The Krion Conquest
( What, you thought I was kidding with that one joke in my previous blog?) OK, I was, but I seriously think that Renegade Ego is a great name for a blog. Hence the new title-card-thingy. Now you can tell what games I'm going to blog about, and not care in advance! (I intended to use the backs of the game boxes, but since I could barely find this game's box art to begin with, I just went with the front. Liking the results more than I thought I would.) This time, I'm doing The Krion Conquest (or The Conquest, as I am apparently calling it) and some random game I haven't decided upon yet because I write these segments individually! Ooh, I have a good feeling about that last one.But not about this one, since last I remember it, it wasn't that good. It all starts with the story: it's 1999, and robots have taken over the Earth. I guess when Prince told you to "party like it's 1999", he was really saying something about stocking up on powdered food, firearms, and powerful electromagnets. The robots are pissed and decide that blowing up the Earth will satiate their anger. Cut to some robots chasing an anime character down an alley. They have him cornered, he's truly fucked, when out of nowhere, the robots die! Wow, does he have a brain that sends out self-destruct-code radio waves? Nope, Maple the Witch came out of nowhere and saved him under the alias Francesca. As if that isn't disappointing enough, you find out that you're playing as this mystery witch.
So you get over the unusual choice of protagonist and suddenly arrive at the conclusion that this is nothing more than a Mega Man clone. I'm not kidding, this is almost a literal clone of Mega Man. Same weapons, same enemies, hell, even some of the levels have been ripped verbatim from any given Mega Man game. I'd make a joke about a game that's had lazier game design, but honestly, I can't think of a single game lazier than this. Fuck it: Laziest Game Award. (That's supposed to be an award for the game being lazy, not a statement saying that this is my laziest award thus far.) So if this game copies everything almost exactly from Mega Man, then it must be as good as the source material, right? Not exactly.
Believe it or not, The Krion Conquest actually does some things on its own; it just doesn't do any of them well. For example, instead of killing bosses, tearing out their hearts, and eating said hearts in front of their orphaned children to gain new powers, you now have all the necessary powers right from the beginning. This sounds good until you realize that most of them are crap. The fire attack is just one of those mega attack things you'll never use ever; the shield can only take one hit and needs to be put in the battery charger before you can use it; and the freeze attack also requires charging, rendering the damn thing useless when you need it the most. i understand that there needs to be some sort of balance, given the lack of weapon energy, but doing so with charges seems to remove a lot of the use from your weapons.
Yet this isn't the worst part of the game. No, that honor goes to the broom, which is a lot like the Rush Jet if somebody replaced with steering pads with a gun. It took me a while to figure out that the broom was more than just a spawnable platform, and when I finally figured that out, I still had to decipher how to steer the damn thing. You have to shoot in whatever direction you want to go. Of course, this comes with several problems, like how you shoot enemies without spinning all about, move down (you can't shoot that way), or jump off your broom without it disappearing into another dimension. You'd think this, along with all the other annoying quirks, would make the game really hard, but in a twist that would make the heads of both Franz Kafka and M. Night Shyamalan explode in confused fury, I found the game to be quite easy. Maybe it was the very visible boss patterns, or perhaps the fact that there are only 15 really short levels in the entire game, but The Krion Conquest didn't challenge me as much as some other games. It didn't please me as much as other games have, either. If you want to play something like Mega Man, I hear Mega Man is actually a decent game.
Review Synopsis
- It's exactly like Mega Man.
- It's not as good as Mega Man.
- Just play Mega Man.
What they don't know is that they're both wrong.
Gunstar Super Heroes
( Remember the original Gunstar Heroes on the Genesis?) It was like Contra on some bad acid? Well, apparently it got a sequel, and according to Lucas' Law of Sequels, the sequel can never be as good as the original. I know a lot of you are going to point out some major flaws with that law (Panzer Dragoon Saga, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Sonic 3, Banjo Tooie, etc.), but keep in mind that George Lucas wrote that law, not me. Besides, it's a joke, you idiot, don't take everything so seriously. I know that one joke in my last blog turned out to be serious, but... ...Wait, what the hell was I talking about? Oh, right, the Gunstar sequel. Well, it's about a year or so after the events of the original Gunstar Heroes. The Empire you knocked back down is up again, and they're after moon gems to power their death machine, which will power a dark Nazi god or something. They've sent their best-color-matched men to retrieve the gems, and it's up to you to get those gems before they do, even if they already have a few of them, somehow. Who are you, exactly? It didn't matter in the previous game, and it doesn't here; the only major things I noticed were that girls look like effeminate guys and the heroes are the previous heroes' kids. Whoever you choose, it doesn't matter; they both have to get the gems and save the world. Again.
I could go on explaining the gameplay mechanics, but it's mostly the same as Gunstar Heroes. Wait a minute, I think I'm experience deja vu. Weird. Again, you use the same weapons, fight the same bosses, go through the same levels, blah blah blah blah. The only differences I noticed were minor ones, like being able to stab enemies or having a super-shot sort of thing. So you'd expect me to give this game the exact same score I'd give the original Gunstar Heroes, right? Wrong, you presumptuous idiot. Look back at the deja vu sentence, if your brain can handle the stress of French. I meant deja vu from the top half of the blog, meaning this game isn't as good as the original.
You'd think that this would make the game rougher and more difficult than this predictable poo joke, but no, I found that GSH edged a bit on the easy side. I went through the entire game with the same weapon, never realizing that there were even super versions of it. I didn't need them, mainly because pointing at things I wanted to be dead magically made them die on the spot. Hell, that even works for the pathetically easy bosses. The only time I encountered a challenging boss was near the end, but that was because I walked into the final battle with more weapons than HP. When I came back with a more respectable number, it immediately became clear that not only did my "spam the B button" strategy work wonders here, as well, but that this God of Ruin's destructive powers ranked somewhere between kitten farts and my Internet ramblings. Then I got the exact same ending as I did in the original Gunstar Heroes. I think I've made my point, so let me make it again in the award: The Krion Conquest Award for Being Exactly the Same, But Somehow Not as Good.
Review Synopsis
- It's exactly like Gunstar Heroes.
- It's not as good as Gunstar Heroes.
- Wait, why does this seem familiar?
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