Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Video Game Review #370: Blaster Master Boy

Blaster Master Boy
Game Boy




Nostalgia Factor:

I’m moving onto the year 1992 with my next review: Blaster Master Boy for the Nintendo Game Boy. Since I never owned a Game Boy as a kid, this is a game I never got the chance to play growing up. I absolutely love the original Blaster Master and it is one of my favorite NES games of all time. I’ve been aware of this game’s existence for years and years now. Sometimes I hear it called Blaster Master Jr. which is a title I prefer. But the official title here in the US is Blaster Master Boy.

I came into this game relatively blind here in the year 2022 – 30 years after its initial release date. All I knew was that it took place entirely on foot and not in the tank. I came into this expecting something similar to the on-foot missions of the NES game, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Read on for my full thoughts. And they aren’t pretty.




Story:

Jason, the hero from the original Blaster Master, is called back into action to investigate some kind of nuclear reaction deep in the heart of the planet and save the world from its potentially devastating effects. Honestly this game’s story means nothing, as it is quickly tossed away the second you start playing.



 
Gameplay:

This is where I have the biggest issues with this game. This is not Blaster Master. I did a little research and saw that this is actually a spinoff of the Bomberman series but reskinned as a Blaster Master game. The goal of the game is to walk around and explore each stage until you find the key that unlocks the exit. You have a series of different bombs at your disposal. You have to use these bombs to kill enemies and destroy roadblocks that are in your way. You have to be careful because unlike most video games, your own bombs can hurt you. And they hurt you BAD. You really have to make sure you put some distance between yourself and the bombs when you drop them or you’ll find yourself dying left and right. 

The different types of bombs include bombs that fire off in a straight line (and can thus take out entire rows of obstacles at a time) and bombs that explode outwards and do a wide radius of damage. You have to learn to conserve ammo for the boss battles, however. I found it was helpful to mainly use my default attack during regular stages unless I absolutely had to use something else.

You’ll encounter obstacles as you play that you need to equip items on your character in order to walk over them. That's an oddly worded sentence, but I don't know any other way to say it. Anyway, these obstacles include water and spikes. If you don’t pause the game and put on the appropriate equipment, you’ll immediately die or start taking damage. This leads to one thing I really hate about this game: you have to constantly be pausing and unpausing to use these items. But here is what I hate the most about this game: the dark areas. Sometimes when you destroy an obstacle it will uncover a staircase going down into the ground. If you go down the staircase, you enter a room that is 100% dark. You have to pause the game and equip the lantern in order to see. As I played through this game, I freely used my lanterns to explore these areas, thinking that there surely must be some kind of purpose or reason for their existence. I didn’t want to miss out on any key items! In my mind I didn’t realize I was making a terrible mistake. The lanterns are finite in their numbers. If you run out, you’re out of luck unless you can blindly collect one in the dark. Some of the later stages in the game take place 100% in the dark. If you don’t have any lanterns in your inventory these stages are nearly impossible to complete. You can’t see what is in front of you. Can’t see enemies. Can’t see spikes. Can’t see the water pools, which will kill quickly if you unknowingly wander into them. The game is virtually unplayable. Imagine trudging through this game, not having any fun in the process, and then getting to an area near the end of the game that you can’t complete. I would have had to start the whole game over again.

The fact that a game could have such a fatal flaw like this was 100% unforgivable to me. I was so angry. I wasn’t even enjoying the game to begin with. I hated it. I just wanted to be done with it. Rather than play the whole thing from the beginning, I loaded a YouTube video of someone completing the level (using lanterns) and then retracing their steps as I played along. Eventually I was able to make it through the end of the level – and eventually to the end of the game. Once I finished playing this I immediately reflected on what a terrible time I had with it. I’ve never been a Bomberman person so maybe that partially explains my dislike of the base gameplay. It just wasn’t any fun to me. It was the same thing over and over again. Walk forward. Blow up trees. Walk up to water. Pause game. Put on the life preserver to cross the water. Shoot enemies. Use bombs to destroy tree. Walk up to spike pit. Pause the game. Put on the boots. Walk over the spikes. Shoot enemies. Bomb away a wall. Pick up ammo. Find key. Go to level exit. It seems so mechanical and by the numbers. I hated it.

The only thing I liked about the game were the boss battles, which were the one and only thing in the game that actually felt relevant to Blaster Master. Even then, many of these boss battles took an annoyingly long time to complete. It feels like you have to hit some of them over 30 times before you beat them.


 

Graphics:

This game looks ugly and is easily the worst looking Game Boy game that I’ve reviewed so  far. Despite minor visual tweaks from level to level, the stages all feel the same. This is a very monotonous game in nearly every aspect, and its visuals do absolutely nothing for it. If I had to offer any positive feedback, it would be on the quality of the opening cutscene of the game. In a way, however, it only emphasizes how sad it is that this game hits its visual peak immediately and then goes roaring downhill from there.




Sound:

I already can’t remember a single thing about this game’s music or sound effects, and I barely just got through playing it. If that doesn’t just scream mediocre I don’t know what does.




Overall:

In case you couldn’t tell, I didn’t like this game. I really didn’t like this game. In fact, I hated this game. As soon as I was done playing it, I knew it was going to get an F. It’s terrible. I struggle to say anything good about it. It’s monotonous, it’s not any fun to play, and the whole running out of lanterns thing that made the game unplayable completely killed it for me. I can’t envision any scenario in my life where I come back and play this game again. Do yourself a favor and pass on this game, even if it is something you’ve always “been aware of” like me. It is not worth it.



THE GRADE:
F



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Saturday, May 28, 2022

Video Game Review #369: Bonk's Revenge

Bonk's Revenge
TurboGrafx-16




Nostalgia Factor:

I played and reviewed the original Bonk’s Adventure for the TurboGrafx-16 back in June of 2021. I had a somewhat lukewarm opinion of the game, saying that while overall I had a decent time playing it, there was nothing too remarkable or memorable about the title overall. I gave it the slightly above average final grade of a C+.

Due to my unenthusiastic reception to that particular game, I didn’t have much of a desire to come back to the series – particularly so soon. But then Mop Up Duty came along. Of all the games released in 1991 that I wanted to check out, for some reason Bonk’s Revenge was sticking out to me. I figured: why not? At least if I didn’t like the game, it probably wouldn’t take me too long to beat it - and then I could move onto something else. Plus I had read somewhere that the Bonk series got better with each passing installment. Figured there was no better time to put that to the test.

Would Bonk’s Revenge end up being more of the same, or would it end up being a massive improvement over its predecessor? Read on for my full review.




Story:

The first Bonk game didn’t offer much in terms of storyline, and neither does this one. You’re Bonk and it’s your mission defeat the evil bad guy on his moon fortress. That’s really all there is to this game. I have a feeling this will be a recurring theme among the rest of the Bonk games.



 
Gameplay:

This game handles just like the original Bonk title. You run, jump, smash stuff with your head, and air-spin your way through a series of stages. Each stage ends with a fight against a boss character. Then you move onto the next stage. Rinse and repeat. While on the surface it doesn’t seem like this game does much different from its predecessor, I had a ton of fun this time around.

I can’t even tell you what’s so different about this game that sets it apart. It’s been a good ten months since I played the first game in the series, so it is a little hard for me to pinpoint just why I had such a better time with this one. But I did!

This game is flat out fun. There was never a dull moment as I made my way through these stages. There’s always items to collect, there’s always enemies to defeat, there’s always platforming sections to make your way through. There are secret areas galore. There are fun bonus stages and mini games hidden throughout each level. The boss battles are super fun. I had a great time with these battles, trying to recognize the enemy’s pattern and trying to find and exploit his or her weakness. I’ll get to this more in detail later when I talk about the game’s graphics, but it seems like the stages are better designed this time around. They’re so creative! And there are multiple ways to make it through most of them. It’s almost like this game is akin to something like Super Mario World whereas the original Bonk was more like a Kirby game. I don’t know. Maybe that’s a bad comparison. But I definitely enjoyed this more than the first game.

Bonk’s Revenge is a decent challenge as well – just enough to not be too easy and just enough to not be too frustrating either. They truly found the perfect balance with this game.




Graphics:

This is a really good looking game. The graphics are sharp, with well-defined sprite characters. The stages are full of life and color. The very first stage of the game sets the tone for your adventure perfectly with its lush waterfalls and its plethora of bright flowers to collect. And things only get better looking from there.

As I alluded to before, stage design is a key component to what makes this game so fun. I love how each area has a theme. The level of detail put into making this game seem like a living and breathing cartoon world is truly appreciated by me.



 
Sound:

This game has a fun musical score that fits its look perfectly. I can’t complain one tiny bit about this game’s presentation. I have only played about five TurboGrafx-16 games in my life, but I have to think that this must be one of the most well put together games for this system.




Overall:

I’m so glad I decided to pick Bonk’s Revenge as one of my 1991 game reviews. I could have easily just said something like “the first Bonk was just an okay game. No need to play its sequels!” and called it a day. But I gave the series a second chance, and I couldn’t be any happier.

This is one of the best 2D platformers I’ve played in a long time. It’s unbridled fun from beginning to end. I couldn’t be more impressed with this game. I could easily see myself coming back to this in the future; maybe even showing my son the ropes when he’s old enough to play a game like this (he just turned two last week, so it may be another few years). As I said, my experience with the TurboGrafx-16 is relatively light. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up being the best game I play for the console. It’s that good.

If you haven’t played this game, do yourself a favor and find a way to check it out. Even if you didn’t like the first Bonk game, it is still well worth your time.

 

THE GRADE:
A-


 40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:


1986:

1987:

1988:

1989:

1990:

1991:
Bonk's Revenge (The review you're reading)

1992:

I was going to play through Final Fantasy Adventure for the Game Boy as my third and final 1991 game review, but somehow my save file became corrupted about three or four hours into the game and I’d have to start the whole thing over again from the beginning if I want to complete it. No thanks. I’ll probably come back and finish it someday, but for now I’m just going to move on from 1991 having only done two reviews for this year. I hope that’s okay with you. It better be!



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Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Video Game Review #368: Resident Evil Village

Resident Evil Village
PlayStation 4


Nostalgia Factor:

Resident Evil is one of my most beloved video game franchises of all time. It’s also one of my most reviewed franchises of all time, as I’ve reviewed 12 Resident Evil games (15 if you count re-reviews) for this blog.

Coming into Resident Evil Village, I actually knew very little about the game. I like to come into games as unspoiled as humanly possible – and that’s exactly what happened here. All I knew was that it was a first person game (like Resident Evil 7), and that it brought back that game’s protagonist – Ethan Winters. As far as the gameplay, the story, basically anything else went: I knew nothing. And I expected nothing, too. As much as I liked Resident Evil 7, the series has been spinning its wheel for years and years now. My expectations for this game were at an all-time low.

Would I end up liking this game, or would it be another disappointing entry into one of my favorite series of all time? Time to find out.




Story:

Ethan and his wife Mia are living a pleasant, relaxing life after the events of Resident Evil 7. They have a nice house and a new baby named Rosemary. Things seem to be going well for them… until their house is raided by Resident Evil mainstay Chris Redfield. Chris kills Mia, takes the baby, and places a stunned Ethan into custody. After blacking out, Ethan wakes up next to a transport vehicle, which has crashed in the snow. He wanders around the vicinity looking for clues as to his whereabouts when he discovers a village nearby. Very quickly Ethan finds out that something is terribly wrong in this village, as he is attacked by a number of vicious, wolf-like creatures. Ethan discovers that this village is under the control of the mysterious Mother Miranda and her four minions: Lady Dimitrescu, Donna Beneviento, Salvatore Moreau, and Karl Heisenberg.

These minions have split Ethan’s daughter into four different “pieces” which they intend to use in some kind of evil ritual. Using the village as a sort of central hub, Ethan goes to each of these minions’ locations to take back all of the flasks containing his daughter’s remains. This is the main object of the game. Once all the flasks are collected, the quest to take down Mother Miranda begins. Chris Redfield arrives in the village and explains to Ethan that he didn’t actually shoot his wife Mia – he had shot Mother Miranda, who had altered her appearance to look like Mia so she could steal baby Rosemary. I don’t want to spoil the game’s ending too much, but shit hits the fan quickly. Explosions, big guns, mutated creatures. Mother Miranda is eventually defeated, but at great cost: the life of one of Resident Evil’s major characters!

The game’s story was pretty fun for me – at least in the beginning of the game. As things progressed I began to care less and less about the story and more about its exploration and gameplay. There are so many plot holes and things that don’t make sense. I just went with it and tried not to think about it too much. By the end of the game, the story goes completely off the rails as it does in many other Resident Evil titles. At least nobody punches any boulders.



 
Gameplay:

This game plays out like a perfect combination between Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 4. At first I didn’t really see the RE4 connection. That became clearer and clearer to me the deeper I got into the game. Initially, I expected this to be more of the same in regards to Resident Evil 7. The first person perspective, the exploring, the slower pace. And then the game just explodes. That whole sequence with all of the wolf creatures swarming you is similar to the sequence early on in Resident Evil 4 where there is a mob of villagers coming after you. That’s when things really began to click for me.

The village looks a lot like the village in RE4. Despite the first person perspective, the combat plays out more like RE4 than RE7. You can shoot wildlife, collect gems and treasures, interact with a merchant. You hit crates and vases with your knife to find health and ammunition items. The scenery, the gameplay, the weapons, the boss characters: this game basically IS Resident Evil 4, but from a first person viewpoint. And that’s a fantastic thing.

You’re going to find yourself using this game’s map quite often. The map tells you if you’ve discovered everything there is to discover in each particular area of the game. If you missed a health or ammo pickup, the location will remain colored red on the map until you pick it up. Once you’ve fully explored an area, it turns to blue. Using the map is a great way to determine where you need to go or what areas you still need to explore. I was constantly opening and closing my map every 20 seconds, which I’m sure would have been annoying to anyone unfortunate enough to watch me play this game. Luckily I am not a streamer.

Exploration in this game is just so darn fun. I’m very OCD in my approach, and I love it. Unless there’s something in a room (like a puzzle) that I absolutely CAN’T clear until later on in the game, I won’t leave that room until I fully explore it and turn it to blue on my map. Same goes for outside areas too. It pays to be meticulous and to check out everything. I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun trying to find all the little secrets and items in a game before. Again, this brings me back to Resident Evil 4. I was the same way with that game too. It helps when your environment is so detailed and rich as it is in this series.

Not only is exploration a blast, but combat is a ton of fun too. I am not going to lie: I HATED the combat in Resident Evil 7. I’m glad they shifted gears and made it more like RE4 for this game. It’s so fun. Enemies react differently to where you shoot them on their body, and there are different strategies you can employ to take out groups of enemies at a time. You’ve got grenades, mines, that kind of thing. Nothing is more satisfying than getting a bunch of enemies bunched up in one location and then taking them all down with one shotgun blast. Nothing. The game does devolve into more of a shooter/action title as things go on, but I’m okay with that. On the whole I prefer the RE series when it is slower and more survival horror-based, but I don’t mind it here. You get a lot of that survival horror stuff in the beginning of the game, sure, but overall that’s just not what this game is. It’s an action game.

Before I move on, I feel I need to give a shot out to the section of the game where you explore Lady Dimitrescu’s castle. Lady Dimitrescu acts like a Nemesis/Mr. X type character, stalking you around her castle relentlessly and putting fear in your heart when you hear her footsteps. This is one of my favorite parts of this whole game, and it sucks that it is so short. I knew basically nothing about this game coming into it, but I HAD seen all the memes and all the hype surrounding Lady Dimitrescu. I really had high hopes that she was going to be a bigger part of the game, and it sucks that she wasn’t.




Graphics:

This game is absolutely stunning. So much detail was poured into the creation of the village. You get a genuine sense that this could have been based off of a real, decrepit, junk-filled village located somewhere in the remote USA. The atmosphere that permeates the game is fantastic. I haven’t been more engrossed and sucked in by a video game in quite some time.

Visually, my favorite part of the game is, again, from Lady Dimitrescu’s castle. There are some areas in the castle that remind me of the castles in RE4, with the brick walls and the red carpet and the gold trim and the wooden furniture and all that. It is jaw dropping seeing how photo realistic these areas are. And I played the game on a PS4. Why exactly do we need a PS5, again?
 



Sound:

There’s not much I can say about this game’s sound other than that it sounds great. The stars here are the voice acting and the atmospheric sound effects. The music I didn’t care much about, as I really didn’t notice it much as I was playing. I certainly don’t remember any of it.




Overall:

This game was such a pleasant surprise. Considering I came into this with low/no expectations, I was completely blown away by it. I was not expecting one of my favorite games ever (Resident Evil 4) to essentially be brought into the new generation of gaming, albeit from a first person perspective. And that’s essentially what this game is: a new, spruced up version of Resident Evil 4.

There were many times this question entered my head as I played the game: do I like this more than Resident Evil 4? RE4 may be one of my top 5 favorite video games of all time. If I liked this more than RE4, that would essentially by default put this game into my personal top 5. In fact, a different question popped into my head later on in the game: is this my favorite game of all time, period? There’s almost never a dull moment to be found here. The exploration is fun, the combat is satisfying, the presentation is remarkable. It’s rare that you encounter a game that you enjoy 100% of, and Resident Evil Village manages to accomplish this task. While I’ve cooled off a bit on the “best game of all time” thoughts (the game goes off the rails a bit towards the end) – the fact that it even entered my mind as a possibility should say a lot about its quality.

I certainly was not expecting to like this game as much as I did. I came into this expecting, at best, something on par with Resident Evil 7 – which I gave a B+. Village completely blows RE7 out of the water. In fact, this is probably my favorite game in the entire series since RE4, which came out 17 years ago. It’s fantastic from start to finish, from top to bottom. If I could muster up one complaint – it would again be about how the story goes off the rails in the later acts of the game. But that’s a minor complaint. When I review games, the fun factor is my #1 deciding factor on what kind of final grade I give a game. And I can’t say I’ve had more fun with ANY other video game in the past 5 years or so. This game is that good.



THE GRADE:
A+



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Thursday, May 19, 2022

Video Game Review #367: Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom

Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom
Nintendo Entertainment System




Nostalgia Factor:

When I was a kid, I was a huge fan of the first two Ninja Gaiden games for the NES. Although they were known for their legendary difficulty level, I never had too much trouble with them. Probably because I used to play them all day, every day until I became so good at them it didn’t even register to me that they were supposed to be challenging. Not only did I love playing these games, they also had really involved storylines as well. The first time I can ever remember caring about a video game’s story was with the first Ninja Gaiden game.

Seeing as how I loved these games so much, you’d probably assume I enjoyed the third game in the series as well. And you’d be wrong. I didn’t like this game. Not because it sucked or anything, but because I never played it. How did that happen, especially considering I was such a huge fan of the series? I’m not sure. The internet wasn’t around back then, so you had to rely on video game magazines or word of mouth from other kids who had played the game. I remember hearing from friends and kids at school that Ninja Gaiden III was “terrible” and that it was the worst game in the series. I remember going to my uncle Stevie’s house (I only got to see him about once a year) and he had this game. I wanted to pop it in and play it and he told me to not even bother with the game because it was “whack”.

Not only did I hear the game was bad, the NES was nearing the end of its lifespan. 16-bit consoles were all the rage and no one wanted to play NES games anymore. Although I personally still wanted to play Ninja Gaiden III, it no longer became a priority. When I traded in my NES and all my games to get a Sega Genesis, it basically closed the door on childhood Dan ever playing this game.

Let’s fast forward to the year 2022 – 31 years after this game’s initial 1991 release date. I had been creating a list of games to play for my Mop Up Duty review tour, and Ninja Gaiden III was on the list. When I made it to the year 1991, I immediately knew that the time had come. After a 31 year wait, I was finally going to play this game.
 

 

Story:

Despite being the third game in the series, Ninja Gaiden III takes place in between the first two games. Irene Lew, Ryu’s love interest from the first game, is murdered by an assassin that looks just like Ryu. Upon hearing of this, Ryu decides to investigate. He uncovers a plot by Foster (the shifty CIA agent from the first game) to harness the power from an interdimensional rift that was left behind when Ryu defeated the evil demon Jashin (again, from the first game). Foster has been using this power to create super powerful soldiers, known as bio-noids. It was one of these bio-noids that impersonated Ryu and killed Irene at the beginning of the game.

But wait! Irene isn’t dead. With her help, Ryu is able to defeat Foster and enter the interdimensional rift – with the hopes of sealing it off once and for all. Inside the rift, Ryu learns that Foster’s ex-partner Clancy is attempting to take control of the Ancient Ship of Doom, a powerful weapon with immense power. Clancy brings this ship through the rift and into the real world, where he is set on using it to take control of the planet. Ryu, of course, infiltrates the ship and destroys it from within, sending it crashing to its destruction. Ryu finds Irene and the two watch the sun rise on a new day.


 

Gameplay:

If you’ve played the other NES Ninja Gaiden games, you aren’t going to have any trouble picking this one up. It handles almost the same as the first two games. There are small differences, sure. Ryu can now hang from ledges and swing across them using his arms. He also has some new special weapons at his disposal. Honestly, though – not much has changed with the gameplay. You move left and right. You duck. You slash your sword. You jump. You climb on walls. You get hit. You lose health. You bounce back. You die –a lot. You fight bosses. You move onto the next stage and do it all over again.

What sets this game apart is its difficulty level. Now, I know that the first two games in the series are considered two of the toughest NES games of all time. And while I’ve gotten pretty good at those games over the years, I can still acknowledge their difficulty – even if it doesn’t particularly apply to me. Those games had unlimited continues, however. No matter how many times you’d die, you could always come back and try again. Sometimes it was at the beginning of a level. Sometimes they’d send you back a ridiculously long ways. But you always got to try again – as many times as you wanted. In this game, you have a finite number of continues you can use. Once you use them all up, you have to go back to the very beginning of the entire game again.

On paper this may sound reasonable, but in reality it was a horrible, horrible decision from the people who made this game. You get good at these Ninja Gaiden games through repetition – by playing these levels over and over again, memorizing jumps and where enemies appear, and learning from your mistakes a little bit each time through. You can afford to die, and you can afford to continue and start these levels over again, because you’re learning a little bit more and more with each attempt. When you take away the ability to continue over and over again, you are taking away the player’s ability to learn and get better at the game. Instead you send them back to the beginning of the game, where they then have to fight alllll the way back to the problem area, losing even more lives and continues in the process. And this is not an easy game. It’s doable, yes, especially with a lot of practice. But I feel the game makes it unnecessarily hard on its players to beat an already difficult game. Imposing a limit on how many continues you can use just seems cruel. I don’t know how I would have felt about this if I had played it as a kid. I would have gotten frustrated with the game, I’m sure. But at the same time I know I would have been obsessive enough to put in the time required to beat it.

Time that I just don’t have in the year 2022. Between my job, raising my son, and taking care of all the other adult obligations on my plate, I just couldn’t sink the time required into Ninja Gaiden III in order to beat it the “right” way. So I cheated and used save states. Every few minutes I’d save the game – and if I died, I would reload that save and try again. Part of me feels guilty for resorting to such cheap tactics to beat this game, but at the same time if I didn’t do it this way I never would have seen the end of this game.


 

Graphics:

This is an amazing looking NES game. You can tell it came out at the end of the system’s life cycle, because they pulled out all the graphical tricks in the book. Clothing flaps in the wind. Fire pulses and glows on the screen. Certain stages have things like plants and machines constantly moving in the background, really making these stages feel alive. The colors seem brighter. You can tell a lot of love was put into the design of both the enemies and  the stages. This may be one of the best looking games ever created for the NES – and I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that.

All of that being said, the game's graphical prowess doesn't translate well to screenshots. This is a game you have to see in action to truly appreciate.


 

Sound:

This game sounds amazing too. Great stage music, great sound effects. Say what you want about this game and its difficulty, but its production values are truly top of the line.




Overall:

I have mixed feelings about this game. I love the first two Ninja Gaiden games – and as far as gameplay goes, this title is very similar to those games. So by extension that means I do like this game. Its storyline is pretty entertaining. Obviously the presentation is great. That said, it is lacking something in the fun department for me. Everything looks, sounds, and feels right, but I don’t know what it is – something is just off for me. Something is missing that the first two games had that this one doesn’t.

Maybe it is simply the nostalgia factor. I grew up on Ninja Gaidens I and II. I played them religiously. I am able to overlook the shortcomings of these games because they both mean something to me personally. Ninja Gaiden III, on the other hand, I hold no nostalgic feelings for. Maybe I’m not able to overlook its shortcomings because, since I didn’t grow up with this game, I don’t feel as if I have to make excuses for it. It’s too hard. The stages are too long. Having to replay long chunks of these stages when you die is a pain in the butt. The knockback is bloody awful, as always. And the fact that you have a limited number of continues to work with? Don’t get me started (again).

This is a good game, yes. Certainly not “whack” or terrible like I had heard when I was a kid. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed I listened to the rumors about this game and that I didn’t check it out for myself. If I had grown up with this game, Ninja Gaiden III might have gone down as one of my favorite NES titles of all time. Now, it simply has to settle for a middling score. Just for namesake alone, I want to give this game at least a B-, but I just can’t do it. When I think back on my time with Ninja Gaiden III, I have absolutely no desire to play it again. Maybe that will change in the future. But for now, I have no choice but to give it a C+. I can’t help but feel I am under rating this game, but seeing as how I had just a so-so time with it, I don’t feel I can rank it any higher.


THE GRADE:
C+


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Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Video Game Review #366: Die Hard

Die Hard
TurboGrafx-16




Nostalgia Factor:

Mop Up Duty for the year 1990 wraps up with my review of Die Hard for the TurboGrafx-16. I originally had no intentions of playing this (I was going to go with Star Tropics instead), but when I saw screenshots of how interesting this game looked, I knew I had to check it out. Since I’ve never played this game before, I don’t have much else to add as far as nostalgia goes. Let’s move onto the review!

 


Story:

This is one of those movie adaptations that only loosely follows the plot of the film. In this game, John McClane, who is apparently just chilling in a park, hears that Nakatomi Plaza is under siege by terorrists. Not only is the building itself taken over, the whole surrounding area is too. He decides to spring into action and take out these terrorists himself. To do so, he has to clear the park of terrorists, cross some swampy terrain outside the building, enter the building, and make his way up to the top – where he must kill the terrorist leader before he can escape in a helicopter.

 


Gameplay:

Just looking at screenshots of this game, I expected it to be similar to other shooters of this era such as Gun.smoke or Rambo: First Blood Part II – two games I recently reviewed. While they share some similarities, they are quite different. 

While the purpose of those games is to simply start at the bottom of the screen and make your way to the top while shooting enemies, Die Hard takes a slightly different approach. Many of these stages are maze-like in their design. You’re not just going up, you’re going left, right, down, and up again – trying to find your way through to the end of each stage. This isn’t a game I would consider “bullet hell” either. It’s slow moving. You can take your time. John McClane can also jump, which makes it much easier to avoid enemy fire.

There are several different weapon upgrades you can pick up as you play. I liked the machine gun and the rocket launcher thing. The rocket launcher was especially useful due to its blast radius. All I did was walk forward while firing a shot off every few seconds, and it would often kill most of my enemies before they even had a chance to react.

Honestly, I don’t have much to write about this game’s gameplay. It’s a top down shooter where you walk around each stage, shooting enemies and occasionally fighting a boss. There are some environmental hazards like sinkholes and pits to jump over, but I don’t feel like those are anything groundbreaking.

This is just a really fun, fairly easy game that I was able to beat on my first attempt (although I ran out of ammunition during the final helicopter battle and let me tell you THAT was a pain in the behind). I enjoyed this game so much that I actually fired it up a day later and played through the whole thing again. That’s not something I do very often!




Graphics:

I was immediately drawn to this game's graphical style. In fact, just seeing one screenshot of this game was enough to pique my interest and make me want to check it out. The graphics are bright and colorful. The sprite characters are large and detailed. The levels have their own unique looks to them. The only thing I didn't care for were the levels where your view was obstructed by the mesh/fencing as you are looking down on the action. That's really annoying.




Sound:

This game has a pretty good soundtrack. I was vibing with it as I made my way through this game. There's not any one track in particular that stood out to me now that I am done with the game, but overall I can say I enjoyed how everything sounds. I guess the one standout would be the little jingle that plays whenever you finish a stage. I like that.




Overall:

This game was such a pleasant surprise. I had never even heard of the game before, which usually doesn't bode well for it. But when I did a little digging, I found out that this game was only released in Japan, not in the United States. That explains why I had never heard of it. Not because the game was bad, but simply because it was never released over here.

I prefer this title over other similar "bullet hell" type shooters - simply because of its slower pace that lends itself more to strategic thinking than to knee jerk reflexes. I'm not going to lie - I would never consider Die Hard an all-time classic or anything like that. It's definitely not going to be remembered by basically anyone in the long run. But you know what? I don't care.

I play games for fun, and to have a good time. Die Hard definitely brings the fun. No, it won't go down as an all-time great (not even close), but it succeeds at what it tries to do - to give the player a fun time. Definitely a pleasant surprise, and definitely something I'd recommend to anyone interested.


THE GRADE:
B



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