fun to play.

Sound:

If you’ve been happy with the music from previous Crash Bandicoot games, you’ll be happy with the music here. I didn’t think it was anything too special, but I didn’t dislike it either. It fits the graphical presentation of the game quite well, even if it isn’t very memorable at all. The sound effects really shine, however. The noise it makes when you use your spin move, the TNT countdown, the sound when you collect fruit and break boxes, the “ooga bah!” when you pick up a mask – this is iconic stuff here.

The voice acting is pretty good, too, even though I didn’t care for the game’s story. If I can say one positive thing about this game, it’s that it looks and sounds fantastic. Again, it is an absolute shame this game isn’t any fun to play.

Overall:

I think you can tell from everything I’ve written so far that I didn’t enjoy this game. The graphics and sound – sure. They are top notch quality. But to me the whole point of playing a game is to lose yourself and have fun. Aside from maybe the first hour I spent playing this game, I didn’t have any fun with it.

I appreciate what they tried to do with this game. Plucking something out of the 90s and updating it with the technology of today is something I wish more franchises would do. I’d love to see something like Vectorman or Earthworm Jim brought into the next-generation of gaming. It was what I was hoping Square Enix was going to do with the Final Fantasy VII remake before they went another direction. But as I said before, I’ve never been a big fan of the Crash Bandicoot series. While I appreciate what they’ve done visually with this game, I just don’t like the original series it was based on. So as a result, I don’t like this. Maybe it could have snuck by with a score in the C range, if only it had a more manageable difficulty level.

But that difficulty level, though. It just breaks the whole game. It’s a shame too, because Crash 4 does have a lot going for it. The presentation is great. It looks and sounds fantastic. The stage design showcases a lot of variety. I like the introduction of the masks and their special powers. You can play side missions as multiple characters. You can tell a lot of TLC went into this game.

I wish I could say I liked Crash Bandicoot, but it looks like me and this series are just not meant to be. The N-Sane Trilogy got a C- and this game is going to rank even lower. If I ever get the urge to play another game in this series again, remind me of how much I hate it and steer me in another direction. I’m sorry, Crash, but we’re just going to have to go our separate ways.

 

Final Score:

D+

If you liked this review, check out some of my other game reviews:

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

Spyro Reignited Trilogy

Ratchet & Clank

Bug!

Puppeteer

Video Game review #336: Resident Evil

Resident Evil

Sega Saturn

Nostalgia Factor:

My personal Infinity Gauntlet of retro gaming is now complete. I’ve got my physical game collection, RetroArch and a bunch of roms on my computer, a fully loaded RetroPie, and a ton of classic games I’ve purchased digitally over the years from the PlayStation store. The last thing I needed was a dependable way to play the Sega Saturn (which I’ve heard is notoriously hard to emulate). I now have it. I’m super excited to finally be able to go back and play all these games I missed out on from one of my favorite eras of gaming. I was so overwhelmed by choices that I didn’t even know where to begin. I wanted to test out the software and see if it was dependable and wasn’t going to crap out on me mid-game. So to test the waters I fired up something I’m familiar with – Resident Evil.

I originally played this game for the Sega Saturn around the time it first came out back in 1997. I remember being impressed that the Saturn was able to handle the game as well as it did (despite a few graphical issues). It even added some new wrinkles to the fray, like an enemy called a Tick and a double Tyrant battle at the end of Chris’s campaign. That said – since I already owned the Director’s Cut of the game for the PS1, I never bothered to purchase the Saturn version. I rented it for one weekend and I haven’t played it again since then. Until now.

I’ve already played and reviewed the Director’s Cut of the game, as well as the GameCube remake (which I even re-reviewed), so I am going to try to keep this one short since I really don’t have much else to say about the original Resident Evil. So without further ado, let’s dive in.

 

Story:

Playing as Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, two members of an elite law enforcement unit named S.T.A.R.S, you are investigating a series of mysterious murders and disappearances in a remote area of town just outside of Raccoon City. An attack by a vicious pack of dogs forces your group to take shelter in a nearby mansion, which you quickly discover has been overrun by zombies and other monsters. As you methodically search through the mansion you discover a secret laboratory that has caused this disaster, and (depending on your game choices) either flee or destroy the mansion on your way out.

Like I said, I’ve already reviewed some variation of this game three times already so I’m not going to explain things any more thoroughly than that!

 

Gameplay:

Again, if you want a detailed breakdown of how this game works, go read my review for Resident Evil: Director’s Cut. It’s in the links at the bottom of this review. Everything about this game plays exactly the same. Same tank controls, same mansion layout, same solutions to the game’s various puzzles. Aside from a few graphical differences, this is the OG Resident Evil we all know and love.

What differences was I able to detect? Well, seeing as how this is pretty much a direct port of the original Resident Evil (not the Director’s Cut), there is no auto-aim feature available. That’s right, when you draw your weapon you don’t automatically lock on to the nearest enemy. You have to awkwardly line up your shot on your own and hope that you don’t miss. It’s funny how just this one tiny little change makes the game so much more difficult, especially when you are fighting enemies that are off-screen or enemies that move around a lot (like dogs or hunters). I thought I would breeze through this game pretty easily, but I have to admit that I died a small handful of times.

As I alluded to before, a new enemy type called the Tick is introduced. It’s basically the exact same thing as a hunter, but with a different skin. You encounter them in the caverns that lead to the underground lab. It’s a small, almost inconsequential change but I appreciated the effort at least. Also, when you are playing as Chris you have to fight not one but TWO Tyrants in the lab room where Wesker meets his untimely demise. Other changes include an added battle mode after you beat the game (which contains a zombie Wesker and a gold colored Tyrant). I think there are also some added costume choices you can unlock.

These changes are all superficial, though. At its core this is pretty much the same OG Resident Evil we all know and love. If you only play these games for the single player story modes, and then turn the game off after the credits roll, you’re going to walk away from this having the same functional experience you did with the PS1 version of the game.

Graphics:

This is the area where I am probably going to have the most to say. This game is undeniably much uglier looking than the PS1 version of the game. Character models are a lot less detailed and are very blocky and jagged looking. The game’s environments seem darker and a bit more gloomy and difficult to navigate. The thing that really sticks out to me is the Saturn’s inability to render transparencies properly. Everything that is meant to be transparent has this mottled, messy looking sheen to it. It’s most notable when there is water present, like when you poison the plant in the fountain, after you use the crank to drain the pool, when you are running through the shark water, or when the Tyrant breaks free of his glass tube. It’s even noticeable on items that you pick up and put into your inventory, like the glass bottles that you pick up to make the V-Jolt serum. All I could say when I would see these transparencies was “bless your heart.” The Saturn tries. It really does.

 

Sound:

The Saturn version of the game perfectly ports over the sound from the PS1 original, terrible voice acting and all. The music for this game is still fantastic and helps promote a feeling of palpable dread and fear. The sound effects are spot on. The voice acting is just as bad as ever, but that’s one of the things that makes the game so loveable to me. When you’re comparing the Saturn version of the game to the PS1 version, the sound is definitely the one area where there are virtually no changes whatsoever.

Overall:

I absolutely loved the original Resident Evil and when I reviewed the Director’s Cut back in 2015, I gave it the perfect score of an A+.

My opinion on the game has not changed. I still love this game, it still means a lot to me personally, and I am still going to give it an A+. Nevermind that this game is graphically inferior to the PS1 version. I’ve stated time and time again throughout the life cycle of this blog that I play games for FUN, and that good graphics are only an added bonus. Functionally, this is the same Resident Evil I know and love. I don’t care that the graphics are a little more pixelated and that its transparencies look terrible. This is still the same Resident Evil that turned video gaming upside down on me back in the late 90s.

I think people these days have been spoiled by the newer Resident Evil games and their flashy graphics. I think if someone young was to go back and play the OG version of the game, they’d be taken aback by its “primitive” appearance. I think it is important to state, however, just how groundbreaking this game was when it first came out. The atmosphere, the music, the permanent sense of dread that engulfs you when you play this game. Resident Evil changed the way I looked at gaming forever. And it’s still an absolute joy to revisit, even in modern times. And on the Sega Saturn.

 

Final Score:

A+

If you liked this review, check out some of my other reviews:

Resident Evil: Director's Cut

Resident Evil 2

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

Resident Evil (remake)

Re-Review: Resident Evil remake (GC)

Video Game Review #335: Mega Man 3

Mega Man 3

Nintendo Entertainment System

Nostalgia Factor:

When I first started this blog, one of my initial goals was to play through all the original Mega Man games for the NES and review them in rapid succession. Here’s how I am doing so far:

August 19, 2015: I review the original Mega Man.

July 23, 2017: I review Mega Man 2.

February 3, 2022: I review Mega Man 3.

So yeah, I think it is safe to say I failed my goal. A two-year gap and a five-year gap between Mega Man reviews. But you know what? That’s totally okay. I’ll get around to reviewing these games on my own time.

My history with the series isn’t a very deep one. As a kid, I only had experience with Mega Man one and two. I picked up and played Mega Man 3 in, say, 2005, when the Mega Man Anniversary Collection came out for the GameCube. I never ended up finishing the game and I remember very little of my time with it. So in no way, shape, or form do I hold the same sentimental, nostalgic feelings for this game that I do for its predecessors. If Mega Man 3 was going to impress 39 year-old Dan, it was going to have to do so on its own merits. Would it succeed? Ehhhhhhhh. Kind of. Read on for my full thoughts. 

Story:

This is a game where you have to read the instruction manual or look online to find out about its story, because nothing is ever explained in-game. When you fire up Mega Man 3, you’re taken directly to the title screen (nothing happens if you don’t press any buttons). After starting the game, you’re thrown headfirst right into the action. It’s a shame, too, because as I was playing through this game I realized that I was missing out on possible key plot points. Who is the pink Mega Man lookalike who keeps attacking me? What the heck is Wily up to this time? Where did this dog come from? No freaking idea.

Typically when nothing is explained in-game, I just ignore its story, which is what I did here. This is a platform based 2D shooter. It would have been nice to know what was going on, but in games like this it is absolutely not essential. Just look at the Castlevania games, which I just got through reviewing for the Anniversary Collection. I even knew what was going on in those games, but did I give a crap? No – just like I didn’t give a crap here. Unless you’re a diehard Mega Man freak who needs to know every single detail of the entire series, it just doesn’t matter.

The only snippet of story you get from this game is after you beat it, when you find out that Proto Man (the pink Mega Man wannabe) has rescued Mega Man from the wreckage after defeating Dr. Wily. You also find out that he’s *gasp* Mega Man’s brother! Whoah! Actually, no. I don’t care. This is good to know in case it plays a factor in future Mega Man games, but it didn’t really do much to help me appreciate this game any more.

 

Gameplay:

Mega Man’s bread and butter has always been its gameplay, and Mega Man 3 faithfully takes the formula established in the first two Mega Man games and expands upon it ever so slightly. At its core, however, this is still pretty much the same as the first two games. You start with a stage select screen. When you finish the stage and defeat the boss, you take his weapon and you are able to use it as your own. The key to winning is to determine which boss’s weapons are strong against which other bosses, and then complete the stages in that order. Once you destroy all the bosses, four more stages become available to fight through. Complete these stages and you advance to Wily’s castle, where you have to battle through five or six more stages before doing battle with Wily himself. Beat him, and you’ve beaten the game. Exact same formula as the previous two Mega Man games.

Gameplay is pretty much the same too. You use the d-pad to move Mega Man. You jump. You shoot. You change weapons (which changes Mega Man’s color). You climb ladders. You navigate your way atop vanishing blocks. You fight bosses. You die (a lot). What are the slight changes I mentioned? Well, there are the random battles against Proto Man, who acts as a mini boss off and on throughout the game. There’s also the ability to summon Rush, the aforementioned dog. Rush has three forms, each of which serves a different purpose. Spring Rush launches you upwards to otherwise unreachable platforms. Rocket Rush launches you across large gaps or chasms. And there’s a hoverboard Rush which basically acts as a flying carpet that you can use to fly around the stage. This drains your energy very quickly, however, so don’t plan on overusing this as you play.

I liked the addition of Rush. It added the smallest of wrinkles to a game that otherwise does very little to set it apart from its predecessors. The whole game feels more like an expansion pack of Mega Man 2 than anything else. It’s so similar, but at the same time NOT as good as Mega Man 2. That game had such a perfect mix of great enemies, music, and stage design. I freaking loved Mega Man 2. This is a decent game, sure, but the whole time I was playing it I felt that it was nothing more than a cheap imitation of Mega Man 2. It doesn’t do anything as good as that game does, and it has absolutely none of its charm.

I’d have to say this is probably the hardest of the three Mega Man games I have played so far. The OG Mega Man was tough, but I found Mega Man 2 to be surprisingly easy given its reputation. This one, however, was pretty tough – especially towards the end of the game. I’m pretty sure that’s where I got hung up back in 2005 when I tried playing through this game. Just couldn’t beat the “boss rush” stage in Wily’s castle. If only I knew how energy tanks worked back then. I just figured it out about halfway through this game. Did these energy tanks work the same back in Mega Mans one and two? If so, go ahead and insult me and call me slow because I completely deserve it.

 

Graphics:

I don’t know what I can say about this game’s graphics that I haven’t said in my past Mega Man reviews. It looks pretty much exactly the same as the last game. Some of the stages have some cool effects going on in the background, but on the whole I found the stage themes and designs of Mega Man 3 to be much more uninspiring than its predecessors. Maybe this is simply nostalgia speaking, and Mega Man 3 actually looks better than I am giving it credit for. Who knows?

Sound:

I don’t mean to make it feel like I’m ripping on this game by constantly comparing it to Mega Man 2 in a negative fashion – but I’m going to do it again. This game has a good soundtrack, sure, but nowhere near as good as Mega Man 2’s.

 

Overall:

*sigh*

I came into this game fully expecting that I would think it was great and that it would rekindle my interest in the Mega Man series again. It did not. I mean, this is a good game. I certainly didn’t hate my time with it. But the whole time I was playing it, I couldn’t help but compare it in my mind to the last two Mega Man games and how it wasn’t as great as they were. The music wasn’t as good. The bosses weren’t as fun. The stages weren’t as creative. Overall, this was just a pretty average experience for me.

As I was playing this, I got the feeling that I was just sort of going through the motions. I didn’t hate the game, but I didn’t love it either. It was just a game that existed that I happened to be playing. While Mega Man 2 left me wanting more Mega Man, I was just happy when this game was over.

Does this mean that it’s going to be another five years before I play Mega Man 4? I would hope not, but you never know. One thing I may take a look at first, actually, is The Wily Wars for the Sega Genesis. It’s basically a compilation of the first three Mega Man games but with improved graphics and quality of life changes. Maybe I’ll change my opinion on Mega Man 3 when I get to that portion of the game? Who knows?

What I do know is that, like I said, I considered this to be a pretty average experience. I’m going to tack a plus sign onto that C grade, though, because even though I didn’t think this game was terrific, it’s still a solid Mega Man title and I worry that the nostalgia factor (or the lack thereof) might be corrupting my view of this game. If I didn’t have Mega Man 1 and 2 to stack this game up against, would I have enjoyed it more? I’m willing to bet that I would have.

 

Final Score:

C+

If you liked this review, check out some of my other game reviews:

Mega Man

Mega Man 2

Kid Dracula

Ninja Gaiden

Ninja Gaiden 2