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Fail Review: Pac-Man World [PlayStation]

Developer: Namco Hometek
Publisher: Namco
Rated: E for Everyone
Released: September 30, 1999

I love Pac-Man, so it pains me to say that I hated Pac-Man World with every fiber of my being.  I hated the disc the data was pressed on, the data itself, and every line of code contained therein.  One would expect a Pac-Man platformer to be fun for the whole family.  Instead what you get is the goddamn Dark Souls of Pac-Man games, where every step springs another deathtrap, forcing players to replay levels several times until they've committed them to memory in a cheap attempt to extend the game's length.

This was a common problem in the earlier days of platformers, and Pac-Man World embraces all of the worst principles of game development from its era.  Frustrating trial and error gameplay, an uncooperative and immovable camera (despite being compatible with the DualShock analog controller), cheap deaths courtesy of ledges you can and will easily fall off of, cheap enemies and obstacles - you name it, it's all here.  I quit after only two hours, yanking the disc from my console in disgust and requiring all of my willpower not to chuck it at the wall.  I've beaten games like Super C and Mega Man on real hardware in recent years, but Pac-Man World bested me. 

It's not just that the game is hard or cheap, but the cheapness sucks all the fun right out of the game.  By the fifth time I'd attempted the game's second boss, Anubis Rex, I was so frustrated with the bullshit the game throws at you, I simply had no desire to continue trying.  To give you an idea, the boss fight takes place in a sort of Mayan ruins setting with a giant stone statue of a deity.  You're supposed to run on four small platforms, causing their fans to spin, which then causes the statue's arms to move, revealing its weak point.  At first, it's simple enough - jump from platform to platform, avoiding fireballs that pop out of the lava surrounding them.  In round two, more fireballs crash down from the background, but they're easy enough to avoid.  Round three introduces a whirlwind, which makes it harder to avoid the fireballs that hit the platforms and is very difficult to jump over.  In the fourth and final round, the statue itself shoots energy beams at you which, I swear to god, hit you if you're on the same side of the screen.  It looks like you're safe, but the game indicates you've been hit, even if you're on a different platform or you attempt to jump over them. 

It's really a shame because the game has lots of charm on the technical side of things.  Pac-Man is very expressive, the colors are vibrant, the music generally riffs on familiar Pac-Man themes but with motifs that fit the stage, and there are even some 3D mazes you can unlock.  These mazes also introduce many of the main game's traps, but it's balanced out by Pac-Man being able to take multiple hits before losing a life.  By far, these are the best part of the game, but you have to scour the main stages for special icons that will allow you to open doors to access them.  So I have to play the worst part of the game to access the best part?  Cool.

Released to celebrate Pac-Man's 20th anniversary, Pac-Man World should have been a homerun.  Instead, it's needlessly frustrating and not fun at all.  I never expected I would unleash a torrent of curse words at a Pac-Man game, yet there I was.  Pac-Man is unquestionably my favorite video game character of all-time, but he deserved better than this pile of trash.  Pac-Man World can eat me. 

Fail Review: Batman [NES]

Developer: Sunsoft
Publisher: Sunsoft
Released: February 1990

If you've ever heard the term "NES-hard," it was games like Batman: The Video Game that spawned it.  Released a few months after Tim Burton's smash hit 1989 film, this action-platformer is actually a fantastic game punctuated by moments of such extreme difficulty that they will test even the most patient gamers. 

To understand what a big deal Batman was in 1989-90, you kinda had to be there to experience the phenomenon.  Burton's film set the bar for all future adaptations.  Despite some very controversial changes, including an origin story for the Joker that ties him into Batman's origin, this was a far more faithful adaptation of the tone of the original comic books.  It was far removed from the campy Adam West TV show; a much more realistic, darker take on the character than had ever been attempted before, and with A-list actors in the lead roles.

As a result, Batman was everywhere in those days.  The logo graced t-shirts, bed sheets, underwear, and just about anything it could be stitched, sewn, or printed onto.  Prince's soundtrack flew off store shelves simply because the cover featured the logo - even non-Prince fans (e.g. - heathens) bought it.  It spawned a new line of action figures, a breakfast cereal, arguably the greatest animated show of all-time (several years later, admittedly, but the influence is clear), and of course, video games.

Batman's history with video games has always been hit and miss, and though this was not the first video game featuring the Caped Crusader or even the first one loosely based on the movie, it is the first good one.  It's one of the rare examples of a good movie tie-in game, though its connection to the film is tenuous at best.

The game begins on the Gotham city streets, and right away you're struck by two things: the appropriately dark and dingy look of the graphics, and the stunning music.  Sunsoft games almost always featured some of the best music on the NES,and this might be the pinnacle.  The level one music is as memorable to me as Contra, Castlevania, or even Mario and Zelda - it's classic stuff.  Getting back to the visuals, however, the color palette is generally drab, relying mostly on browns, rust red, gray, dark greens, and dull shades instead of vibrant, bright colors like most NES games.  Ironically, it resembles modern day games more than games of its era, which made it stand out all the more for players who were used to the cartoonish hues found in other popular games.

The drab colors work perfectly for the game, and the levels are loaded with details such as street signs, moving gears, and dripping acid.  Even Batman's death animation is awesome - a giant, flaming bat symbol!  I guess they figured they'd better make it cool, because you will undoubtedly be seeing in dozens of times.  Batman: The Video Game is hard.  No, like, REALLY hard.  Like, REALLY, REALLY HARD.  Controller-smashing, TV-tipping, wall-punching hard.  Seriously, this is a hard game - like "fuck this game" hard.  And yet, it's so damn good that I'm torn between smashing my cartridge with a hammer until there's nothing but a fine plastic dust remaining and persevering until I finally reach the end.  Ultimately, however, the game defeated me whereupon making it to the game's final showdown with the Joker himself - the only instantly recognizable boss - I spent more than four goddamn hours attempting to beat him before calling it quits.  I even paused the game and left my NES on while I left the house for several hours, with the hope that I'd return to it later and, in true gaming fashion, beat him on the first try after I'd had a chance to calm down.  No such luck.  Time and time again, the Joker destroyed me in a matter of seconds until I just couldn't take it anymore, threw my controller on the ground as hard as I could, and wrenched the cartridge from the clutches of the console, declaring it the worst game ever.  Yes, at 38 years of age, Batman: The Video Game still managed to make me break an NES controller.

If there's one saving grace to the game's ruthless difficulty, it's that you get unlimited continues, but in some ways it's almost like it's taunting you.  "Yeah, you know you wanna try again.  Sorry, you suck!  But try again!  This time you'll get it!  Oops, no you won't!  Hahaha!  But for real, the NEXT time will be the one... OR NOT!" 

The game quickly deviates from the movie with its first boss, the obscure comic villain Killer Moth (though many argue it's the slightly less obscure Firefly).  In fact, all the bosses in the game are generally so obscure I've never heard of most of them, and I read Batman comics growing up.  Interestingly enough, even a number of the generic thugs Batman faces during levels are based on villains such as KGBeast and Deadshot, which begs the question how they keep coming back after being blown up by Batman.  In a real divergence from the comics, Batman's enemies explode in a gout of flame, so I guess the Dark Knight gave up on that whole "no killing" rule for this game.

As a video game, this is a precision platformer of the highest caliber.  Batman has the ability to wall jump, often requiring very specific pressure sensitive commands to avoid obstacles placed there just to make your life a living hell.  It's one thing to make a tight jump to avoid falling into a bottomless pit, but another thing entirely when there are spikes overhead that will damage you or send you falling to your death if you hold the jump button too long.  The game's final stage takes place in the Gotham Cathedral, just as the film does, and some of the jumps there are almost impossible to make without just sucking it up and taking damage.  Enemies do randomly drop hearts to replenish your health, as well as ammunition for Batman's various gadgets (why do they have that?), and points - which are utterly useless since the game does not grant extra lives based on your score.  Being that the drops are random, you'll spend a great deal of time walking back and forth, forcing enemies to respawn just so you can farm for health and ammo.

Most of the levels have some correlation to the film - the Gotham Streets, Axis Chemical Plant, Gotham Cathedral - but there is also the obligatory sewer level, which dumps out to a cave, and a weird high-tech level where the Joker's face appears on TV monitors that I definitely don't recall from the film.  The bosses, on the other hand, are all completely unrelated.  In addition to the seemingly random selection of D-list villains, there are several original bosses that would feel more at home in a Contra game than here.  There's a giant computer thing where you have to take it out in stages, and two weird moving block things in another level.  With such a large and famous Rogue's Gallery, it's puzzling why Sunsoft chose to use these lame, generic video game bosses instead of including more recognizable, or even obscure, characters as bosses. 

Between levels, you're treated to some pretty damn slick cutscenes like the Batmobile cruising down the street, the Batwing circling the cathedral, or the Joker uttering his famous "Ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?" line.  Interestingly, Vicki Vale does not appear in any of these, though she was in the early prototype version of the game.  Sadly I never got to officially see the game's ending cinematic where Batman straight up murders the Joker in cold blood by throwing him over the cathedral balcony.  I guess I'll just have to settle for YouTube videos of the ending, because after spending hours fighting the Joker with no success, I doubt I'll ever attempt the feat again. 

Even in spite of the brutal, merciless, unfair, bullshit final boss - I mean, the Joker summons lightning, for Christ's sake.  Lightning.  When did the Joker become Thor, the God of Thunder? - Batman: The Video Game retains its status as a classic in my eyes.  The graphics, the music, and the precise control are all top-notch.  The level designs are challenging, but honestly quite manageable if you take your time.  This is as close as I've ever gotten to beating it before, and it's close enough for me. 

Batman was played on a real Nintendo Entertainment System.

 

Fail Review: The Red Star [PlayStation 2]

The Red Star
Sony PlayStation 2

Developer: Acclaim Studios Austin
Publisher: XS Games
Rated: T for Teen
Released: 2007

As one of the best-selling consoles with one of the largest libraries of all-time, it’s only natural that the PlayStation 2 would have more than its fair share of hidden gems.  Quietly released near the tail-end of the system’s lifespan, while a completed Xbox version remains unreleased, The Red Star is a top-down action game in the vein of games like Smash TV, Expendable, or Cannon Spike.  Based on a graphic novel of the same name, the title offers two distinct characters that can be upgraded, 18 varied stages, a satisfying melee combat system, and some terrific shoot-and-dodge gameplay.  With its relatively low price, thanks to its relative obscurity, there’s really no reason for PS2 owners to pass this one up.

After heaping such praise on it, you might be wondering why this is a Fail Review.  Simply put, the final stages were just too hard for my limited patience.  I made it all the way to stage 16 with both characters, the slow and devastatingly powerful Kyuzo and the nimble Makita, but the barrage of enemies and mid-level bosses just became too much to bear.  That said, I stand by my statement that The Red Star is an excellent and criminally overlooked game, and my failure to complete it stems more from my cranky demeanor and slowing reflexes than any fault of the game itself.

As a budget title, don’t expect the best presentation.  The game’s story is told via static dialogue boxes between missions.  I have no idea how faithful, if at all, it is to the original graphic novel, but it’s interesting enough with lots of fictional politics between warring factions.  The in-game graphics won’t blow you away, but they’re serviceable.  The main characters and enemies look nice enough, and the humongous bosses look fantastic, but the stages are mostly generic industrial-style catwalks.  The stages that deviate from this look are the best looking, particularly an early stage where you must avoid falling bombs by looking for an overhead ship’s reflection in puddles on the ground. 

The sound and music is also what you’d expect from a budget title.  Some of the tunes have a nice Russian flair, which is fitting given the game’s setting and story, and most meld elements of electronic and rock music.  It’s an exciting mixture that fits the action very well.  There are some minor voices, mostly grunts and groans, but really nothing in the form of voice acting.

One thing that is not budget-quality is the stellar gameplay.  The Red Star borrows heavily from top-down action games mentioned in the first paragraph, but goes a step further with its melee combat system.  Both characters have unique combos and ranged weapons, giving them both a completely different feel and requiring different strategies.  Makita’s rapid attacks may lack the range of Kyuzo’s spear, but she can juggle enemies with ease and backflip out of harm’s way.  Kyuzo plays more like a tank character and while he’s as slow as one, his reach keeps makes it hard for enemies to get close at all. 

Upon completion of a stage, your performance is ranked, which translates into upgrade points you can use to enhance your character’s abilities.  These upgrades are the same for both characters, but they do make a noticeable difference in the game’s difficulty if you perform well enough to earn them.  Therein lies the one major problem I had with The Red Star: there’s no way to earn more upgrade points.  You cannot replay levels to try and increase your rank, so unless you have perfect runs in each of them, you could end up missing a crucial upgrade to your life bar or weapon that makes all the difference in the game’s final stages.  You may find yourself restarting the entire game, as I did, just to try and perform better and earn more upgrades, and even then you may still fail. 

As disappointing as it was that I couldn’t finish the game, I can say I had a lot of fun playing it.  Most stages feature a great mixture of melee and ranged combat, but to keep things interesting, there are two horizontal shoot ‘em up stages where you pilot a jet and destroy everything in your path.  These stages, while short, add a lot of variety to the experience overall and were some of my favorites.  The variety doesn’t stop there.  There is also a stage with minor puzzle elements where you must weave your way through shipping containers, some of which will explode if shot or touched.  I thought this sequence was a blast as I scrambled back and forth, shooting my way through safe containers, trying to avoid being blown up or crushed by others.  Yet another section has you shooting or melee attacking force fields so you can progress up a conveyor belt.  Much of it may be variants of the standard game mechanics, but it’s the fresh way they’re used that keeps things fun and exciting.  You never quite know what comes next.

But the real highlight here are the boss battles.  Most stages have both a mid-boss and a final boss, but these play out similar to bullet hell shooters.  Dodging a hail of enemy fire while carefully looking for openings in their patterns to return some of your own is a thrilling experience.  Gigantic machines with multiple turrets, each with their own firing pattern, make each encounter unique and fun.  Timely use of your shield and your special powered-up shots are crucial here, requiring both split second decisions and reflexes to survive. 

Sadly, it was these very same boss battles that ultimately bested me and convinced me to quit my second attempt at beating it.  I’m sure with enough practice and patience I could do it, but my other major problem with the game is that there are no checkpoints.  Dying means you restart the whole level, and nothing is more aggravating than making it all the way to the boss, whittling its health down, then perishing in the final seconds of a protracted battle and having to go through the whole stage again. 

All things considered, The Red Star is a game that I enjoyed my time with, despite the difficulty spike near the end that caused me to give up.  Who knows, maybe I’ll revisit it someday and, as is so often the case, I’ll have no trouble in a future attempt.  Until then, I can’t recommend that you give it a shot and judge for yourself.

Fail Review: The Battle of Olympus [NES]

The Battle of Olympus
Nintendo Entertainment System

Developer: Infinity Co., Ltd.
Publisher: Broderbund Software
Released: 1989

Sometimes I play a game so bad I simply can't bring myself to finish it.  Though it often comes highly recommended as one of the NES' hidden gems, I can't help but think there's a reason BOO is the acronym for The Battle of Olympus'.  It's a monotonous, repetitive, boring slog through a confusing landscape.

This game is nothing more than a clone of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, except without any of the enjoyment.  Make no mistake, Zelda II is notoriously hard, but I've always found it the fun kind of challenge.  BOO is the exact opposite. 

When I say it's a clone, I really mean it.  Most of the graphics look like they were ripped straight from Zelda II, as does much of the animation.  If I didn't know better, I'd say it's little more than a sprite hack, but Zelda II also features some gameplay elements not found here, making it a deeper experience. 

BOO makes good enough use of its Greek mythology theme.  There are plenty of recognizable monsters, such as a cyclops, centaurs, satyrs, and a siren, and numerous Greek Gods, but then there are some that look nothing like what they're supposed to be.  Take the hydra, for instance.  It's a single-headed dragon that bounces out of water and passes through solid ground in order to land cheap hits.  The same sprite is later recolored for another boss that's supposed to be a plain old dragon.  Then there are odd enemies like little monkey-things and purple ostriches.

Cheap hits are one of the game's many fundamental flaws.  There are many areas in the game where you will take unavoidable hits, and it's even possible to get caught up in multiple hits because the stun period is so limited.  Just one enemy could hit you two or three times as it passes by, taking a sizable chunk of your lifebar.  Then there are the enemies that are too small the kneel and hit.  Sure, you can duck and swing your weapon, but what good does that do when slimes and insects just pass right under it?  Why can't I jump in the air and slash downward like Link in Zelda II?  They ripped off everything else, why not that?

Most of the enemies are just plain annoying.  Satyrs bounce around and your weapon has such a short reach, you'll often take a hit just to get close enough to kill them.  Bats have no consistency at all.  Sometimes they swoop down at light speed, and other times they flutter harmlessly over your head.  You never know, so half the time you just have to make a leap of faith over a pit two bats are perched above, hoping they don't swoop down and knock you straight to your death.  The hit detection on bosses is atrocious as well.  You can be right on top of the boss, swinging your sword, but it doesn't register a hit unless you get it exactly in the tiny hitbox the game expects you to.  This makes sense for, say, the cyclops where his eye would be his natural weakness, but why does it matter whether I hit the siren from the front or behind?

Another thing they failed to implement well is the shield.  Like Zelda II, you have one, but unlike that game it's fucking useless.  Most enemy projectiles are just above its effectiveness, forcing you to make a perfectly timed jump in order to deflect anything.  And when you do that, you'll likely just get hit by something else.

Even the game's logic make no sense.  There may be stairs that lead down to another screen, but if you jump down right next to them you die.  So the next screen only exists if you take the stairs?  On top of that, there's one area in the game where a pit leads to a hidden room where you fight a bunch of salamanders.  You need to collect 20 salamander skins so a character can make something out of them for you, but since it's in a pit which usually equates instant death, how would you ever know to jump down there?  One of the NPCs may mention something about it, but you have no way of knowing which one it is without jumping into all of them until you find the correct one.

The absolute worst thing about the game is collecting items.  Enemies drop items randomly.  It could be health, olives, which are the game's currency, or something special like the skins, but since it's random, you could be killing the same enemies over and over for upwards of an hour just to progress.  These aren't optional items, either.  Twice in the game, Greek Gods offer to sell you items you need in order to proceed in exchange for a lot of olives.  It took me 43 minutes and 54 seconds to collect 70 of them at one point, and by that point it was the third time I'd had to collect things to progress.  I estimate about 80% of the time I splent playing this abomination was wasted walking back and forth across two screens just so the enemies could respawn and I could collect whatever shit I needed.

While I'm on the subject, why the fuck am I collecting olives for gods anyway?!  They're gods!  Can't they get their own olives?  And why are they trying to fleece me for necessary items?  Don't you want me to save Greece?  Why wouldn't you just give it to me?  That's like if the old man at the beginning of The Legend of Zelda refused to give me a sword until I punched a bunch of octorocks to death and brought back 300 rupees.

The world layout is utterly confusing.  Certain doors take you to different areas, and other times you just walk to the edge of the screen and you're some place else.  There's even a maze-like forest where you're bound to get lost until you figure out the correct path through trial and error.  There are fast-travel areas once you acquire a certain item, but the game randomly transports you around the world instead of letting you pick where you want to go. As if that weren't bad enough, the game is full of backtracking, but it's difficult to remember how to get back and forth to specific areas, so you'll likely wander around until you stumble upon the correct path back to Argolis or Laconia or wherever the hell you need to go next.

The only positive things I can say about the game is that the graphics are OK, and the animation is generally very good.  The music is fair enough, but though each area has its own theme, each one is very short and repeats endlessly.  This wasn't uncommon for games of this era, but when you spend so much time killing enemies to collect olives, the short, repetitive tunes will soon make you want to puncture your own eardrums.  Control is actually solid, but as previously mentioned, the mechanics of hitting your enemies and defending against attacks are so broken that it renders responsive controls meaningless.

The last thing I want to talk about is the password system.  Lots of old NES games used extremely long passwords, and this is one of those.  Not only is each password 26 characters long, but they use both upper and lower case letters and numbers.  It's so tedious, I found myself not wanting to continue the game just because I didn't want to input the goddamn novel that represented my password.

After hours of boredom, backtracking, frustration, suffering cheap enemies, collecting random drops, and developing a seething hatred for the very plastic the game's PCB is housed in, I decided to simply call it quits.  It's not the first time I've given up on a shitty game, and it won't be the last, but it will be the last time this particular piece of shit defiles my precious NES.  BOO, indeed.