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Video_Game_King

So is my status going to update soon, or will it pretend that my Twitter account hasn't existed for about a month?

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Nothing but Sega shooters in this blog. Also, spiders.


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Gunstar Heroes

( Wow, that was over ridiculously quickly.) I know that I should expect this thing by now, given the ungodly amount of old school games I mainline, but let me give you an idea of how quickly I beat this game: it essentially took me a day to blast through this, and it took the exact same amount of time to S Rank the damn thing. That last part's because the achievements for this game are the exact opposite of Half Life 2's achievements (they're uncreative, very easy crap), even though the game surrounding them is pretty cool.

Wait, did I say cool? I meant "completely insane." But you should already know that, since everybody knows that Treasure made this game. It's set in a world made of nothing but explosions. Various colors must fight an empire of colors (evil colors, I guess) and M Bison. Yes, I know that the joke's been done more times than "Princess Peach is a selfish bitch for not jumping on the first penis to rescue her", but what else do I have when it comes to Gunstar Heroes? I already used the "make the story sound more interesting than it actually is" card, so I'm pretty fucked. Wait, I know! Let's talk about the art style. Looking at the characters alone, you might not see anything amiss, unless you have something against early 90s anime. (If that is the case, fuck you. Although I haven't watched Samurai Pizza Cats, Shin Chan is awesome, and that's enough.) You need to see it in motion, especially the bosses. There's something really surreal about how these guys animate. The really cool ones are each made of separate sprites, confusing your brain as you try to reconcile the fact that it's a bunch of separate things, but also one thing. The hit boxes don't exactly simplify things (how do you even decide that?). It doesn't help that one of the bosses that pulls this confusion is a demon clown face. Oh god...that face...that fucking face...OH GOD!!!

 Welcome to one of the few parts of Gunstar Heroes that kicked my ass for a while!
Welcome to one of the few parts of Gunstar Heroes that kicked my ass for a while!
You know what? Let's...uh...let us never speak of that again. I'm just going to put that behind me and move on. I know: let's talk about the weapons. Why not? What's that? Melee attacks? Get the fuck out. Who the hell plays Gunstar Heroes with melee attacks? In fact, anything that isn't "gun" in this game is pretty much useless. So that means that all the guns are really useful, right? In theory, yes, they should be. After all, Gunstar Heroes allows you to mix and match between four gun types, giving you an amount of guns that I'm too lazy to calculate. How many of them will you actually use? About two, maybe. Remember those four weapons you could combine? I can only remember one of them: homing. It's pretty much the only weapon you'll use throughout the entire game. Combine it with the lightning one, and nothing will be able to stop you. Boss health will become a countdown until the end of the level. (Except for the final boss; first he's hard, then easy, then dead.) How did they not balance this weapon? OK, so it doesn't do much damage on hard, but I don't play my games on hard; I play them on normal. What balance is in that mode? "Getting caught on shit?" I can just let go of the "make things die" button and reset it to home in on things that need death. But let's assume that maybe you're not using homing anything, possibly because you're an idiot. I have good news for you, dumbass: the game's still pretty easy. You get infinite continues, somewhat generous checkpointing, and a shitload of health. You know how in most games, 100 HP is the limit? Not in Gunstar Heroes. I was able to get something like 240 health near the end of the game, and I'm pretty sure that if I was insane enough, I could have gotten 999 without a cheat device.

But who the hell plays Gunstar Heroes for the challenge? Actually, don't answer that; the thought that people wouldn't play a game for the challenge scares the hell out of me. However, let's humor that argument and give it an answer: those people are playing this game for the level design. What did you expect? It's a Treasure game. Of course it's going to do insane shit. Insane shit like that dice palace, a mine level so fast that it beat Sonic to the punch by -2 years, an OKish shmup level, a regular one...I never said that all the levels are super awesome. Two of them are fairly standard shooter stuff, by which I mean "there are so many enemies in these levels that I'm convinced that there are very disgusting Russian dolls off screen." But you won't care that these levels are so bland and generic. Why? The other levels are so amazing and cool that when you look back on this game, like, say, when you're struggling to figure out how to end a blog you're writing on it, you'll only remember the completely insane and cool levels. You'll also remember how you blasted through all those levels with a weapon that resembled a deadlier version of that snake game you'd play on extremely old Nokia cell-phones. You'll also remember how the game can get scaneliney. Man, I'm remembering a lot. Excuse me while I transform into any given JRPG protagonist and hope that the act of doing so gives me amnesia.

Review Synopsis

  • THAT FUCKING FACE!!!
  • The weapon mixing system would be cooler if anything other than "homing plus lightning" was useful.
  • Name one other game with a dice palace. * sigh* One that doesn't suck.




I think this is why Claude doesn't have kids.
  
  

Bulk Slash

( Wait, a Saturn game?) When was the last time I actually beat a Saturn game? As far as I can tell, the last Saturn game I beat was Astal, and that was at least a year ago. Why the delay that I'm stupidly calling the Duke Nukem Forever of the blogging world? Two reasons: first, a short amount of time after Astal, I fucked things up in a way that prevented me from playing any other Saturn game, and it took me about a year to figure out which files to drag around to get certain drivers to work. Second, once you get past Panzer Dragoon and NiGHTS and just about anything Treasure made, there aren't a lot of games for the Saturn. That second part probably explains why I'm playing an obscure Japan-only mech game.

That's right: Bulk Slash is a mech game. Not that you could tell from the name; judging by that alone, you'd probably think it's some shitty Chinese pirate game that will summon the fury of Marvel's legal team, but it's not. It's about robots and anime and stuff. OK, it's more complicated than that, but all the story stuff is in Japanese, and there's no translation. All of this probably explains why I'm confused by the ending to the game, which features somebody killing themselves and some random characters getting comically married. I don't know how that works; again, the game's in Japanese. All I know is that the wedding thing is just one of many endings you get based on which navigator you have at the end of the game. That's all the navigator system adds. Wait, I forgot to explain the navigator system: in the first level, you walk up to a random woman and let them jump inside your mech body. (How does the mech move without anybody in it?) She then says things throughout the game. Want to swap her out? I only found one chance to do that in the entire game, and absolutely nothing changed. Confused, I went to GameFAQs to get word about any other potential navigators in the game. Turns out that the only one that FAQ writer found was the exact same one I found. That's a FAQ that's about as useful as the navigator system.

  Well, damn it. I can only understand one of these words.
 Well, damn it. I can only understand one of these words.
But I am not here to talk about bad FAQs; I am here to talk about pretty cool mech games. Of course, the game doesn't start off pretty cool. When I jumped into the first level (via the kind of level select), I had trouble figuring out which button was shoot. Part of the problem was that in systematically pressing every button possible, a bunch of weird shit happened; a larger part of the problem is that the only menu that's in Japanese is the one that lets you change the control scheme; the largest part of the problem is that depending on the context, "fire" can mean many different things. It can mean fire if you stand still, lob bombs if you kinda press forward, slash if you're right next to somebody, and something else at some other time, maybe. Oh, and there are also special weapons scattered about that you can use, if you want. Again, it takes a lot of getting used to, but once you finally adjust, the game becomes pretty damn awesome, since it's nothing but running up to things (or flying up to them, because a robot that can't fly will be laughed out of the League of Robots) and shooting them. Fine, I'll concede that many of the levels have goals other than "kill things and then kill them again to make sure that they're dead", but those levels still have a fair amount of shooting in them, so it's OK.

You know what's not OK? The difficulty. I feel like I'm repeating my Astal blog, because this game reveals its age pretty badly. For example, very few in level health refills. I used the phrase "very few" because very rarely will you find health in the levels, and a few bosses drop refills, especially near the end. Other than that, no health refills. Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if your health refilled between stages, so in that case, it's kind of a problem? How do I handle this? Health does refill between stages, but it's never even close to all the way. If you want something like that, you can try beating some of the bosses, but good luck doing that. The bosses are fairly easy  (step 1: fly up to them; step 2: shove rockets into their face; step 3: win), but the real challenge comes in actually hitting these guys. I know that this sounds contradictory, but when I say that they're hard to hit, I don't mean that there's some complex pattern that requires deciphering; what I mean is that it's just hard to stay locked onto them long enough to fire at them. Wait, did I say "locked on?" There's no lock-on system! And since there's no 180 degree turn around feature, you're left with one option: slowly and clumsily turning toward the boss and hoping that you can shoot them. Did you beat the boss? Yea, I know, it took a long time. Now repeat that for six more levels, and that's Bulk Slash: an OK mech game that you've never heard of. I'd say "but what else is new" and end on a cliché, but I can't remember any other mech games I've played.

Review Synopsis

  • This has to be the only game where it's really hard to control a mech. I can't think of any others.
  • Of course, unlike those other games that I can't think of, this one's full of cool shooting action and stuff...
  • ...that's buried beneath years of age.
40 Comments

40 Comments

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Video_Game_King

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@iam3green
 
"Robots fighting robots" sounds pornographic, for some reason. In fact, I hereby patent the "robotic fistfuck" genre of porn.
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Edited By iam3green

the mech games sounds awesome. who doesn't like robots fighting robots.

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Video_Game_King

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@Unknown_Pleasures
 
Everybody loves Ice Cap Zone music. If you do not like either act's music, then you are not fit to inhabit the same space as civilized beings. Leave their presence now, inhuman beast. You are not wanted.
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Edited By Karl_Boss

Ice Cap Zone Act 1 is one of my favorite video game songs.

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@Video_Game_King:  
 
I fear my janitor would be pissed. Besides, not even God and his almighty flood could kill the spiders, so puny me doesn't stand a chance.
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@TMThomsen
 
Why don't you just plug up the drain and create a flood that no spider can survive?
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Fuck spiders.  Especially when they attempt to assassinate you in the shower.

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@ArbitraryWater
 
Actually, it was mostly the technical issues. Keep in mind that playing Saturn games without a Saturn is already a pain in the ass, so there's a lot of room for fuck ups.
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Edited By ArbitraryWater

The reason you haven't played any saturn games in a while is because, quite frankly, the Saturn has always seemed like a not-very-great console outside of its few standouts, especially if you didn't live in Japan at the time it was relevant. I guess there's that port of Symphony of the Night with new areas and you can play as Maria, and it had a few good ports of late 90s fighting games, but those do not really justify the console itself in my eyes. Keep in mind that my knowledge of Sega isn't especially broad though. All I know is that the end of the genesis lifespan was full of bad decisions related to the Sega CD and 32X, and that the Dreamcast failed because it was incredibly easy to pirate, and yet still has a very impressive lineup of games for only having lasted a little more than 2 years.

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@Video_Game_King: ah ok. Good blog though :)
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@Yanngc33
 
I never said "only but Sega shooters." In fact, I don't think I've ever said "only but." Besides, I have a rule of two games per blog, no more than that.
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@Video_Game_King: Beacuse you said "only but Sega shooters" and no After Burner. But Gunstar heroes is indeed brilliant
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@kingclaw
 
Eh, I don't consider these reviews, at least professionally. If anything, they're mot entertaining blogs. For reviews, look under my review tab.
 
How?
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@Video_Game_King:  I don't know, I didn't read them :P  It's just that every time I see one interesting title browsing the forum, I  open it and then I see that image you put at the top of your blogs and think "Oh come on, is the guy reviewing old games again". (they are reviews right?). 
I feel kind of cheated, something like going to this thread
But I'm sure your blogs are good, after all people keep reading them and commenting too.
And my exam is over, so I am going to read this one right now.
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@Yanngc33
 
Why?
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Would you consider After Burner as a shooter?

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@wolf_blitzer85
 
I always liked picking up homing and lighting and just DESTROYING the game :P.
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Edited By wolf_blitzer85

I always liked picking up both fire weapons and just making a REALLY BIG flame thrower.

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@Contro: Oh I gotcha now. Knew him well on these boards.
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@Claude said:

@Contro: Oh man, I can't remember the "NO U" dude. A lot of people on Giant Bomb can't stand spiders. I do know that.

 
Yes you do, the guy who posed as Casey Wegner the Gamespot moderator aka...arggh. I can't bloody remember his name, but I do remember him being quite a character round these parts. 
  
edit: 

Pleasureismine. 
 
 
@VGK 
 
Gunstar Future Heroes (EU name) may not be as good as it's older brother, but it sure looks far cuter when played on a GB Micro.
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@marioncobretti
 
Simple: it's the GBA. If it wasn't made specifically for the GBA after the first year or two, the music for it would usually suck.
 
Not really. Sure, it's lazy game design, but if it worked for the first game, why not this one? The problem I have is remembering why it doesn't work in Super Heroes.
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@Video_Game_King
I think maybe the worst thing about it is how rubbish the first stage music from the first sounds in the GBA game. how do you mess that up? 
 
I'd say after playing through it recently it's a very valid criticism. There are whole sections of its five minute playing time are exactly the same.
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@marioncobretti
 
But as I remember it, it wasn't really as good as Gunstar Heroes. I can't remember why, so let me read the actual blog. *does so* Wait, this was back when I still thought the whole "this game sucks because it's the same as the last game" was an acceptable criticism. I have learned not to do that, and I wish other reviewers would do the same.
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Oh man I love the hell out of Gunstar Heroes. Ive been having a Treasure game collection thing the last few months, so much so that I got Gunstar Super Heroes (or future here) only to realize that as your review of that game from another blog says does everything the same and somehow completely messes it all up.
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@Contro: Oh man, I can't remember the "NO U" dude. A lot of people on Giant Bomb can't stand spiders. I do know that.
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@Video_Game_King said:
@Contro:   Magic Knight Rayearth? That game almost gave me a vagina. However, I do hate how I didn't remember Princess Crown in that list. I'd say the same of The Story of Thor, but only vaguely remember hearing about it (it was the sequelish thing to Beyond Oasis, wasn't it?).
 
It was indeed the sequel.  
 
Beyond Oasis is available to download on the Wii's Virtual Console for 800 Nintendo Points, if your interested.  

 
@Claude:  
  
That post reminds me of another posted long ago by that crazy "NO U" dude.
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@Video_Game_King said:
@Leafhopper
 
I'd like it more if the game wasn't so damn easy. Again, why can't I blast through each level with homing/lightning?
 
That is very true. At least Metal Slug had somewhat of a difficulty. The only thing in that game I had trouble with was that fight with Green and even then it was staying in the right spot and shoot :/. I really don't know what changing the difficulty does for it either. I don't know if it raises their damage, health or both but either way it was still easy.
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@Leafhopper
 
I'd like it more if the game wasn't so damn easy. Again, why can't I blast through each level with homing/lightning?
 
@Claude
 
That explains this.
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Not a fan of shooters, but I do love spiders. 

No Caption Provided
She's gone now, but she left three sacks of eggs. Pretty, pretty.
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You better enjoy Gunstar Heroes NOW >:(. Seriously though that is one of my favorite sidescrolling shooters of all time. Mainly because of how much stuff you could actually do. Didn't feel as constrictive as say, Megaman who could crouch in a game until X7. 
 
Although your point is valid. The game is short. Like REALLY short in terms of side scrolling shooters lol.

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@Contro
 
Magic Knight Rayearth? That game almost gave me a vagina. However, I do hate how I didn't remember Princess Crown in that list. I'd say the same of The Story of Thor, but only vaguely remember hearing about it (it was the sequelish thing to Beyond Oasis, wasn't it?).
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I'd be feeling better if you had mentioned some of these: Wachen Roder, Albert Odyssey, The Story of Thor, Grandia, Magic Knight Rayearth, Riglord Saga, to name but a few.

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@Tireyo643
 
Another freebie shmup? Shit! I haven't even touched that Bullet Candy thing.
 
@Contro
 
I was pretty much going off memory there. Besides, I had two rules: no mentioning games I mentioned before (NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon, Treasure), and no multiplatform games. I'd have named more, but those were all that I could remember. If it makes you feel any better, I'll throw in those two Shining games I just remembered, along with Dark Savior.
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Your lack of knowledge on the platform disturbs me...A true "Video Game King" would be aware of them. I can list them all happily if you want :).  The Sega Saturn had many great Japan-only titles, not a handful as you've lamely tried to imply. The Saturn has a ton of great fighters, shmups and RPG's, I have many of them as a collector. 
 
 Here's just a few from my image folder: 
 

Princess Crown, Soukygurentai, Cotton 2/ Boomerang,  Sexy Parodius, Baku Baku Animal, Waku Waku 7, Astra Superstars, Vampire Savior, X-Men Vs Street Fighter, Alpha 3.. etc-etc.
Princess Crown, Soukygurentai, Cotton 2/ Boomerang,  Sexy Parodius, Baku Baku Animal, Waku Waku 7, Astra Superstars, Vampire Savior, X-Men Vs Street Fighter, Alpha 3.. etc-etc.
   
 

 

 

 
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Edited By Tireyo

Mentioning shooters, I downloaded this indie space shooter game called Hydorah. You ever play it before, or do you stray away from indie games?

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@Contro
 
I'm fairly sure that I'm aware of them. Let me see if I can name some:
 
  • Elan Doree
  • That Japan-only adventure game thing whose name I can't remember
  • Symphony of th-no, that was on the Playstation, too.
  • Clockwork Knight
  • Astal
  • Those Japan only Lunar ports, maybe? They've always confused the hell out of me (where does Lunar end and Lunar Complete begin?)
  • Shining Force III, three or four times
Eh, that's about right. Also, it's kind of hard to tell me that I'm not aware of a game that didn't come out in America when the game I'm talking about was only released in Japan.
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@Video_Game_King:  
 

Panzer Dragoon and NiGHTS and just about anything Treasure made, there aren't a lot of games for the Saturn. 


 
I'm sorry, but I have to call BS on this claim. I think you may simply be unaware of them, as many didn't make it over to the US officially. I have a sizeable collection which consists of many great games within all the genres.
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@kingclaw
 
You mean the last two were completely confusing? Mind pointing out a blog darker and more hate fueled than "SpongeBob sucks, the show should end with everybody committing suicide"?
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For the first time the title of your blog make any kind of sense, this may be the first time I read one of these, But later I have an exam in like  tow hours.

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No Caption Provided

Gunstar Heroes

( Wow, that was over ridiculously quickly.) I know that I should expect this thing by now, given the ungodly amount of old school games I mainline, but let me give you an idea of how quickly I beat this game: it essentially took me a day to blast through this, and it took the exact same amount of time to S Rank the damn thing. That last part's because the achievements for this game are the exact opposite of Half Life 2's achievements (they're uncreative, very easy crap), even though the game surrounding them is pretty cool.

Wait, did I say cool? I meant "completely insane." But you should already know that, since everybody knows that Treasure made this game. It's set in a world made of nothing but explosions. Various colors must fight an empire of colors (evil colors, I guess) and M Bison. Yes, I know that the joke's been done more times than "Princess Peach is a selfish bitch for not jumping on the first penis to rescue her", but what else do I have when it comes to Gunstar Heroes? I already used the "make the story sound more interesting than it actually is" card, so I'm pretty fucked. Wait, I know! Let's talk about the art style. Looking at the characters alone, you might not see anything amiss, unless you have something against early 90s anime. (If that is the case, fuck you. Although I haven't watched Samurai Pizza Cats, Shin Chan is awesome, and that's enough.) You need to see it in motion, especially the bosses. There's something really surreal about how these guys animate. The really cool ones are each made of separate sprites, confusing your brain as you try to reconcile the fact that it's a bunch of separate things, but also one thing. The hit boxes don't exactly simplify things (how do you even decide that?). It doesn't help that one of the bosses that pulls this confusion is a demon clown face. Oh god...that face...that fucking face...OH GOD!!!

 Welcome to one of the few parts of Gunstar Heroes that kicked my ass for a while!
Welcome to one of the few parts of Gunstar Heroes that kicked my ass for a while!
You know what? Let's...uh...let us never speak of that again. I'm just going to put that behind me and move on. I know: let's talk about the weapons. Why not? What's that? Melee attacks? Get the fuck out. Who the hell plays Gunstar Heroes with melee attacks? In fact, anything that isn't "gun" in this game is pretty much useless. So that means that all the guns are really useful, right? In theory, yes, they should be. After all, Gunstar Heroes allows you to mix and match between four gun types, giving you an amount of guns that I'm too lazy to calculate. How many of them will you actually use? About two, maybe. Remember those four weapons you could combine? I can only remember one of them: homing. It's pretty much the only weapon you'll use throughout the entire game. Combine it with the lightning one, and nothing will be able to stop you. Boss health will become a countdown until the end of the level. (Except for the final boss; first he's hard, then easy, then dead.) How did they not balance this weapon? OK, so it doesn't do much damage on hard, but I don't play my games on hard; I play them on normal. What balance is in that mode? "Getting caught on shit?" I can just let go of the "make things die" button and reset it to home in on things that need death. But let's assume that maybe you're not using homing anything, possibly because you're an idiot. I have good news for you, dumbass: the game's still pretty easy. You get infinite continues, somewhat generous checkpointing, and a shitload of health. You know how in most games, 100 HP is the limit? Not in Gunstar Heroes. I was able to get something like 240 health near the end of the game, and I'm pretty sure that if I was insane enough, I could have gotten 999 without a cheat device.

But who the hell plays Gunstar Heroes for the challenge? Actually, don't answer that; the thought that people wouldn't play a game for the challenge scares the hell out of me. However, let's humor that argument and give it an answer: those people are playing this game for the level design. What did you expect? It's a Treasure game. Of course it's going to do insane shit. Insane shit like that dice palace, a mine level so fast that it beat Sonic to the punch by -2 years, an OKish shmup level, a regular one...I never said that all the levels are super awesome. Two of them are fairly standard shooter stuff, by which I mean "there are so many enemies in these levels that I'm convinced that there are very disgusting Russian dolls off screen." But you won't care that these levels are so bland and generic. Why? The other levels are so amazing and cool that when you look back on this game, like, say, when you're struggling to figure out how to end a blog you're writing on it, you'll only remember the completely insane and cool levels. You'll also remember how you blasted through all those levels with a weapon that resembled a deadlier version of that snake game you'd play on extremely old Nokia cell-phones. You'll also remember how the game can get scaneliney. Man, I'm remembering a lot. Excuse me while I transform into any given JRPG protagonist and hope that the act of doing so gives me amnesia.

Review Synopsis

  • THAT FUCKING FACE!!!
  • The weapon mixing system would be cooler if anything other than "homing plus lightning" was useful.
  • Name one other game with a dice palace. * sigh* One that doesn't suck.




I think this is why Claude doesn't have kids.
  
  

Bulk Slash

( Wait, a Saturn game?) When was the last time I actually beat a Saturn game? As far as I can tell, the last Saturn game I beat was Astal, and that was at least a year ago. Why the delay that I'm stupidly calling the Duke Nukem Forever of the blogging world? Two reasons: first, a short amount of time after Astal, I fucked things up in a way that prevented me from playing any other Saturn game, and it took me about a year to figure out which files to drag around to get certain drivers to work. Second, once you get past Panzer Dragoon and NiGHTS and just about anything Treasure made, there aren't a lot of games for the Saturn. That second part probably explains why I'm playing an obscure Japan-only mech game.

That's right: Bulk Slash is a mech game. Not that you could tell from the name; judging by that alone, you'd probably think it's some shitty Chinese pirate game that will summon the fury of Marvel's legal team, but it's not. It's about robots and anime and stuff. OK, it's more complicated than that, but all the story stuff is in Japanese, and there's no translation. All of this probably explains why I'm confused by the ending to the game, which features somebody killing themselves and some random characters getting comically married. I don't know how that works; again, the game's in Japanese. All I know is that the wedding thing is just one of many endings you get based on which navigator you have at the end of the game. That's all the navigator system adds. Wait, I forgot to explain the navigator system: in the first level, you walk up to a random woman and let them jump inside your mech body. (How does the mech move without anybody in it?) She then says things throughout the game. Want to swap her out? I only found one chance to do that in the entire game, and absolutely nothing changed. Confused, I went to GameFAQs to get word about any other potential navigators in the game. Turns out that the only one that FAQ writer found was the exact same one I found. That's a FAQ that's about as useful as the navigator system.

  Well, damn it. I can only understand one of these words.
 Well, damn it. I can only understand one of these words.
But I am not here to talk about bad FAQs; I am here to talk about pretty cool mech games. Of course, the game doesn't start off pretty cool. When I jumped into the first level (via the kind of level select), I had trouble figuring out which button was shoot. Part of the problem was that in systematically pressing every button possible, a bunch of weird shit happened; a larger part of the problem is that the only menu that's in Japanese is the one that lets you change the control scheme; the largest part of the problem is that depending on the context, "fire" can mean many different things. It can mean fire if you stand still, lob bombs if you kinda press forward, slash if you're right next to somebody, and something else at some other time, maybe. Oh, and there are also special weapons scattered about that you can use, if you want. Again, it takes a lot of getting used to, but once you finally adjust, the game becomes pretty damn awesome, since it's nothing but running up to things (or flying up to them, because a robot that can't fly will be laughed out of the League of Robots) and shooting them. Fine, I'll concede that many of the levels have goals other than "kill things and then kill them again to make sure that they're dead", but those levels still have a fair amount of shooting in them, so it's OK.

You know what's not OK? The difficulty. I feel like I'm repeating my Astal blog, because this game reveals its age pretty badly. For example, very few in level health refills. I used the phrase "very few" because very rarely will you find health in the levels, and a few bosses drop refills, especially near the end. Other than that, no health refills. Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if your health refilled between stages, so in that case, it's kind of a problem? How do I handle this? Health does refill between stages, but it's never even close to all the way. If you want something like that, you can try beating some of the bosses, but good luck doing that. The bosses are fairly easy  (step 1: fly up to them; step 2: shove rockets into their face; step 3: win), but the real challenge comes in actually hitting these guys. I know that this sounds contradictory, but when I say that they're hard to hit, I don't mean that there's some complex pattern that requires deciphering; what I mean is that it's just hard to stay locked onto them long enough to fire at them. Wait, did I say "locked on?" There's no lock-on system! And since there's no 180 degree turn around feature, you're left with one option: slowly and clumsily turning toward the boss and hoping that you can shoot them. Did you beat the boss? Yea, I know, it took a long time. Now repeat that for six more levels, and that's Bulk Slash: an OK mech game that you've never heard of. I'd say "but what else is new" and end on a cliché, but I can't remember any other mech games I've played.

Review Synopsis

  • This has to be the only game where it's really hard to control a mech. I can't think of any others.
  • Of course, unlike those other games that I can't think of, this one's full of cool shooting action and stuff...
  • ...that's buried beneath years of age.