REVIEW - X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse | SNES | 1994

GENRE(S): Action / Fighting
RELEASED: December 1994
AVAILABLE ON: SNES
DEVELOPER(S): Capcom
PUBLISHER(S): Capcom

Capcom snatched the X-Men video game license in 1994. Their first X-Men game was the arcade beat 'em up X-Men: Children of the Atom, which was much later released on 32-bit home consoles; since the game was so heavily influenced by Capcom's very own Street Fighter franchise, and since it was so well-received among Street Fighter fans, the game is often considered the first game in the popular Marvel vs. Capcom franchise. Another game that's not quite as well known today, but also immensely popular in its time, is X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse, which was released on the SNES around the same time Children of the Atom debuted in arcade halls. This game, in turn, was heavily influenced by Capcom's side-scrolling beat 'em up franchise Final Fight, and included elements from their biggest platformers as well. Could this be it? Could this be the X-Men game I've been waiting for nearly a year? ...No, still not it. But a fine tool for self-torture if you're into that kinda stuff. X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse is not a bad game by any measure - but it is one hard motherfucker.

Annihilation by humiliation

A group of mutants are captured and forced to labor on the island of Genosha. Worse yet, the villainous Apocalypse seems to have something special planned for the hostages. Cyclops, Wolverine, Psylocke, Beast and Gambit each have their own individual task to enable the group's infiltration into the Genosha stronghold.

As my current project is taking longer than I expected - and maybe a bit longer than I was prepared to bear - I played a few of my favourite SNES games to ease the tension and lift up my mood. Then I noted that the next title in the Marvel marathon was also a SNES game, and judging by what I've heard of it, it can't be all that bad. It was made by Capcom, after all - in their prime, I might add. And, if this game had been an utter failure, we probably wouldn't have Marvel vs. Capcom - which is THE most difficult and frustrating fighting game of the modern age, but there's just some strange appeal to it. Amusingly, the same can be said for X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse. It is most definitely the best game under the X-Men banner reviewed thus far. It's just not a very friendly game.

Let's go, tin can.

X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse is a love child conceived by people who know their business, that much is clear from the start and that much cannot be denied by anyone. First of all, it looks fantastic, if not perfect by the standards of its time. For once, I cannot come up with a complaint; both the character and level design make it feel like the game was made years after the Sega couple. It really feels like you're playing the animated series, down to the sound effects. Speaking of sound, the graphics are not the only element of instant appeal; the soundtrack is solid as well. Not nearly as memorable as in Capcom's original beat 'em up franchises, but delivered in surprisingly much of that same force.

Gameplay-wise, this is what happens when Mega Man, Street Fighter and Final Fight have a threesome one night stand. The short levels are almost straight out of Mega Man X, very familiar-looking industrial settings, yet not blatant copies. The game starts by having you choose between five levels, which you can beat in any order you wish. Perhaps in a conscious move by the developers who are well aware of everyone's favourite mutant, who everyone wants to play as (first), Wolverine's level is clearly - yet arguably - the easiest. And man, did I enjoy it. First of all, Logan's claws are out all the time; there's no punishment for using them, and you cannot retract them even by accident. That's all it takes. Perhaps due to the system's limitations which are tempted all the time, that's all there is as well; no regeneration ability for Wolverine, it's one specialty per character, which in Logan's case is a very efficient dash attack. The special attacks are executed exactly like special moves in Street Fighter; most of them follow the "ha-dou-ken" code, such as Cyclops' laser. Might sound too difficult for a hectic side-scroller, but let me tell you that these attacks pack a LOT of punch and would tip the scales for your benefit a lot more than the developers were ready to allow. Which isn't much, as you will see.

Mmm. Agile.

Those people duped to thinking that two lives per character is perfectly enough despite the game's high level of difficulty, since there are only five levels, I'd love nothing more than to ruin your Monday morning by saying that those five levels form less than one third of the game. After you've beaten each mutant's first solo mission, you FINALLY get your first password. You must then choose any mutant you feel most comfortable with (clever to give them all a level of their own so you'd have to make nice with 'em all), and go for three more levels with tough bosses, with the titular character Apocalypse for one of them. Even getting a password after each level from now on doesn't change the fact you're gonna weep. Out of every cavity you have, and every bodily fluid you have. ...Oh, you think THAT'S it? Go back to math class and ask your teacher the meaning of the word "third". Two more bosses, then ANOTHER set of five "HARD" levels for each mutant, THEN the final boss. This is like Mega Man 3 all over again. It's kinda neat, really, but at least it was possible to survive Mega Man 3 - at least the Blue Bomber could stand a hit - and at least you saw your enemy. Let's elaborate.

Lock 'em on the murder train.

First of all, your X-Men cannot block or evade enemy attacks; the absence of a block button is amazingly dumb considering there are two buttons without any use, namely L and R. Blocking could definitely even the odds, even if it's just for a little bit. You just have to keep moving and acting all the time, with high hopes that the enemy won't land a cheap one while you're kicking the shit out of the wrong pixel in their body. Happens all the time, if you didn't figure it out already, and just a few punches to the head are perfectly enough for you to drop dead and be hauled back to the beginning of the level with just one life left. Every character has two lives; once you lose two lives as the same character, it's game over. There are no checkpoints, just a couple of health power-ups per level, and the very slim chance to gain one extra life per level by collecting three hard-to-reach, blue X icons. And about the enemies you cannot see... my mind wanders to the first Cyclops level in which this wave of enemies on hoverbikes works as the sub-boss. You see 'em in the background just before they attack, and you quickly need to figure out the exact spot and time they'll attack you, and go for a dropkick a fraction of a second before they appear on the screen. One mistake, be it one of the placing or timing or both, they crash into you and take almost half of your health meter with 'em. It's fucking ridiculous, and what's even more ridiculous, if you somehow manage to survive the onslaught, you get a small health power-up for your troubles. A small one. Fair - considering you're not even halfway through the level. You're bound to get your ass kicked within the next 30 seconds - and this isn't the last you'll see of those hoverbike dudes either.

After all the yelling and cursing, it's time to reflect on the game's strengths again. Many game developers have made ultra-difficult games their business, kind of a sales point even - who made Ghosts 'n Goblins again? Oh yeah, Capcom. Who made Mega Man? Capcom again. The Magical Quest? Mmm. We have a load of ultra-difficult games with good gameplay and nice face values that have Capcom's name on the cover, and X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse is once again one of those games there's very little actually wrong with, it's just 1,000 miles of virtual cock right up your ass, tempting you with an appealing name from your childhood.

Besides the inexplicable absence of the ability to either block or dodge, and somewhat rough controls in general, it's a decent game - and definitely the closest to an entertaining X-Men video game experience I've had during this whole long-ass marathon. At this point of time, I think the best word to describe X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse is "refreshing".

UPS
+ Looks like X-Men, and greatly so
+ Sounds awesome
+ Good boss fights
+ A simple, yet clever mix of different Capcom concepts
+ Challenging...

DOWNS
- ...Extremely and unfairly so
- Imperfect controls and limited movement; possible solutions are ignored perhaps to raise the stakes even higher
- That health meter don't mean shit

< 7.5 >

REVIEW - Wolverine: Adamantium Rage | SNES | 1994

GENRE(S): Action
RELEASED: November 1994
AVAILABLE ON: SNES
DEVELOPER(S): Bits
PUBLISHER(S): LJN

The X-Men debuted on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in the end of 1994... however, this "debut" of the mutant supergroup once again placed the bulk of the group in less than a cameo capacity, and cast the spotlight on its most popular member - Wolverine, a few years off his solo debut on the NES. Two very different versions of the same draft were made. The Sega Genesis version was developed by Teeny Weeny Games and published by Acclaim; this balanced action game was fairly well-received by Marvel fans, who praised the storyline and presentation, but heavily criticized the gameplay. The SNES version was an unforgiving, do-or-die type of beat 'em up. It was developed by Bits and published by LJN. Now why would I waste time on looking for a game that could actually be at least interesting (on a console that's not really one of my favourites), when I've got an almost guaranteed wet turd soiling my hands right here (on a console which ironically is my favourite console of all time)? Then again, you might remember that not all 16-bit LJN/Marvel collaborations were that bad...

One of us is going down, and it might as well be this game

In a classic set-up not presented too well in this SNES version of the game, Logan finally catches a hint of his mysterious past and travels to Canada alone to investigate the Weapon X project which turned him from a simple mutant of flesh and bone into the unstoppable adamantium-infused beast he is.

Left: 11 out of 15?! I've already beaten the crap
out of  something like one hundred and
eleven dudes in this level. Something stinks.

Wolverine's origin story is Marvel's equivalent to DC's Batman's; no matter how often they tell it, no matter how slightly it changes, they always come up with a way to make it interesting in any format. It's been known to happen in video game development among other mediums - as proven by the Arkham series, and in this context, you know a review of the video game adaptation of X-Men Origins: Wolverine is bound to pop up sooner or later. Storywise, the Genesis version of Wolverine: Adamantium Rage was well received, 'cause it told the story well and stayed true to it. What we have here is half the story... probably, since I've never personally experienced the Genesis game, this is all through the ever-so-trusty grapevine. Might correct that sometime later, but for some way beyond ironic reason, I chose to review the SNES game, avoiding taking on any extras at this stage of the Marvel marathon. Perhaps 'cause I thought it wouldn't be that different, and it's available on a console that is more familiar and comfortable to me. Aaaaand, when I was an undemanding child who thought Wolverine was cool even though he didn't know much about the X-Men comics, the game looked awesome. My favourite magazine only covered Nintendo games back at that time, so I never even really knew there was a whole different "version" of the game available, one that maybe wasn't all about the looks.

The SNES game lives by its looks. Even though the storytelling and presentation are off, the graphics are basically really good, but as you make progress - if you can - you'll very soon figure that the reason that the sprites look so fluid might very well be that the cutscenes are so minimal, and the whole game consists of copied and pasted level and enemy design.

The game starts at the Weapon X lab, and although this is the easiest level in the game, it's probably the most exemplar of all the things wrong with Wolverine: Adamantium Rage. OK, so Elsie-Dee's supposed to work as the time limit - if you stick around for too long, say, "cheat" by standing in a safe spot to let your health regenerate in peace (one of the first games with spontaneous regeneration, by the way), Elsie-Dee's supposed to sneak up on you and kill you dead. However, that does not happen at least in this version of the game, or on the normal difficulty level. I've waited around for ages for it to happen just to see how, and how fast it plays out, but it doesn't happen at all. So whenever you find yourself in a pinch, just backtrack to the safest spot - usually the entry point - and take five. There, a tip. It makes the game a little easier, none the more interesting though. There's the game's greatest challenge, right there: maintaining interest. It takes you way too long just to skewer through this first non-sensical maze of copy and paste.

Yes, those most certainly are ninjas with
jetpacks.

Your primary task in each level is to get rid of a set number of enemies before you're allowed to continue. There are straightforward levels in which getting to the goal is fairly simple and easy - just plow through everyone you see - but in these maze-like levels it's a bit more complicated. You won't be able to sink the counter by just slashing through endlessly spawning armies of cybernetic soldiers, you have to run around the level and bash all sorts of enemies to crap to - maybe - see the number go down. There's no indication whatsoever who you should go after, it's just trial upon trial. When you finally get rid of all the enemies in the first lab, the exit that's been in plain sight all that time will finally open, and on the other side awaits... another identical lab. With less enemies to kill, though. After you're done with them, you need to seek out the master computer, a really high-tech looking apparatus which they probably used in Vietnam... after smashing the computer to bits, you have 30 seconds to make it to another exit. Another lab? No, a password, which works as your checkpoint. A little about the passwords later, but let it be known right now that not only is it a password, but indeed a checkpoint. Whenever you choose "Start Game" from now on, right up until you power off the console, you will start from this point. That's kinda cool, considering there are no continues. After that, you'll have to deal with the first boss, Destroyer, who's pretty easy to maim to death assuming you're at 100% in the beginning. Then Logan travels to Japan and the rest of the game opens up to offer some different experiences than what you just suffered through... but again, none the more interesting.

I know you've waited for this, so I'll just say it: the controls are shit, but a different variety of shit than what you're accustomed to in these games. They're completely non-sensical, over-sensitive, and pretty much impossible to master, since just one tiny press of the digital pad, in any direction, can change a simple move completely. Wolverine's running speed varies all the time, I guess it has something to do with repeated clicks into a direction but in this sort of game, it inevitably feels completely random. If you're going for a standing jump straight up, one wrong press and you might be diving head first into the pit next to you instead - no bottomless ones to my recollection, though. When it comes to aerial attacks, what you do with the digital pad doesn't matter all that much, it's Wolverine himself who decides whether he's going to execute that attack you just told him to or just jump straight into the enemy's line of fire as if to say "end my suffering". You could say that the best way to survive this game is to avoid moving whenever you're fighting. It's impossible, of course; in the later levels, you're bombarded from every direction - at all times.

Maybe they won't see me if I run across this
table here.

Let's just skip right to the passwords. The passwords are portraits of different X-Men characters. With the positive issue of the checkpoints out of the way, what about when you shut the system down? Is a casual player supposed to have a photogenic memory? Since most of these characters don't appear in the game, is he supposed to know these guys by name? Is he supposed to shine at drawing? In other words, how in the hell are you supposed to write these passwords down for later use? Personally, I do know these guys, nearly all of 'em are well known to any who's half of a Marvel buff, but the player might be what I was back when this game came out: a ten-year old kid who wanted to play this game because Wolverine was in it and Wolverine was cool, but ultimately I didn't know shit about the X-Men. I didn't even know who Professor X, Storm or Nightcrawler were. Cyclops and Beast were probably the only other X-Men characters I knew back at that time besides Logan. I probably would've had to write the passwords down like this: "the blue guy who's not Beast, the crazy lady with white hair, the bald guy, Geordi La Forge". Yup, I watched The Next Generation as much as the next kid. Think about it: I knew more about Star Trek than about the X-Men.

In all seriousness, Wolverine: Adamantium Rage is one of LJN's better games, as it does at least have its moments; you just need to survive several extremely boring levels and endure some terrible controls to get to experience those few brief moments of clarity. Like I said, I might take on the Genesis version someday - not within this marathon's limits, though - and judging by the reviews that actually focus on gameplay rather than presentation, it's not good, but at least a whole different game and well-presented Marvel Comics by-product.

UPS
+ Wolverine...
+ ...In nice colours
+ Nice cavalcade of Marvel Universe characters rarely seen in games
+ Moderately good music
+ The password system's function as a checkpoint system as well...

DOWNS
- ...However, the password system's function as an actual password system sucks
- The controls are terrible
- The level design is boring and totally uninspired/uninspiring; the maze-like levels with their cryptic progress criteria are the worst
- Good story told bad

< 6.1 >

REVIEW - Terranigma | SNES | 1995

GENRE(S): Action / RPG
RELEASED: October 20, 1995
AVAILABLE ON: SNES
DEVELOPER(S): Quintet
PUBLISHER(S): Enix

After Illusion of Gaia, Enix commissioned Quintet for one last story revolving around creation and evolution. This game was called Terranigma. Determining that they had no chance on the North American RPG market wholly dominated by Square, Enix shut down their U.S. subsidiary indefinitely just before an English localization of the game had been finished, leading the expecting European audience to believe the game would be yet another Japan-only release by Enix. To the surprise of many, Terranigma did see daylight in both Europe and Australia, breaking the usual chain, and for once we got something to flaunt with. Terranigma came in much too late to enjoy any fundamental commercial success, but it turned out the best Quintet game ever and one of the best RPG's on the SNES.

Tales of Creation: Chapter V - The Alpha Game

In his ambition to break every rule, a consciously mischievous teenager named Ark manages to open a tightly sealed door in his grandfather's house, releasing an ancient power that not only curses his home village, but the whole world. Ark's grandfather sends his unruly descendant on a quest to resurrect the world, destroy this dark power and maybe grow up a little in the process.

Just tell me one thing, though. Why do they
all have to have the same hairstyle?

Back in college, I had a classmate - who's since become a good friend of mine - who praised this game, and he wasn't that much into action-RPG's. I knew the game by name, and I knew it was made by the same studio as Illusion of Gaia, but at the time I had no idea it was some sort of semi-sequel to the game. At that time, I liked Illusion of Gaia a lot more than I do now, for some reason, and when I tried Terranigma, it was so much better than the already awesome Gaia that I was easily led to believe that it would be a forgotten gem like no other - no less than one of the best games on the SNES. I never found the time to finish the game, not even close. It still always remained a very dear game to me and I considered it one of the best SNES games of all time even if I didn't know it inside out; as some of you might remember, I even listed Terranigma in the SNES Top 20 I did a couple of years back as a tribute to the SNES' 20th anniversary. I'm glad I won't have to back down on (at least all of) my words - Terranigma is awesome and it might well be my favourite Enix game of all time.

Woohoo, a world map which you can actually
explore. Changes all the time, too.

To elaborate, hopefully for the final time using these games for comparison, Terranigma is not Final Fantasy VI-awesome or Chrono Trigger-awesome. It's awesome in its very own fashion - it's something Quintet had been building up for quite some time, it's the game Soul Blazer was originally supposed to be. It's the best game you can get from those basic ingredients. With Soul Blazer, they made mistakes. Some of those mistakes were corrected with the development of Illusion of Gaia, but they made whole new ones with that game. They made mistakes with Terranigma, but the important thing is that most of the top worst nuisances that plagued those two preceding games are totally harvested from the fray. The result is the most simple, accessible and comfy action-RPG in the series. The downsides are few, but sensible - it's still cryptic, and the storytelling, as unique as the story itself once again is, is clumsy, occasionally dumb, and the game is really stingy when it comes to explaining some of the most basic things. Such as the use of magic in general. Players have to find out things like this for themselves, which means that you'll have to waste good spells just to find out how they work; there are some good spells, but once again some bad ones. There's also no strict, well-explained line between regular items and key items - in theory, you might go on forever before you realize you could've traded a seemingly useless piece of junk for a useful piece of equipment several in-game hours ago. Yes, this time there are different weapons and armour - even shops. While the previous games drew most of their influence from Zelda, Terranigma's definitely an RPG.

I still can't believe there was nothing behind
any of those waterfalls! What kind of adventure
game is this?!

In a word, the graphics are great. Perhaps even too great. As clumsy as the storytelling might be, it was one of the main focus points - the completion of each dungeon is followed by a lengthy, artsy-fartsy cutscene showing us how this "cleansing" affects a certain key element in the world's resurrection. The lengthiest of these cutscenes are almost as drawn out as the ending of any other SNES game. Also, it's funny that whenever you hitch a ride to any location you can't reach by foot on the world map - which is usually right next to wherever you're at - the transporter takes a huge detour, all the way to another continent and back, as if to flaunt with the Mode 7 effects. Flashy, but boring as heck. The soundtrack's an on/off deal - you'll be spending a lot of time in a single dungeon, 'cause almost every single dungeon you stumble into after the long introduction is a much worse maze than Sky Garden in Illusion of Gaia; easier on the eyes and eye-hand coordination, though. A 30-second loop isn't quite enough to cover the whole hour or two.

Funny how much he reminds me of the worm
in Silent Hill 3.

Let's get the downsides out of the way right now. Don't let Ark's admittedly fancy combat moves and such an odd feature as being able to jump fool you. If it's a fast-paced and fully dynamic game you want, then Terranigma might not be the right game for you - it's not just the cutscenes, it's occasionally a very slow game with constant halts. Ark's walking speed is muddy, the discovery of an important item results in Ark holding it up for about three years, and every time an enemy uses a special attack, text describing the attack appears on the screen and halts the game for several seconds. Just to mention some examples. It's all something you get used to rather quick, if you're not from the _most_ impatient end. Usually, I myself perceive such a slow pace as a near-lethal flaw - depending on the game, of course - but I can tell you that after a few hours, you won't even notice it anymore. In every other way, Terranigma is a giant leap forward from its predecessors.

The use of most magic is extremely clumsy, but also irrelevant - you usually have to resort to it only during boss fights since you might not be able to reach them physically, and the spells can't really miss since the boss is directly in front of you 90% of the time. All spells are consumable items - you can buy more spells from a Magirock Shop using gems called Magirocks, as well as a few gold coins, for currency. Item management was a huge issue in both preceding games - in Terranigma, it looks more complicated and uncomfortable than it really is. Pandora's Box, which you have in tow the entire time - a "little" artificial size difference between the Pandora's Box in God of War and the one in this game - serves as your menu, and the bat-like monster Yomi as your sidekick/navigational instrument through the initially confusing mass of maps, stats, settings, items, equipment and jewelry (magic).

Hanging out with "Simba", in a plot setting
that's actually ripped straight off The Lion King.

Items are actually quite easy to use. For example, in Soul Blazer, you only had room for one health item at a time. To use it, you had to equip it from the menu, perhaps to replace and sacrifice your armour on the behalf of being able to continue once your health ran out. In Illusion of Gaia, you also had to equip it from the menu, and depending on the situation, it was even more of a pain to use since you had to trigger the use of the item yourself, at the absolutely correct time window, and you even had to confirm your choice to use the item. I lost count how many times I got my ass kicked for answering "No" in a hurry. Also, in Soul Blazer you could only carry one health item at a time, in Illusion of Gaia you had space for plenty, but they didn't stack and there was a limited quantity of them in the whole game anyway (if you didn't find them all or used them "recklessly", you regretted it in the final boss fight). Terranigma doesn't have any of these problems for its burdens. Health items come in fair quantities, they stack, and you can either use them from the menu itself or equip them for immediate use any time during gameplay with the press of a single button. Consumable items (and unfortunately, some more or less useful accessories) have their own slot in the HUD, so you don't have to worry about trading your armour for a small drop of health for one second.

Terranigma offers up some good challenge - item management alone makes it a much easier and reasonable game to deal with than either one of its spiritual predecessors. However, the level design is so consciously confusing that you'll be in for a whole bunch of in-game hours just navigating the sumbitch. The bright side is that the enemies respawn each time you go to a different room, and grinding is not nearly as painful as it can be in many games with turn-based combat.

The occasionally extreme pacing problems and altogether crummy storytelling common to the series aside, Terranigma is a great RPG anyone into the SNES simply must check out. If you're a patient one, you might even be able to overlook the awkward pacing - hell, even appreciate it. I'll be back for seconds one day - that is something I haven't honestly said about any game in a long time.

UPS
+ Once again, a simple game with easy access...
+ ...Spiced up with a whole bulk of advanced options and development from "real" role-playing games
+ Ark reminds me of Yoda; walks real slow, but has some real awesome moves in combat
+ Finally, item management works...

DOWNS
- ...Magic doesn't
- Subpar telling of another good story
- A somewhat slow pace to everything
- Not good at explaining things

< 8.8 >

REVIEW - Illusion of Gaia | SNES | 1993

GENRE(S): Action / RPG
RELEASED: November 27, 1993
AVAILABLE ON: SNES
DEVELOPER(S): Quintet
PUBLISHER(S): Enix, Nintendo

"Is that The Legend of Zelda?" It might look like it, but no - it's Illusion of Gaia, one of Enix's most popular 90's titles alongside any Dragon Quest game. This game was promoted quite well internationally, thanks to Nintendo themselves, who took on the duties of publishing the game everywhere in the world a year and a half into its original release in Japan - in Europe, we knew the game as Illusion of Time. Connections to any earlier games were hardly mentioned back in those times, it was only later that people stopped looking at the game as a stand-alone, cute little RPG, and started to treat it as a follow-up to 1992's Soul Blazer, therefore also a follow-up to ActRaiser, although the Master is no longer part of the equation. Illusion of Gaia was also much closer to a true RPG than any of its predecessors in this curious arc by Quintet, but still as simple and accessible as a genre game could possibly be in those times and survive the competition. And, it's pretty good; a strangely attractive game, despite a slow start and a few major shortcomings.

Restoring the laws of evolution

Sure about that, slick?

Will is the young survivor of a mysterious shipwreck - how he survived he has no memory of, but he has since developed curious psychic powers. He accidentally enters a dark void, where according to its only inhabitant, the Earth's guardian Gaia, no human is supposed to be able to unless he's the "chosen one", to protect the world from a recurring meteor strike that has prevented mankind and the world's evolution into a more modern state for ages. With an exceptionally cute member of the local royal family in tow, Will embarks on a quest to find the only power strong enough to neutralize the meteor - the power of the firebird.

I always had some sort of infatuation with this game. Perhaps it's because I like the word "Gaia" so much, perhaps it's because it was treated moderately well for an Enix RPG in a time that Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger were the genre games to watch for. I first played the game in 2001, and back then, I could see the errors of its ways, but I appreciated how simple and accessible it was, and I liked how the combat combined elements from both Legend of Zelda and conventional RPG's. After getting run over by a train of frustration when it comes to the worst parts of Soul Blazer, I find myself appreciating Illusion of Gaia even more... but in turn, I've matured and I can see the unique errors of its ways a lot clearer than before. Simply put, Illusion of Gaia is definitely not as good as I remembered, but definitely worth a look if you're able to digest all the cons I will try my best to cover as I go.

Freedan in Mushroom Kingdom.

Although the story is focused on a lot more and it's basically well crafted, it's poorly and cryptically told. Not only is the narrative uncomfortably clumsy, it's extremely slow at times. Especially in the beginning of the game there are long, dragging sequences that make you somewhat uncertain if you're making progress or not; it's like the game is waiting for you to make a right decision when all you actually have to do is WAIT. Now I see where they were getting at - a realistic pace to give the role-playing part a boost - but it's far from necessary, especially at such early parts of the game in which you don't know the game well enough to figure whether you've made a mistake or not. Also, third-person narration seamlessly mixes with the character dialogue, rendering it all perhaps readable, but impossible to fully understand, assuming you're even interested to catch every single detail beyond the halfway mark of the game. The characters are extremely annoying and way dumber than anyone you bumped into in Soul Blazer; one thing Quintet might've wanted to pick up from Square's R&D was at least some dramatic direction for character development.

You are asked many questions with multiple choice answers, but only one of them's right. For an easy example, if you answer "No" when you're supposed to answer "Yes", the NPC just keeps repeating the question until you say "Yes". Sometimes, NPC's will artificially comply to whatever your response is, but the story still develops according to the "right" answer. How open-ended indeed.

General graphics are only so-so when pitted against the most fabulous-looking genre games of the time, but there are some nice level-specific elements like a rain of flowers or a whole village that bobs up and down while you're exploring. The music ain't that special either - they once again opted to switch to a different, inexperienced composer, and this time, they didn't end up with one truly memorable tune. It's not bad, just forgettable.

Cannibal holocaust!

Now that I've pretty much bashed the game which I've previously referred to as somewhat of a cult classic, it's time to bring this review up a notch in tone. As it was with Soul Blazer, the most important key to Illusion of Gaia's charm is its simplicity. You are no longer mandated to kill every single enemy in every single screen to make actual progress, but it helps; killing the last enemy of a screen gives you a permanent boost in HP, strength or defense, at a well-balanced order right up 'til the end. So basically, you can level up in every screen if you're dedicated enough - which also means that the game isn't that lengthy at all, as you can see there's a pre-determined limit to HP. What makes Illusion of Gaia even more of an RPG than its predecessors is the actual exploration of towns and villages, not just a series of restore-and-fetch sequences like in Soul Blazer. However, there are only two people you really need to talk to in each town - the one to tell you where to go next, and the Jeweler Gem.

On your trip, you'll find regular gemstones yielded by defeated enemies. Gathering 100 of these grants you an extra "life" (it's-a-me, Maaaaariooo!!), in this case meaning a checkpoint at the last door you entered; otherwise, you'll return to the last save point. Believe me, you'll need those - the game likes to have a huge piece of your ass every once in a while. You'll also find hidden Red Jewels, which there are 50 altogether. Bringing these to Gem, who is found in most inhabited areas, and hitting a certain numerical mark grants you a special item or ability. For a simple example, further boosts to your basic stats. No special weapons or anything like that, but for the last item, an optional boss to fight, and he might or might not be someone you know from the earlier games. Neat.

The three heroes and the boss lady.

Actually, you can't change your weapons at all, so yes, you'll have to do with Will's flute. Yes, I said flute. A flute is a very dear item to any hardcore Zelda fan, but to me it spells out something I prefer not to say out loud. Oh, well. You attack with A, use an item with B, and use Will's telekinetic power to move objects with L and R. In time, you'll learn new abilities at particular save points - which makes finding each one extremely important - and they are used with combinations of these buttons. The item system is still quite retarded; once again, you use an item by going into the menu and linking an item to the B button, but at least this time the item menu's only one button press away, and at least this time you can carry multiple items of the same type. Also, there are no armour pieces to annoyingly vacate the item slot. However, the medical herb has a whole new problem linked to it; if you use it at the brink of death while getting mauled by an enemy, you will die, 'cause it takes a moment to load. There's really no right time for it, especially not in boss fights which range from incredibly easy (the sandworm ripped straight off A Link to the Past) to incredibly hard (the final boss). Magic or special physical abilities take time to load as well, but at least they blast straight forward this time.

I said you'll have to do with the flute, but would I like the game if it was that simple? Probably not. Quite early on at another particular save point, Will goes through a metamorphosis and changes into a pumped up knight with a long-ass sword called Freedan. Freedan has high power and range, which make him a very essential "friend" to have along on dungeon crawls, but he lacks Will's special talents (in the beginning, it's always the case of the fucking flute), which means that you can't just go bashing everyone's face in using Freedan all the time, but need to go back to the save point or sometimes, just wait for the game's decision to revert him back to Will. There's another alternative character that steps in much, much later, who's even better, and once you finally get to play as this character, you will find it very tough to be forced to go back to your own self.

I burned a guy alive. With my flute. I'm awesome.

Another thing that I truly like about this game - but which can be one of its most enfuriating elements depending on the surroundings - is that it's a constant puzzle, a true one. The dark side of the puzzle lies in the confusing level design. I'm not a huge fan of deliberate, warpzone-ridden mazes in games that promote exploration, never have been since I have such crappy sense of direction (which is just one of the hundred reasons I don't own a car), and this game has one of the worst I've ever suffered through to annoy you. What could be done in an hour takes three from me. The game also takes a turn for the overwhelmingly cryptic every once in a while. But alas, the game does pay back, with traditional and dare I say, surprisingly clever puzzles, and I also like the initially stumping parts where the very simple solution usually lies in exploring the talent of each playable character. It's like poor man's Lost Vikings.

As a whole, Illusion of Gaia is an entertaining and challenging game for any 16-bit RPG and/or adventure game enthusiast. You just have to fine-tune your receivers a little. The writers were very likely high as kites while scripting this game, it's extremely linear and the "cutscenes" are drawn way out of proportion, and it's really confusing at times altogether, but it's also an effortlessly accessible game for the RPG newbie, and the combat's simple and paced really well. I think that in the end, the game plays out slightly better than Soul Blazer... but has nothing on the final game in Quintet's SNES trilogy.

UPS
+ Easy access
+ Good combat mechanics, with a clever development system directly tied to the combat
+ Some clever puzzles
+ Another unique story with a lot of real world history tied in...

DOWNS
- ...However, it is told very poorly; the dialogue is uncomfortable to read with the third-person narrative mixed in, it's dumb anyway, and finally, long, linear and sometimes cryptic sequences ruin every remaining ounce of enjoyment
- Very confusing level design, partly caused by the graphical limitations (ie. dimensional differences)
- Item management is still a huge problem - although an update to what we had to suffer through in Soul Blazer

< 7.9 >

REVIEW - Soul Blazer | SNES | 1992

GENRE(S): Action / Adventure / RPG
RELEASED: January 31, 1992
AVAILABLE ON: SNES
DEVELOPER(S): Quintet
PUBLISHER(S): Enix

Among the first games to be reviewed on this blog was ActRaiser, a SNES cult classic from 1990. In this game, you took on the guise of God himself - localized "Master" in North America - and rose against the monstrous hordes of Satan - localized "Tanzra" - in a clever mix of a city-sim and a straightforward action game. In 1993, the game spawned a simplified all-action sequel shunned by just about every fan of the original. Between these two games, Quintet developed an action-RPG named Soul Blazer, an ActRaiser spin-off and spiritual successor that was to spawn a couple of spiritual successors of its own, ending up regarded the first game in Quintet's unofficial "Gaia trilogy". Soul Blazer is an intriguing and fun game, and frankly, I think it's more of an ActRaiser 2 than that one piece of trash ever was.

S.O.S.

King Magridd - under the influence of his malicious, sociopathic and greedy wife - summons a soul-stealing spirit named Deathtoll and literally sells every living creature in the Freil Empire to him in exchange for one gold piece each. The Master sends one of his most trusted allies, an angel known as the Soul Blazer, down on Earth to rebuild the Empire to the way it was and liberate its people from the forces of evil.

Gee, thanks for all your appreciation!

After deciding that the next review was going to be about a 16-bit RPG, I didn't have to look far to find the perfect solution. Soul Blazer is the kind of loose end I've been babbling on about for the last year due to its strong connection to ActRaiser - far stronger than I expected, actually - a game that I've often mentioned as one of the most unique and interesting SNES classics. Also, it will lead me to a pair of some of my favourite non-Square genre games on the SNES. The main difference between Soul Blazer and those two games, as well as ActRaiser, is that I've never actually played this game before. I might've heard its name mentioned a few times when I was a kid, but like I said in the Final Fantasy VII retrospect, it's an Enix game and Enix games went largely unnoticed in these woods since they were considered a second-rate company in comparison to Square - the most ironic thing about it is that there were way more Enix games on the international market than Square games. Being linked to ActRaiser, this game might've garnered in a bit more attention than the usual Enix IP, but that's not much. Soul Blazer is not as unique, interesting or fun as its spiritual predecessor - actually it's most like a cross between that game and a poor man's Legend of Zelda - but it's entertaining in a lot of ways, a fine game to pass a fistful of time with. Basically, everything that ActRaiser 2 wasn't.

Scouting the bottom of the sea.

Soul Blazer wasn't really released at the best time in Europe, either. With the European release postponed as far as early 1994, the game was inevitably deemed obsolete and out of value. I'm so grateful that things have changed in the past 20 years - most people have begun to learn to put things into perspective and appreciate some good games, if not proper gems, they originally rejected for reasons of vanity or initial monetary worth. To put it simply, I just know I'm in for a comfortable experience when I start this game up. Not great, but comfortable. I don't get that from a lot of games nowadays, there's nearly always a creepy feeling of some proportion jolting up my spine. Maybe that's the spice of gaming to some of you folks out there, but I enjoy knowing I'm not wasting my time here before the game's even begun. Well, I think that's enough of the middle-aged gamer's ranting, let's get on with the game.

The graphics are quite good, but nowhere near the Super Nintendo's best, not even in 1992. Once again, there's a strong resemblance to ActRaiser in a different gameplay setting, due to the same, or at least very similar, font used for the HUD, and similar character design. There are lots of different environments, though, it's not just about switching the palette, so I've got to give the level design some credit. I would've expected Yuzo Koshiro's soundtrack, but we've got another composer at work here - Yukihide Takikawa - and even though some of the tunes stand up to the best of ActRaiser (and then some), it's very inconsistent and even uncharacteristic. Repetitive funk doesn't really go well with a genre game, be it closer to Legend of Zelda than a traditional J-RPG or not. "Solitary Island" has still got to be one of my favourite 16-bit tunes ever.

Soul Blazer is indeed a lot like ActRaiser in the most basic sense. You have six kingdoms to save, and there are two different sides to gameplay: going around battle arenas, releasing the captive souls of the kingdom's citizens from monster lairs and sealing them up, and exploring the rebuilt cities and interacting with those citizens to get ahead on your quest. Everything's alive and able to speak in this game, including woodwork, which takes a while to get used to, and saying this makes it easier for me to explain an example that requires you to show a raft (yes, a raft) a bunch of leaves from its home village, so it believes you're with its people and agrees to carry you across a marsh to the next dungeon. Those expecting this game to make some semblance of sense can turn to some other game. It's weird, it's outright retarded at times ("hey, I know I just met you and this is kind of a strange question anyway, but would you like to be my child?"), but I kinda like it that way. The actual gameplay derives a lot from The Legend of Zelda, all three games that were released up 'til that point; the character development system and half of the item managing comes from traditional console RPG.

If there's one less positive word to describe Soul Blazer as a whole, it's "clumsy". For starters, you don't really have a party; the few folks that join you are actually "part of you", starting with a magician that joins you right away. He appears in the form of a blue orb circling around you for the rest of the game. If you want to use magic, you need mana points, which in turn appear in the form of golden orbs yielded by defeated enemies and found in treasure chests. Magic is extremely useful in this game in itself, but using it is a pain. Every time you use a spell against an enemy, you have to make sure that you're facing the enemy you want to blast at, AND that the orb is aligned with the enemy. It's kind of tough to explain, but what this results in, especially in more demanding situations, is a lot of precious magic gone to complete waste and getting your ass kicked by the other potential threats on the screen while you're trying to focus on a single enemy you necessarily cannot reach with your sword. Also, just having any type of item in your inventory isn't enough. If you want to use an item, you need to have it equipped (think Castlevania: Symphony of the Night). With some more weight on it, this concerns ANY type of item; from helpful accessories such as a bracelet to consumable items such as a medical herb. Let's elaborate.

The bosses don't really shine in design, but
God damn, they're hard to beat.

You're in a tough spot, and you decide that you'd be better off equipping a bracelet that nulls half of the damage taken. Even having the bracelet on isn't enough, and you get your ass kicked. You're thinking to yourself: "well, I have an herb in my inventory, it'll save me if my HP falls to zero". It doesn't do shit if it's not equipped, so you die, whether you have it or not. What you need to do on the brink of death is to quickly switch the bracelet to the herb, sacrifice the benefit from the bracelet for your few final ticks of health, and once the herb is used, you need to switch to the bracelet again. A nuisance, to say the least, as well as the fact that the game keeps giving you both useful equipment and consumable items, when you no longer are in desperate need of them. You just completed a dungeon with bridges of fire for its main attraction - for your efforts, you get an armor set that enables you to walk on fire unharmed. Urgh. You will need the special armors later, but usually by that time, their value as protection is long gone, which means more constant menu toggling between armor sets. One more thing about the items: you can't carry any more than one item of any type at a time. Which means that if you have an herb in your inventory, each herb you find is a wasted, rare opportunity. There are few creatures with endless supplies of herbs, and you can return to any of them any time you use up your short supply, but this calls on some serious, unwelcome backtracking.

Deathtoll's an asshole.

To be frank, the game lives on backtracking. Very often you will need the citizens' help to get forward in an outdoor battle arena or a dungeon. Actually, the easiest way to proceed in this game is to die, over and over again, 'cause the monster lairs you've already sealed remain sealed as long as the power's on, and each time you save the game at the nearest Master's shrine - where you're always taken when you die - the sealed lairs are saved as well. Only the respawning enemies - the grind fodder, as I like to call 'em - come back to annoy. The Master's shrine is always within the confines of a safe area, so dying or going back there via a warp point found from two different locations in each level, enables a quick observation of everything that's been going on since you left to battle the last time around and a quick catching up with more or less important NPC's you've saved thus far. Since sealing the most essential monster lairs in each area manipulates the environment even within those areas, shortcuts which go through the dungeons are often created, so backtracking's not THAT much of an issue in the end, at least in comparison how disturbingly long it takes to get used to the quirky magic and item management.

You can get used to all the quirks, and that's a relief, since the game is very hard thanks to its borderline unreasonable bosses who will outright wreck you, every single one of them - well, perhaps one's an exception and it's quite weird that he's actually smack in the middle of the game. Even the first boss is not that easy at all. Of course, Deathtoll himself takes the cake as one of the most frustrating bosses of the era, right alongside Tanzra in the original ActRaiser, as a matter of fact. It's also quite easy to miss some details on "secret" items that'll help you a great deal; I don't really like to call them secrets since I couldn't imagine being able to beat the game without 'em. Anyway, if you're good and quick about it, and are out to accomplish every single task in the game, you'll be done with Soul Blazer in about 15 hours or so.

Even if immensely frustrating and outright stupid at times, Soul Blazer is worth a peek in the vault, the true follow-up to ActRaiser in my books, and a precursor for something perhaps even better than the mother game.

UPS
+ Immediately accessible, surprisingly well explained gameplay
+ Adorable in some of its core stupidity
+ Quite a unique story
+ Some extremely good music...

DOWNS
- ...But ultimately inconsistent soundtrack
- Dumb NPC's with bone dry sense of humour (not quite sure if that's an up or down)
- Clumsy item management and magic use, lots of unnecessary menu toggling
- Constant backtracking

< 7.5 >

REVIEW - Spider-Man | SNES | 1994

GENRE(S): Action
RELEASED: 1994 (SNES)
AVAILABLE ON: GEN, SNES
DEVELOPER(S): Western Technologies
PUBLISHER(S): Acclaim Entertainment (GEN), LJN (SNES)

Spider-Man - The Animated Series originally premiered in November 1994 on the heels of the great success of DC's Batman - The Animated Series, and like its "spiritual predecessor", it went on to become one of the most successful and longest-running animated series' of its time, praised for its diverse storylines that often crossed over to other, less known Marvel franchises. A game based on the fabulous show was quickly developed for 16-bit consoles; it was released somewhere in between Maximum Carnage and Separation Anxiety. I didn't quite know what to expect from the game, but I had my suspicions. Let's see how well I hit the mark - hopefully not too well. (Hope is futile.)

Sometimes good memories are all I have

The Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus, and "the Ultimate Spider-Slayer" Alistair Smythe have escaped from the Ravencroft Institute, and you'd never guess who takes it upon himself to return these foes to justice. Spider-Man, Spider-Man...

If my mom was still here, she would most definitely vouch for me when I say that the animated series this game is based on, used to rule my world. God forbid if I missed one episode - if my alarm clock suddenly stopped running on a Saturday morning and she was preoccupied with something else, and forgot to wake me up. God forbid, seriously - if this had happened, she would've had a lot of work ahead of her to make it up to me. Bless that woman's soul - she never forgot, and I never missed one episode of Spider-Man. Which leads me to wonder why I never heard one single peep about this game 'til a couple of years ago. Sure, it was never that popular - especially not as popular in the underground as Maximum Carnage - and it was never officially released in Europe, but I still would've known about it. I was fascinated by games that never made it to Europe, especially since I owned a U.S. model of the SNES, and I would most definitely remember if there ever was any slight talk about a game based on the Spider-Man show. Now I must say that I was better off with the theoretical knowledge of the game's existence. This game SUCKS.

What perhaps surprises me the most after an audiovisually pleasing game like Maximum Carnage (over a year after that game!) is that the game is so generic in both look and sound. Character animation and design is ripped straight off from just about any action-oriented platformer of the time (Parker's using steroids), and the level design is repetitive and confusing. When I said that Maximum Carnage was like Batman Returns at its best and Battletoads at its worst - which was not a bad start for the game at all - this game is like Batman Forever at its worst and the SNES version of James Bond Jr at its BEST. Now that's NOT a good start, and it reflects on every single aspect of the game.

Do not slip. Please.

In a word - or actually two - Spider-Man is one of "those games". Those games that are absolutely horrible in every possible way, and are not fun to play for a passing second. It's cryptic - not to mention the glitches that go with it and drive the fact even deeper; in the very beginning of the game, you need to dropkick through a vent cover to be able to crawl through the vent. Well, as it happens, it won't always work, and you're left wondering what the hell's going on and where you should go, right up 'til you check it up on the net (today's luxury) and find out that's exactly what you gotta do. On the tenth or 11th try, you might succeed. The same goes for jumping between layers; for some reason, the game quits recognizing different layers in the background and traps you in empty space, forcing you to either keep trying 'til the cows come home, or just flip the game in the dumpster where it belongs.

You'd hope the fuckery stops here, but it won't. It's absolutely necessary to take damage in this game to proceed, and since the camera is so unbelievably bad, you're forced to make so many jumps to the utter unknown that you'll lose count of them within the first ten minutes of gameplay, and most of those jumps indeed lead straight into a bottomless pit. Or a puddle of mystery liquid you can't escape from after one slip, and are forced to watch your character die a slow and painful death. Some shades of the NES version of James Bond Jr there, for a change. The controls are incredibly stiff, and if you're lucky enough to make it through one level in this game, the final test for your patience comes in the form of a boss who doesn't seem to mind any of your attacks, has incredible range, and will probably have to be dealt with using your webbing to your advantage... that's _HAVE TO_ and I capped that on purpose. That purpose is, as you probably guessed already, limited supply of webbing. No chance to restore it when you truly need it. Bang bang!

I thought I'd seen the worst this marathon has had to offer in Invasion of the Spider-Slayers, Arcade's Revenge and The Incredible Hulk on the Game Boy Advance, and if I had included the Questprobe games from the 80's (some of the first Marvel games ever made), I would've found it. For now, this particular game entitled Spider-Man takes the cake, and does it by one damn long shot. Not only is it a horrible game, but its a horribly designed game. I seriously cannot point out one good thing about this game, not one thing done right. It isn't even that much of an experience to the Marvel buff, which is ironic since few games have had Marvel collaborating with the developers this closely.

UPS
+ The show was great

DOWNS
- Suffers from every single problem in every single bad game ever made

< 2.0 >

REVIEW - Venom / Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety | SNES | 1995

GENRE(S): Action / Fighting
RELEASED: November 1995
AVAILABLE ON: GEN, PC, SNES
DEVELOPER(S): Software Creations
PUBLISHER(S): Acclaim Entertainment

1995 - what a great year for gamers and Spider-Man fans alike. Spider-Man - The Animated Series had spread like wildfire across the globe just as expected after the success of DC's award-winning Batman series; Spider-Man comic books and merchandise sold better than in years, perhaps ever. Gamers rejoiced when LJN was officially merged into Acclaim Entertainment, and this merge resulted in some honestly good licensed games, like Stargate. 1995 was also the SNES' final stand; games were made right up 'til 1997, and 1996 sure had its share of great SNES releases, but if I had to point out the greatest overall year the SNES ever had, it's 1995. Chrono Trigger, Yoshi's Island and Diddy's Kong Quest made it at least the most magical SNES year since the console's international launch in 1991. In the final days of the SNES, in the midst of the Spider-Man heat, Acclaim put out a sequel to 1994's Maximum Carnage, named Separation Anxiety after a Venom series of the same name, and based on a Venom series called... Lethal Protector. That's a little bit confusing, but it's a sequel to a quite decent game, and it's at least supposed to star my favourite Marvel villain, so basically I have no choice but to take the game out for a spin.

Venomous

I thought I was.

Venom and Spider-Man finally reach an agreement, and Venom moves to San Francisco to live on as Eddie Brock and keep his symbiote at bay to the best of his abilities. He soon becomes the target of the psychopathic Carnage and five other offspring of his symbiote, as well as a group of mercenaries calling themselves the Jury. Well aware of the impossibility of the challenge laid before him, he reluctantly asks for Spider-Man's help.

I pitted yesterday's sequels against today's sequels against each other, not so long ago - in fact, I must've been reviewing a Spider-Man game. I think I can count failed sequels from this generation with my fingers, while two decades ago sequels went both ways all the time. I can't say I never heard about this game, but what I can say is that I never a read a review of the game, and thus it didn't make much of an impact on me, even though I was a huge Spider-Man fan at the time. I had never played Maximum Carnage at the time, either, but I knew how the game looked like and I was dying to try that out, even though the review wasn't that flattering. The only Separation Anxiety preview I ever caught a glimpse of only mentioned Spider-Man, not Venom, and even less the fact that Venom actually starred in this game instead of Spider-Man. When I read about this game a couple of years ago, I found out that Venom stars in the game and that it's actually a direct sequel to Maximum Carnage. That's when curiosity hit, big time, and after finally getting to play Maximum Carnage and finding it quite decent, I hoped for the best. This is how it turned out.

I've seen this before.

You just know. You know from the first moments you slap this one in, that it ain't going to be close to Maximum Carnage in quality. The soundtrack is basically quite good, but its style is quite different - actually, I can't figure out where they were going with it. What genre is this sound salad supposed to represent? The next thing you'll notice is that the awesome comic book cutscenes that marked the first game are gone and replaced with long-ass text. And the next thing... well... is the presentation in general. Even though Venom is by all means the main character of the game, I think the developers thought it was best for their wallets to promote Spider-Man to the lead. Virtually all the text is about Venom, and you are given the choice to play as either Spider-Man or Venom from the very first level onward, but Venom is constantly billed second, and in-game, his HUD is placed in the Player 2 slot, even if you're playing alone. No break for Brock.

The gameplay's virtually identical to the gameplay of Maximum Carnage, and while there's a certain light side to that statement, it has a whole bulk of dark ones. It's not only the fluid controls that pay respect to Maximum Carnage, it's also the complete inability to block enemy attacks, and the level design is almost exactly the same, not to mention character design - they're recycled with minimal effort. In-game graphics might be just a tad better, but seriously, you wouldn't know the difference between Level 1 in Maximum Carnage and Level 1 in Separation Anxiety by a quick glance.

What the hell am I doing in the Technodrome?

If you found Maximum Carnage unreasonably hard, try Separation Anxiety on for a size: the characters are WEAK (Venom's the more enduring one, but he's slow and stiff) and apparently, the developers took heed of people's criticism of having just one continue... by removing continues altogether!!! Remember, you cannot block - I still don't know what the fuck was so hard to add in this very basic feature. Oh well, it wouldn't matter much, 'cause this time, some of these fuckers have guns. And, in the later levels, you will also have to deal with robots with a whole array of tools for ranged combat. What do you have? Unlimited (symbiotic) webbing, which does not directly harm enemies, and standing in for a blocking ability, a "web shield" that only covers one side and apparently does not work against projectiles. Feeling helpless yet? You will.

The last soaking wet piece of crap I'll throw at this game and its makers is the promotion of Spider-Man; I haven't quite finished with it yet. A game that's supposed to star Venom feels quite weird to play when it's the other playable character that simply is better, by all means except for his inferior health. Venom's what drew me to this game, and playing as him from the beginning was what I thought to raise this game even above Maximum Carnage. That's what I expected, a game at least equal to its predecessor, not a wholly watered-down bundle of badly recycled fluff, but that's exactly what I got. What a shame.

UPS
+ Looks and sounds good, but so did the last one; no real improvement here, and no GJ to provide the music
+ The controls... yep, _still_ good...

DOWNS
- ...But where the hell is the block button?
- Spider-Man's sticking his nose too deep
- Pathetic health, totally unfair combat situations (such as thugs with guns, and robots), long and repetitive levels, no continues... get a picture of how unreasonable the game is, already?
- Every remotely good thing about it is ripped straight off Maximum Carnage
- Extremely lacking presentation in comparison to the previous game

< 5.5 >

REVIEW - Spider-Man / Venom: Maximum Carnage | SNES | 1994

GENRE(S): Action / Fighting
RELEASED: September 1994
AVAILABLE ON: GEN, SNES
DEVELOPER(S): Software Creations
PUBLISHER(S): Acclaim Entertainment (GEN), LJN (SNES)

In 1994, Spider-Man swung onto the screen in a 16-bit game called Spider-Man / Venom: Maximum Carnage. Now let's look at it: the cartridge was blood red. A New York-based rock band named Green Jellÿ - that at one time featured current members of Tool - was hired to do the soundtrack, and a licensed soundtrack at that time was completely unheard of in a console-exclusive game. The title of the game itself told stories: it was to star both Spider-Man and Venom in hunt of their insane arch nemesis Carnage, another victim of the alien symbiote that originally turned Eddie Brock into Venom. Everything about this game sounded awesome. Then LJN was confirmed to publish the SNES version, and the light at the end of the tunnel just went out. Well, despite the fall of darkness, I went and tried the game. To my complete and utter surprise, I liked the game, but that was years ago - I could've just been glad to find ONE half-decent Spider-Man game. How about now? ...Honestly? If you're into arcade-style beat 'em up and some truly well presented comic book action, Maximum Carnage might honestly tingle your senses and do it good. Maximum Carnage might well be the best game LJN ever laid their hands on.

Sticking to the basics and doing it well

What a kick-off.

Cletus Kasady is taken to the Ravencroft Institute, where he somehow manages to generate a copy of the alien symbiote he once bonded with, enabling his transformation into Carnage. Carnage goes on to release a few of his fellow patients and recruit more from the street, to form a whole group of psychopathic criminals to hunt down Spider-Man. Venom also takes note of Carnage's escape and forms an uneasy alliance with Spider-Man to stop his murderous doppelganger.

I must say that when Maximum Carnage came out, I didn't pay too much attention to who made the game - to be even more precise, I didn't really have an opinion on LJN as I was just a kid and my experience with video games was limited to what my mom could afford, plus what she could even find. I was in love with Spider-Man at the time the game was reviewed in my favourite magazine, and I think it was around the same time as the awesome animated series premiered on Finnish TV. Spider-Man was the shit back at the time Batman had taken a dive into a pile of literal shit. Venom was probably the coolest villain ever, right after the Joker's best days of course. So this game Maximum Carnage got a crappy review from a magazine that had a tendency of rating every game they perceived half-decent, over 80; Maximum Carnage got under 70 points out of 100, which basically meant the game sucked, but since it had so many fine artificial qualities, they probably couldn't bear to rate it any worse. I didn't care about a thing they said: the game looked so fucking awesome in the eye of a dedicated Spider-Man fan, that I just had to try the game out. I had to wait for several years for that to happen, but when it finally did, I liked it - I just wasn't that much of a comic book or Spider-Man buff at the time to care beyond a brief try-out.

The comic book schtick spreads into the game.

Now that I've stabilized again and been jacking myself up with several Spider-Man titles, none of which have been that good, it's time to take Maximum Carnage for a bit more thorough spin. And hell, it IS quite good. The game is quite like the first Spider-Man game on the Game Boy - like a reimagining of some sort, it has a similar structure. It's just about a few dozen times better in every possible way. It's nothing fancy, it's a very simple side-scrolling beat 'em up with just a few minor features to make a difference. At its best, it's a poor man's version of Batman Returns on the SNES. Even at its worst, it's a poor man's version of Battletoads on any platform, most notably Battlemaniacs on the SNES - hell, the Double Smash! animation is almost identical to the double punch in Battlemaniacs. That's really not a bad start, considering the logo on the cover which we veteran retro gamers have grown to perceive as a warning. Well of course there are flaws, a lot of them, but I swear the whole experience is a lot better than I could've ever imagined. Maybe the side-scrolling beat 'em up had generally ran its course, and Maximum Carnage offered us nothing new at the time, but 17 years later, it feels quite all right. Hard as fuck, but surprisingly tense.

The first thing that comes as a surprise about the game is that the graphics, presentation and music are... wait for it... incredible... no, I won't cap that off with a supposedly funny turn-around, the audiovisuals of the game are off the charts considering who made this game, and when they did it. Green Jellÿ's bombastic soundtrack is perfect for this type of game, and once again, this was one of the first - if not the first - console games to have a licensed soundtrack. A proper recording of the title screen tune actually appears on an album of theirs, and it's called "Carnage Rules". I think the song went on to inspire the developers to ask Green Jellÿ to make the soundtrack. As per usual with these old-school Spider-Man games, the cutscenes are stylized to resemble a comic book, and to my recollection, these semi-animated scenes are ripped straight off the Maximum Carnage series, just mashed up and censored a little to meet Nintendo's standards (the game was however rated T upon release).

Hell yeah.

Spider-Man and Venom - who turns up as a playable character after 3-4 levels, a little too late in my view - both have different versions of the same moves available. What you'll be doing, mostly, is punching the shit out of endless waves of enemies, and the game is fun as it is; actually, I'm more fond of generic button mashing than the out-of-place levels where you simply need to climb and dodge obstacles. It's just like in Batman Returns; as great as that game was, I hated the spots where they tried to add colour into a game that was obviously always meant to be a standard beat 'em up. In addition to the always effective punch combo, Spider-Man and Venom have their unlimited (!) webbing/symbiote slime to bind an enemy, and they can even swing (from something invisible) and deliver a dropkick right to the opponent's jaw. They can also grab the enemy to deliver different grapple attacks, and do some context-specific attacks like a Double Smash! when they get surrounded by two enemies, or use special weapons. Neat.

Excuse me, sir... uh. Never mind.

The game is much harder than it sounds from the get-go. To my knowledge, there is no chance to block attacks, whatsoever, and it just so happens that your health is much easier to drain than the health of any standard enemy or boss. Actually, bosses that have multiple health meters take forever to go down, and may and will very easily drain you of a few whole LIVES while they're still enjoying the benefits of the first meter. You're not doing anything wrong, you just can't block, and some of the bosses have such range even dodging won't matter jack. Oh, there's the chance to continue, all right... one single time. The game is quite lengthy, too. But, be it frustratingly hard or not, it's an entertaining game, and if you're a Spider-Man fan, you can't really afford to miss the great opportunity LJN took heed of for once.

So, Maximum Carnage is far from a reasonable game, but with its generic, yet functional concept, tight gameplay and outright amazing audiovisuals, it's also lightyears ahead of any Spider-Man game that came before it - actually, any Marvel Comics video game product that came before it. It's been criticized for lacking the great production values of the first Spider-Man game on the Genesis - widely considered one of the best licensed games of the generation - but I didn't like that game. This one, I do. As absurd as it is.

UPS
+ Amazing audiovisual presentation; there's a true Spider-Man feel to it, all around
+ Good controls for once
+ A great cast; Venom as a playable character says it all...

DOWNS
- ...However, he steps in a bit too late
- No chance to block attacks...
- ...Only one continue...
- ...Pathetic health meter...
- ...And all the other stuff that makes this game unreasonably hard

< 7.5 >