Nothing but Sega shooters in this blog. Also, spiders.
By Video_Game_King 40 Comments
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!!!
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.
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.