Tag Archives: review

Harvest Moon (SNES) — Issue 45

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Farm­ing life begins with
SNES sim­u­la­tor classic

Leav­ing every­thing behind and tak­ing up the life of a farmer does­n’t seem to be half bad. Sure, it’s back-break­ing daunt­ing work with a large reser­voir of poten­tial fail­ure. But it’s hon­est work and high­ly sat­is­fy­ing. Or, at least that’s what Har­vest Moon wants you to believe. In a tale as old as video game time, the orig­i­nal farm­ing sim­u­la­tor wants you to live that life and suc­ceed, no mat­ter the cost.
Har­vest Moon’s orig­i­nal entry is the stark­est of all in the series. You, the name­less farmer, are tasked with rebuild­ing the fam­i­ly farm and prop­er­ty. There are ani­mals to raise, crops to nur­ture and sell, and — if you play your cards cor­rect­ly — a fam­i­ly to start. You have rough­ly a year to do this before your par­ents come back and judge your efforts. If you’ve suc­ceed­ed most­ly, you’re in the clear. If not, well, you’ve failed and it’s game over. This is the basis for the series that you see today in Har­vest Moon and Stardew Val­ley, and though most­ly unchanged in basis, it’s sim­ple and effective.
The depth comes in learn­ing the game sys­tem. Crop nur­tur­ing and ani­mal hus­bandry are not easy, but once you’ve got the nuance it’s a whole new world of prof­its. The con­trols are sim­ple to pick up and once you’ve built your­self up sta­mi­na-wise, the fruits of your labor are obvi­ous. There’s some­thing super sat­is­fy­ing about work­ing the land, plant­i­ng crops and car­ing for your ani­mals in a day’s work and then reap­ing the ben­e­fits. There is plan­ning involved also, which adds an extra lay­er of depth. Know­ing how to spend your day wise­ly — whether it be tend­ing to the farm or social­iz­ing in town — is impor­tant, and adds to the over­all experience. 
Part of that expe­ri­ence is the pre­sen­ta­tion, and it’s not bad for a SNES game. Giv­en that this is 16-bit, the sprites are bright and pop with the gor­geous SNES palette. Some areas are a lit­tle too brown but over­all, it’s a pret­ty game. The music is slight­ly monot­o­nous but it’s a lit­tle catchy so it does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly grate the way you’d think hear­ing the same tune would for more than 20 min­utes of farm work and socializing.
Because this is the entry point to the mod­ern series, Har­vest Moon has work to do. Time — though not explic­it­ly shown on screen — runs too quick­ly. Also, the start­ing hand­i­cap of low sta­mi­na and mediocre tools is not fun. This does become eas­i­er in lat­er entries, but this frus­trat­ing mechan­ic began here and does not enhance the series in any way. 
Despite some frus­tra­tions with the game, it’s a nice, relax­ing start to a fun, quirky series. Mod­ern fea­tures may be a draw for the lat­er games, but don’t let the orig­i­nal fool you. There’s a won­der­ful life to be had even in the 16-bit starter.

Columns — Issue 45

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Columns stacks up against Tetris juggernaut

As the faith­ful read­ers of GI know, I’m a child of the ’80s and ’90s. I owned an NES, Gen­e­sis and a Game Gear, but not a Game Boy. To sat­is­fy my portable gam­ing needs, I got a few Game Gear games that would hold my atten­tion. I’m not much of a puz­zle man, but one stood out as an alter­na­tive to the high­ly pop­u­lar Tetris at the time: Columns.
Columns’ game­play is sim­i­lar to Tetris, except that you’re match­ing var­i­ous gems with each oth­er before their row known as — you guessed it — columns stack up, ulti­mate­ly end­ing your game. The game back­sto­ry claims that its ori­gins hails from Mid­dle East­ern mer­chants with also a lit­tle bit of Greece mixed in. 
Con­trol of the columns is sim­ple: Guide the columns’ rows and arrange pieces to fit. It’s a sim­ple con­cept that is quick­ly under­stood. You can be a new­bie or a puz­zle expert and still jump into play­ing. There’s also an option to change the items from jew­els, to fruit, dice, or tra­di­tion­al play­ing card suits, which livens up the game­play slightly. 
The graph­ics are top-notch in both ver­sions. The graph­ics are col­or­ful and more than just bricks being moved around. They look good even in a small set­ting like the Game Gear. 
The music in Columns varies from ancient Roman tunes to a futur­is­tic beat that is calm­ing dur­ing game­play. The sound­track is a nice men­tal break for the mind, which helps when you’re pos­si­bly fran­ti­cal­ly mak­ing matches. 
Columns is an under­es­ti­mat­ed crown jew­el that shines on all Sega sys­tems. It’s a fun alter­na­tive to Tetris with a nice calm­ing effect to boot. Hunt down this dif­fer­ent but bril­liant puz­zle choice. 

 

Build­ing blocks of Columns

In 1989, Jay Geert­sen, a devel­op­er for Hewlett-Packard, was look­ing to port a soft­ware tool to HP’s in-house oper­at­ing sys­tem for its work com­put­ers. Geert­sen believed there was a bet­ter way to learn skills and have fun at the same time. He came up with mod­i­fy­ing Tic Tac-Toe and applied it as a way to help soft­ware engi­neers prac­tice their pro­gram­ing. The result: Once they heard about Geert­sen’s work through third par­ties, Sega called him and inquired about devel­op­ment. Check out his sto­ry through this link: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/retro-gamer/20190711/281599537055264.

Beetle Adventure Racing — Issue 45

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Adven­ture of a life­time races on the scene

Smooth with no chas­er. Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing is like a fine cognac: No filler, no BS. It’s just a fine rac­ing game fea­tur­ing the pop­u­lar-in-1999 redesigned Volk­swa­gen New Bee­tle. Like that cognac, it’s what you want in an expe­ri­ence, but you wish there was more at the end of the glass.
Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing, while short on sto­ry, is a rac­ing dream. There isn’t much to the sto­ry oth­er than you’re rac­ing against oth­er Bee­tle dri­vers on six var­ied tracks. There are sev­er­al modes includ­ing a time tri­al, cham­pi­onship and two-play­er duel, but that’s about it. You’re also rac­ing with only Bee­tles, though they vary in col­or with dif­fer­ent stats. There are two unlock­able Bee­tles, but that’s pret­ty much all there is in terms of rewards. The depth real­ly lies in the tracks and their nooks and cran­nies. There are a ton of secrets and short­cuts that help in the point-gath­er­ing modes or to shave time in the time tri­als, and that sort of makes up for the lack of every­thing else. Sort of.
While the rewards are sparse, the pre­sen­ta­tion is not. Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing looks and plays won­der­ful­ly. The envi­ron­ments look great for a Nin­ten­do 64 game and real­ly make the game pop over­all. And it also plays well. The rac­ing is smooth and lithe, mak­ing for a sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence when tak­ing curves or final­ly land­ing a short­cut path.
Of spe­cial note is the sound­track. It’s only six tracks plus a few oth­er menu tunes, but this is a fan­tas­tic sound­track. The tracks work well with the rac­ing locales, and almost all of them are bangers. Our long­time favorite is Mount May­hem, the snow lodge moun­tain track. We’ve been bump­ing that as long as the game has been out in var­i­ous for­mats, and 24 years lat­er we con­tin­ue to do so. It’s that good and comes with high praise.
Our only caveat with Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing is that the dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el is slight­ly out of bal­ance. It could use some tweak­ing so that you see the lat­er rac­ing tracks a lit­tle more often. Giv­en that it’s hard to find some of the point box­es on the tracks and you need them in order to earn con­tin­ues, it should be eas­i­er to obtain for the lat­ter por­tions of the game.
Aside from the pun­ish­ing dif­fi­cul­ty, the game is prac­ti­cal­ly per­fect. There isn’t much to feast on, but when you can feast it’s among if not the best rac­ing game on the N64. It’s a heck of an adven­ture whether you’re a Bee­tle enthu­si­ast or not. V dub or bust.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 — Issue 45

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Son­ic reigns supreme in sec­ond outing

Ah, Son­ic the Hedge­hog. Sega’s top mas­cot has had a bit of a revival late­ly. From tril­o­gy games on the Gen­e­sis and oth­er sys­tems devel­oped by Sega and its com­peti­tors to com­ic books and var­i­ous mer­chan­dise, car­toon series and two block­buster movies, Son­ic and Co. are liv­ing large. He reached a sim­i­lar zenith in his sec­ond game — Son­ic the Hedge­hog 2 — which also intro­duced fans to his equal-yet-unique part­ner, Miles Prow­er aka “Tails” (because he’s a two-tailed fox) who joins our favorite blue speedy demon in a new bat­tle to stop Dr. Robotnik. 
In Son­ic 2, Son­ic and Tails and their friends are enjoy­ing peace­ful days on West Island until Dr. Robot­nik and his cronies arrive, kid­nap­ping the inhab­i­tants, and trans­form­ing them into robot­ic slaves. The slaves would help Robot­nik search for the leg­endary Chaos Emer­alds, which he plans to use to pow­er his space sta­tion. With Robot­nik’s lat­est threat, It’s up to Son­ic and Tails to find the Emer­alds to foil Robot­nik and his dreams for world domination. 
Game­play in Son­ic 2 is much like the first Son­ic game, but with some new addi­tions. Each lev­el or “act” (there are 20 in total) will have you bash­ing ene­mies and avoid­ing var­i­ous haz­ards such as spikes and bot­tom­less pits. While dash­ing through you must uti­lize some patience and tim­ing to avoid these var­i­ous obsta­cles. Son­ic is still easy to con­trol but he now also has a cool new trick called the Spin Dash. This lets him go even faster and take down more ene­mies. Tails has the same skills, but his two tails give him a lit­tle more flair. 
Son­ic 2 has the option of Son­ic or Tails going after Robot­nik alone or join­ing forces in either sin­gle- or two-play­er modes. Robot­nik has some new allies in the form of a robot­ic mon­key named Coconuts and a robot­ic crab named Thrash­er whose shell is com­prised of a pin­ball bumper. With Robot­nik hav­ing new meth­ods to attack and hench bots to car­ry them out, the usu­al powerups (Rings, Speed Sneak­ers, and invin­ci­bil­i­ty) are vast and abun­dant, but Son­ic and Tails can take advan­tage of a new pow­er shield that gives tem­po­rary pro­tec­tion against hits. 
The graph­ics are of 16-bit qual­i­ty, but they do an excel­lent job of shin­ing, whether it’s char­ac­ters or back­grounds. Each stage is burst­ing with high ener­gy col­or; the Chem­i­cal Plant Zone, Metrop­o­lis Zone and the bonus stages are my some of my per­son­al favorites. 
I was pleased with Son­ic 2’s music from begin­ning to end as it paired per­fect­ly with the stages, beat by beat. The Green Hill, Chem­i­cal Plant, Casi­no Night and Mys­tic Cave zones hit the spot with spe­cial recog­ni­tion for the Sky Chase Zone for its relax­ing beats. 
Son­ic 2 is wor­thy of revis­it­ing often, espe­cial­ly if you want to expe­ri­ence 16-bit gam­ing at its finest. There is no doubt that Son­ic 2 would be a sure-fire hit game to intro­duce to a new gen­er­a­tion of gamers look­ing to expe­ri­ence good old-school gaming.
Son­ic the Hedge­hog 2 is a cer­ti­fi­able banger in the annals of video game his­to­ry. One of the best sequels ever released kept Sega in the 16-bit wars and gave us leg­endary Son­ic game­play that still holds up. Spin Dash on blue blur.

 

Jet Grind Radio — Issue 45

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Jet Grind Radio sets cool standard

Bom­bas­tic yet cool. This is the dichoto­my you encounter in the atmos­phere of Jet Grind Radio. There’s noth­ing quite like it — except its sequel — and that’s a bless­ing because I don’t think the world could han­dle any­thing else. It’s quirky, futur­is­tic, stun­ning, and unde­ni­ably cool when you get down to it: Jet Grind Radio is the future.
Set in a futur­is­tic Tokyo, Jet Grind Radio fea­tures a wide cast of rollerblad­ing graf­fi­ti gangs vying for suprema­cy and strug­gling against an ego­ma­ni­a­cal mad­man and his con­glom­er­ate, which are attempt­ing to take over the world. The sto­ry­line serves its pur­pose but it’s the char­ac­ters that are the draw here. Each char­ac­ter — includ­ing the unlock­able — has an inter­est­ing look and sto­ry going on. They are the lifeblood, and it’s fun to learn about them and their motivations. 
While we’re lov­ing the char­ac­ters, let’s also give love to the art style that brings them to life. The art style is gor­geous and still holds up after 23 years. The graf­fi­ti cel-shad­ed look has aged well; graf­fi­ti nev­er fails to be awe­some and impact­ful, and Jet Grind Radio looks phe­nom­e­nal. It’s the first game to use this tech­nique, and it set the stan­dard in 2000 in terms of pre­sen­ta­tion. The back­grounds are also well done and inspire runs through the game. It’s clear­ly an ear­ly 2000s game, but that only por­tends good things about the Dream­cast and what it was capa­ble of.
And as good as the game looks, the graph­ics almost don’t hold a can­dle to the sound­track. This is one of the best sound­tracks ever done, and it will have you bop­ping while you’re run­ning around on inline skates. This is one of those sound­tracks that you put on while work­ing and you get some of your best work done. Funky and pop-cen­tric, the sound­track has so much going on the­mat­i­cal­ly that there’s bound to be some­thing for everyone. 
And in terms of appeal­ing to mass con­sump­tion, the con­trols are a com­mon denom­i­na­tor kind of sen­si­bil­i­ty. The imme­di­ate com­par­i­son here is Tony Hawk, which isn’t sur­pris­ing since the Hawk­man had just released his first game — Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater — a year ear­li­er to crit­i­cal acclaim. Jet Grind Radio does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly grind on Hawk’s coat­tails, but you’re bound to say to your­self at least once, “These con­trols sure feel famil­iar.” And you would­n’t be wrong. That’s a good thing, because it plays like ear­ly Tony Hawk, you know when it was good.
While every­thing is great in terms of pre­sen­ta­tion and con­trol, I’d be remiss in men­tion­ing that there is one both­er­some flaw with Jet Grind Radio. While the con­trols are eas­i­ly anal­o­gous to ear­ly Tony Hawk games, it was­n’t easy to pick up the game and know what’s going on imme­di­ate­ly. It’s a lit­tle too inac­ces­si­ble at first, like it’s ask­ing you to have some in-depth knowl­edge ahead of play­ing for the first time. You may not be famil­iar with the con­cepts the game is throw­ing at you, and it’s the game’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to ease you into the fray. Thank­ful­ly, the sur­round­ing game is so good that you’ll come back to get more in-depth with the trap­pings of Tokyo-to.
The Jet Grind series has last­ed into the mod­ern era with re-releas­es and a rumored reboot, and the orig­i­nal game details exact­ly why. Easy con­trols, var­ied modes, an engag­ing cast (love Pots, Piran­ha and Beat!) and pop­ping sound­track make for an imme­di­ate­ly unfor­get­table expe­ri­ence. Get in-line to get down with the fan­tas­tic Jet Grind Radio.

Altered Beast — Issue 44

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Beast & Co. alter gaming

As a young lad grow­ing up in the era of arcades (AKA the gold­en age of gam­ing) one of the for­mer kings of gam­ing, Sega was the name that had instant recog­ni­tion with me. From titles like After Burn­er, Out­run, Shi­no­bi, and Vir­tu­al Fight­er, Sega has mas­tered the art of sep­a­rat­ing one from their gam­ing tokens with­out fail. Dur­ing my arcade trav­els, I saw a Sega title that turned out to be not only a clas­sic arcade hit, but also was the inspi­ra­tion for the Bloody Roar series: the revered but maligned Altered Beast for the Genesis.

In Altered Beast, you take on the role of an ancient Roman Cen­tu­ri­on war­rior res­ur­rect­ed by Zeus to res­cue his daugh­ter Athena who was kid­napped by the under­world ruler Neff. As this unnamed war­rior, you do have a small-but-pow­er­ful advan­tage over Neff and his armies: the abil­i­ty to pow­er up into var­i­ous beasts that change the tide of the bat­tle. With this abil­i­ty, the Cen­tu­ri­on war­rior sets off on his divine man­date to res­cue Athena and defeat Neff. 

Game­play of Altered Beast is real­ly sim­ple: As some­one who played side-scrolling games, I instant­ly took to the basic punch, kick and jump mechan­ics. As you go through each ene­my, you’ll get a pow­er-up orb that lit­er­al­ly says “Pow­er-up!”; this made me think that Zeus came down and gave com­mands. On the third pow­er-up, you’ll go into your actu­al beast mode, which con­sists of forms such as a drag­on, were­wolf, were­bear, weretiger, and a gold­en were­wolf, each with their own unique pow­ers. At this point, I’m think­ing that this game is the ori­gin for the pop­u­lar phase “Beast Mode.” At the end of each lev­el, you bat­tle Neff in var­i­ous forms. The graph­ics are pret­ty good for a tran­si­tion from arcade to 16-bit con­sole with lit­tle notice­able dif­fer­ence in qual­i­ty for the time period. 

Altered Beast does have a few flaws: When you defeat Neff at the end of each stage, he some­how takes away your pow­er-up forms as a last part­ing shot, which is obnox­ious. Also, the brief inter­mis­sion scenes are grainy, mak­ing it hard to under­stand what’s going on. On the bright side, the replay val­ue is awe­some for those who want to relieve the gold­en days of the Gen­e­sis and those who want side scrolling action with a mix of horror.

Altered Beast is one of Sega’s clas­sic gems that is wor­thy of anoth­er look. There was a mod­ern-day remake released in 2005 for PS2, but it was crit­i­cal­ly panned. For­tu­nate­ly, Sega decid­ed to give Altered Beast anoth­er look, this time plac­ing it among its oth­er well-known prop­er­ties in var­i­ous TV and film projects. Sega altered the side-scrolling land­scape with this epic tale of good ver­sus evil.

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse — Issue 44

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Hop ‘n bop Dis­ney style

Hop ‘n bops are the lifeblood of the old­er con­soles. You did­n’t have a decent con­sole if it did­n’t have one romp with a mas­cot-like char­ac­ter at the helm. Even the ter­ri­ble con­soles had at least one. So, it should be no sur­prise that a great sys­tem such as the Super Nin­ten­do was chock full of great bops. While a bit on the easy side and slight­ly deriv­a­tive, Mag­i­cal Quest Star­ring Mick­ey Mouse is in the pan­theon of good plat­form­ers for the SNES.

The game starts out with cutesy lore: Mick­ey and his friends Goofy and Don­ald are play­ing a game of catch with Plu­to at the park. The ball gets thrown too far and Plu­to runs off. Goofy and Don­ald chase Plu­to and even­tu­al­ly dis­ap­pear, leav­ing Mick­ey to search for them. Mick­ey tum­bles down a cliff and finds him­self in a strange mag­i­cal land. After a bit of search­ing, a wiz­ard appears to inform Mick­ey that Pete is a tyrant over the land and has cap­tured Plu­to. With that infor­ma­tion, it’s now up to Mick­ey to save his canine com­pan­ion and reunite with his friends.

While search­ing for Plu­to isn’t hard, some of the mechan­ics are lit­tle cum­ber­some. The spin-and-throw mechan­ic is weird at first, but even­tu­al­ly it becomes sec­ond nature. It’s a lit­tle too off some­times, mak­ing clean hits more miss than suc­cess. There are cos­tume changes for Mick­ey that serve to high­light the mag­ic usage of the game, and each has a way to be use­ful. The prob­lem is, it’s not always clear what you should be using the suits for indi­vid­u­al­ly. And upgrad­ing them is some­times a chore. How­ev­er, the over­all basic hop ‘n bop mechan­ics are excel­lent and feel tight. Mick­ey is easy to con­trol, and bop­ping through the beau­ti­ful scenery is an easy affair.

While the sto­ry isn’t any­thing to real­ly get excit­ed about, the graph­ics are. They’re super lush and beau­ti­ful, with detailed sprites and abun­dant col­ors to bright­en even the dark­est of realms. The music is also appro­pri­ate­ly bright, with a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties to the lat­er excel­lent Aladdin sound­track. It’s a Cap­com music show so the sound­track is at worst decent. The tracks do add a lit­tle some­thing to the romp through loca­tions, so the music is serviceable.

This is the very def­i­n­i­tion of hop ‘n bop in the ear­ly days of 16-bit plat­form­ers. It’s got a decent sto­ry, beau­ti­ful graph­ics and a decent sound­track with excel­lent plat­form­ing and a vari­ety of mechan­ics to learn. If it had a save fea­ture, that might have pushed it to the upper ech­e­lon of SNES plat­form­ing. But, that bit of miss­ing mag­ic along with some quirky con­trol issues keep it from being an epic Mick­ey quest.

Gunbird 2 — Issue 44

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This is good and clean bul­let hell fun

Bom­bas­tic bul­lets, bombs, and spe­cial attacks. You’re get­ting a taste of every­thing in the wild ver­ti­cal shoot­er Gun­bird 2 from shoot-’em-up prac­ti­tion­er Psikyo. Whether that taste is enough to whet your appetite for fur­ther shmup adven­tures is anoth­er sto­ry, one I believe is worth at least reading.

Gun­bird 2 is your aver­age ver­ti­cal shoot­er in that it sub­scribes to bul­let hell envi­ron­ments. There are sev­en char­ac­ters to choose from, each with their own moti­va­tions for cap­tur­ing three mys­ti­cal ele­ments and pre­sent­ing them to their god. All of them fly around var­i­ous stages in the Gun­bird world, blow­ing up ene­mies and tak­ing on the boss Shark and her cronies Blade and Gim­mick of the Queen Pirates. The sto­ry is sim­ple to get into and won’t take up too much of your time through sta­t­ic screens explain­ing the sit­u­a­tion at hand. 

It’s easy to under­stand the mechan­ics as well. Each char­ac­ter has five attacks: Pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary, charge, melee, and super weapon. The pri­ma­ry weapon is either a con­cen­trat­ed or spread shot with all oth­er weapons spe­cif­ic to the char­ac­ter in ani­ma­tion. It’s fun to try all of the char­ac­ters to see how their weapons ani­mate and behave, and it’s impor­tant to as well, because there is strat­e­gy involved. Know­ing when to ini­ti­ate a super weapon is cru­cial for main­tain­ing com­bos and sav­ing your­self or your team­mate if you’re play­ing along­side some­one else. The attacks are all assigned to but­tons so you don’t have to do too much to move around and attack. It’s sim­plis­tic and yet chaot­ic at times, but it’s fun chaos.

The pre­sen­ta­tion is gor­geous while you’re dodg­ing ene­mies and get­ting shot from all direc­tions. The col­or palette is beau­ti­ful and the char­ac­ter ani­ma­tion shines. And, yes, even though Psikyo car­ried over Mor­ri­g­an’s dog-tired sprite from Dark­stalk­ers it still works here. You imme­di­ate­ly know who she is, and it does­n’t look to ter­ri­ble against the back­drops of bul­let hell. The oth­er char­ac­ters look good for late ’90s ani­ma­tion. While the ani­ma­tion is good, the sound­track is pass­ing, if not a bit late ’90s mediocre. It’s not ter­ri­ble, but it does­n’t stand­out. A sin­gle track caught our atten­tion, which is OK. Not all shoot-’em-ups get to be Gala­ga Arrange­ment or Gradius.

Over­all, Gun­bird 2 is a good ver­ti­cal shoot­er in a crowd­ed genre pop­u­lat­ed by heavy hit­ters. It shoots its way to the mid­dle of the pack, and while it won’t knock your socks off, it’s got replay val­ue and charm built into its laser.

Golden Axe — Issue 44

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A gold­en era of gaming

I know I’ve cov­ered a lot of Sega games, but I’m a big fan. I par­tial­ly owned a NES, a Mas­ter Sys­tem and a Gen­e­sis, and while I did not have a lot of games for those sys­tems, I enjoyed the games that I had for them, espe­cial­ly the Gen­e­sis. One of those games has an arcade back­ground shared with Gaunt­let with ele­ments of the Dun­geons and Drag­ons table­top games. If you old­er read­ers know what I’m talk­ing about, respect. For you younger read­ers, lis­ten and learn of the tale of Gold­en Axe.

Inspired also by the Conan the Bar­bar­ian movie series of the 1980s, Gold­en Axe gives you a choice of three war­riors: Ax Bat­tler, who wields a broadsword; Gilius Thun­der­head, a dwarf war­rior with a bat­tle ax; and, an Ama­zon­ian war­rior, Tyris Flare, whose weapon of choice is a longsword. These war­riors were brought togeth­er by twist of fate thanks to an evil enti­ty known as Death Adder, who has cap­tured the king­dom of Yuria along with its king and his daugh­ter. The three heroes have also lost loved ones at Death Adder’s hands and set off on their quest to destroy Death Adder and restore hope and peace to Yuria. 

Game­play is sim­ple with each char­ac­ter have the basic attack, jump and spe­cial attacks you find in reg­u­lar side-scroller games. The one major advan­tage that Ax, Gilius, and Tyris have is their unique abil­i­ty to cast mag­ic spells that does seri­ous dam­age to all ene­mies on screen. How­ev­er, this spe­cial attack comes with two caveats: mag­ic ener­gy has a high cost and pro­tect­ing your nec­es­sary mag­ic potions from thiev­ing elves is a chore. Now, this is the part where you ask, “what’s the pay­off with the char­ac­ter’s mag­ic attacks?” Good ques­tion! Tyris wields fire mag­ic, Ax’s spe­cial­ty is earth spells and my favorite char­ac­ter, Gilius, lit­er­al­ly brings the thun­der with light­ing spells. It’s easy to under­stand the mechan­ics and use every­thing in the heat of battle. 

If there was one neg­a­tive thing that I found about Gold­en Axe, it’s that it’s too short on game­play. The first stage is set on a giant sea tur­tle that moves across the sea in the sec­ond stage. You move to a sleep­ing giant eagle in the third stage and are trans­port­ed to the fourth and final stage by said eagle. That’s entire­ly too short of an adven­ture. Eas­i­ly there could have been a few more stages to flesh out the story.

The music has a strong com­bi­na­tion of hero­ic and fairy­tale beats that are not too shab­by but is a per­fect fit for the game. The replay val­ue is pret­ty good for a 16-bit game that has a short lev­el of game­play. Over­all, this is a valiant effort by Sega to be cre­ative with a game that has poten­tial sad­ly but lacks creativity.

While it can be fun to play, the game need­ed some pol­ish and a lit­tle bit more finesse to real­ly shine. You’ll pull some hair at the length and some ele­ments, but over­all, it’s a decent hack ‘n slash. Just exer­cise calm and steadi­ness in this promis­ing yet cru­el venture.

Monster Hunter: World — Issue 44

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A whole new world awaits

Lush, breath­tak­ing, com­pli­cat­ed, try­ing. If you weren’t a fan of Mon­ster Hunter as a fran­chise until you played Mon­ster Hunter: World, con­sid­er your­self miss­ing out on some­thing won­drous. Mon­ster Hunter: World is as close to per­fec­tion as an action RPG can be.

Every­thing begins with you. You begin your adven­ture as a hunter join­ing the Fifth Fleet on an expe­di­tion to the New World. You are tasked with explor­ing the vast wild in search of infor­ma­tion and sci­ence. You’re sup­port­ed with an assis­tant — Pal­i­coes — and oth­er offi­cers of the Fifth Fleet, who help with hunt­ing the flo­ra and fau­na in the wide unknown so that you may inform the Research Com­mis­sion of your find­ings and pos­si­bly stop the extinc­tion of vital drag­ons. The sto­ry is engross­ing, well-writ­ten and eas­i­ly digestible with hints of more to come as you explore every nook of the new land. 

And explore you will because that’s the name of the game here: Hunt­ing. You, the hunter, go into the world to hunt mon­sters of all sizes. Dur­ing your hunts, you’re using your wits and the envi­ron­ment to your advan­tage, care­ful not to faint too many times while work­ing to take down a crea­ture so that you may get new parts to craft gear and weapons. The craft­ing aspect is fan­tas­tic. The vari­ety of gear and equip­ment that can be gen­er­at­ed is off the charts, and there is noth­ing more sat­is­fy­ing than tak­ing down a new ene­my and obtain­ing new, more pow­er­ful gear. Cap­com knew the essence of the high that comes from win­ning a hard-fought bat­tle, loot, craft bet­ter gear and repeat. And they’ve cap­tured that essence mas­ter­ful­ly here with increas­ing incen­tives and nuanced pac­ing. Fight­ing nev­er feels weird, and it quick­ly becomes sec­ond nature to swing your sword and make waves in bat­tle. My only gripe here is that there is so much to learn with the bat­tle mechan­ics and item craft­ing and usage that some­times it gets over­whelm­ing. Tak­ing your time to read the tuto­ri­als and work through sce­nar­ios in train­ing is the way to com­bat that. I’m pleased with this set­up because I’d rather get too much infor­ma­tion than not enough.

While on your expe­di­tions or even at the hub, stop a moment when you can and admire the beau­ty that Cap­com has cre­at­ed. The game is one of the most beau­ti­ful I have ever seen. I fre­quent­ly stop to watch the scenery and take in the detail of the sur­round­ings. And, I want to espe­cial­ly high­light the impres­sive char­ac­ter cre­ation suite. If I can cre­ate my own char­ac­ter in a game, I want bold and accu­rate tools to do so. Mon­ster Hunter: World gave me that and more. I spent two hours with it alone and I still want­ed to spend more time there. The wealth of options is out­stand­ing, and I’m extreme­ly impressed with the diver­si­ty found with­in. I can make a char­ac­ter that accu­rate­ly looks like me with gor­geous options for hair­styles … or not. But I love the options giv­en, and I can’t praise that fea­ture enough.

The sound­track is anoth­er stand­out in the pre­sen­ta­tion. It’s fun, fast-paced and engag­ing. No track is out of place and it’s well-scored with so many dif­fer­ent instru­ments that it puts almost every oth­er adven­ture title to shame. This is big-bud­get music and it shows in every sit­u­a­tion you’ll find your­self in every envi­ron­ment. Also, the Pal­i­coes’ sound effects are some of the most adorable cat rep­re­sen­ta­tions I’ve ever heard. If you love cats like I do, you’re going to be say­ing “Aww, how adorable!” every five sec­onds and it’s not going to ever get old. That’s the mark of good audio, honestly.

Mon­ster Hunter: World is a mas­ter­piece in adven­ture. No short­age of things to do, a wealth of options and sto­ry and great mechan­ics come togeth­er in a majes­tic mag­num opus of craft­ing and sur­vival. The hunt for per­fec­tion is over with Mon­ster Hunter: World.