Sanctum 2 Review

       You know you're about to review a good game when you get ready to start writing and instead you just start playing the game for a half hour. That's what just happened to me when I fired up Sanctum 2 to let it run in case I needed to reference it during the writing of this review.

       Sanctum 2 is an FPS tower-defense game. It's a pretty even match of both genres. In each level, you construct, upgrade, and configure an array of towers. Then, you face a wave of enemies. You whip out a gun and run around shooting enemies. Between the towers and your own firepower, you must defend a giant sphere called a core in the level. If your core survives the wave, you get more resources to build and upgrade your towers, and then you face the next wave. If you die, you re-spawn. You only lose if your core gets taken out.

       Sanctum 2's story is told in a really ingenious way. You are given no back story at all. You are thrown right into the thick of the action and you'll have to catch up with what is going on as you go. The story is told through beautiful comic book style panels that appear between levels. The story is ingenious because you basically pick it up through context and reading conversations in the comics. You aren't directly told anything, but you soon get a grasp on the basic situation, and by the end, you feel like you really know the characters and the story just as well as if it had been to to you explicitly. I haven't really seen a game pull this kind of story off in this way before. It really adds to the drama of the action to not know exactly what is going on at first. You feel like you are being dragged along for the wild ride; sort of like a movie that starts in the middle of an action scene and explains the situation later. Unfortunately exactly what happens at the end is a little unclear (although it is clearly really cool), but up until that point the story and its method of delivery is just great. Now, given what I just told you, I obviously can't tell you anything about the story.

       So, when you fire up Sanctum 2 and load up a level, you must first choose a character. There are four to choose from. Each character is defined by their main weapon, which no one else can use, and a few unique abilities. Without getting into the nitty gritty details, there is Skye, who has an assault rifle and can double jump. Then there's Sweet, who has a rocket launcher and has better maneuverability while jumping. SiMO is a robot with a sniper rifle who does extra damage if he hits enemies in their weak spot, and Haigen has a shotgun and does more damage if he is close to the enemy. Once you pick a character, you pick a secondary weapon for them. Then you pick what towers you want to take into the level with you, and then you take perks for the character. So there are a lot of choices to make to trick out how you want to play. You gain experience for playing, and when you level up, you unlock new secondary weapons, towers, perks, and tower and perk slots that let you take more of those things with you into battle. There are quite a few weapons and towers to earn, and many perks, and taking different stuff drastically changes your performance in the level. I found a few favorite perks and stuck with them (such as the one that heals the core after each round), and rotated my other perks based on what was needed for the level and character (there is one that make you re-spawn instantly instead of having to wait 10 seconds, one that damages all enemies around you, one that makes enemies explode when they die, and many others). I found tower combinations that I liked to use early on, but was able to experiment enough that I would change my line up from time to time. I tried to rotate which characters I used. My most used was Haigen, whose shotgun, which can charge up and fire extremely strong blasts, is devastating and extremely useful, but I also had a good run sniping enemies as SiMO for a few levels. And while I was less successful playing as Skye and Sweet, I still used them for a couple of levels and enjoyed playing as them a lot. Helping you pick your favorites in all these categories are numbers that pop out of enemies when you damage them, RPG style. I love this. Just like in Soldner-X, this addition really adds a lot to the gameplay and feel. It's like it's asking you to experiment and try new things.

       Once you are in the level, you select a tower to build with the d-pad. You then aim the reticle where you want to build using classic FPS controls; left stick to move the character, right stick to aim the cross hair. The level is divided into a grid with each tower taking up a square. You hold R2 for a second to build the tower. R1 recycles it, giving you back the resources you used up to build it. This lets you change up your build between rounds and experiment. Holding R2 while aiming at a tower allows you to upgrade it. You start with a general cannon tower, but soon start to earn more exotic ones, such as a gatling gun, a mine dispenser, and a tower that boosts other towers' attack power (plus there are 8 others, but I don't want to spoil them!). Besides these offensive towers, you also have tower bases, which act as blockades. Usually you have enough of these that you can build a maze that the enemies have to run through in order to get to the core. You can never close off a section of the maze completely; there must always be a way for the enemies to get through, but besides that rule your imagination is the limit. Designing these mazes is really fun, and the controls make it easy to do quickly. Two tools aid you in the design process. The first is the mini-map on the side of the screen, which can be blown up to nearly full screen size instantly by holding R1. The other is a line that flies through the air at regular intervals showing you the route the enemies will take to get to the core. This line updates in real-time as you build and is visible both in the level and on the mini-map. Building towers in the first person view might sound a bit cumbersome, but it actually works really smoothly. And the design part of it is really deep. You'll get some great “Aha!” moments as you design mazes that double back on themselves to let a tower get a second crack at the enemy, or create a shape that routes multiple enemy forces through the same kill zone of towers. The line that shows you the enemy route is an ingenious idea.

       You start the round when you are ready by pressing select, although some rounds start automatically after a timer ticks down, which puts the pressure on you to build quickly. The shooting controls are pretty standard. R2 is fire and R1 is alternate fire. All weapons have really cool alternate fire modes. For example, the shotgun's alternate mode charges up its power, the rocket launcher locks on to enemies if you hold alt fire, and the SMG secondary weapon shoots poison darts! L2 is the aim button, which slows your movement to a crawl but zooms in down the sights of your weapon allowing for better accuracy. Square is reload, X is jump, triangle is switch weapon, and clicking R3 makes you run. Some enemy types like to attack you if they get the chance while others will totally ignore you and make a bee-line for the core. Sanctum 2 really feels different in the shooting department because your weapons don't have all that many shots in their magazines. Ammo is unlimited, but you'll have to reload a lot, and you only have 2 weapons. Reloading is a little lengthier affair than in most games, but your guns can reload themselves while you are firing your other gun (I think this is because they are all energy weapons and are technically cooling down, not reloading). The only way to continually lay down fire is to constantly switch between your two weapons. You must always be sure to empty your clip to cause an automatic reload or to press the reload button before switching weapons. Otherwise you will be switching over to a weapon with only a few shots left and be stranded without the ability to shoot for a few precious seconds. This forces you to play really well and always manage your weapons correctly and to make sure your tower design is tight, as you can't rely on being able to save the day totally on your own.

       And that's the real beauty of Sanctum 2. It is balanced to a T. You need to personally play well and shoot straight, but you also need to design a clever maze and set up your towers in just the right configurations. If you fail at either, you probably won't be able to defend your core through enough rounds to clear the level. It truly is tower defense and first-person shooting at the same time. Both are equally important. The difficulty is keyed right into this formula too. Many of the levels took me several lengthy tries, but the game is so engaging and there are so many methods and combinations to experiment with, I would often play these levels over and over again in a row without getting bored.

The level design is also pretty brilliant. The levels are very varied. They seemingly take you through every type of situation you could imagine, from defending a single core from a single attack point to defending multiple cores from multiple angles. There are wide open arenas for you to build in and tight spaces where every tower placement drastically alters the enemies' movement pattern. There are cores that are in the middle of the level and must be protected from all sides and cores that need to be almost fully protected by towers while you personally guard another core yourself. You will build mazes that funnel enemies into big killzones for your towers and mazes that just lead the enemies on a circuitous route to buy you some time. Some levels don't even let you build a maze at all, making you place towers with a totally different philosophy. Most make you think about how you are going to take out both mobs of little enemies and attacks by titanic armored beasts given the current terrain. There are 16 levels, and they are all really well-designed and fun. They even have secret areas you can explore, which usually contain mines you can bring back to the main part of the level and plant. And the last level... your jaw might drop when you see how that is set up. Brilliant.

       Visually, this is a really unique and interesting world. The player characters are all wearing this futuristic white armor with mostly rounded edges. Thy all have one normal hand and one gigantic robotic hand that holds their heavy weapons. SiMO has a holographic screen for a face that makes silly images and also displays information readouts that the other characters read like a computer screen. The weapons all look really great too. Even familiar weapons look exotic and different, and the guns have lots of weird moving parts and interesting visual features on them. The towers are incredibly sleek and clean, like they are medical equipment or something. The enemies are amazing too. They have a beautiful purple and black color scheme with one bright red eye-like slit in the middle. This design carries over to flying enemies with fluttering tentacles, giant four-legged beasts, massive boss monsters (which are the only enemies that can destroy your towers, I should mention), and other strange monstrosities, like a four-legged enemy called a Soaker that carries a gigantic red, pulsating bulb on top of it, and small kamikaze enemies that look like they just crawled out of on of those underwater caves that are out in the middle of nowhere. The enemies are grotesque, bizarre, and beautiful and very unique. My reaction to the human, mechanical, and creature designs was that I want action figures or model kits of them, and I can think of no higher praise. The landscapes of the levels and the art in the comic strips lives up to this same very high standard.

       If you want to mess around with the game's basic formula, there are some interesting ways to do so. You can switch to survival mode, which makes waves of enemies continue to come past the levels' normal ten or so rounds. The level goes until you loose the core in this mode. More interesting to me however, are the feats of strength. These are settings you can add to a level that make it more difficult and give you an experience bonus. There are five of these, and they do things like make enemies faster or stronger or harder to kill. After beating the game, I wanted to try and beat it with all five enabled, as the trophy list beckons you to do. After awhile, it became clear to me that even when using the ingenious strategies I found on this youtube channel (which I recommend only using after you beat the game with your own strategies!) I am not quite good enough to beat most of the levels this way. I decided to beat the game with 3 feats of strength active. I beat most of the game this way, but had to turn it down to 2 feats of strength for a few of the tougher levels, and even down to 1 for the craziness that is the final level (especially because the strategy used on the youtube channel for this level has been patched so that it doesn't work now! I had to improvise my own strategy based on the idea in the video). The feats of strength are basically a customizable hard mode that you can tailor to your needs while increasing your XP gain, which is awesome. It's a great way to do a hard mode that more games should consider.

        The music side of Sanctum 2 is solid. There are a few calm beautiful tunes that play during the building phase and on the title screen, but the music that chimes in during the attack phase is epic – movie score type stuff that gets the adrenaline flowing. The song that plays during the build phase of the final level is a standout. It's like a slowed down chill remix of an early Daft Punk song or something. The calm tune on the title screen is also great as you stare into the distant landscape featured there.

       I want to take a minute and congratulate Sanctum 2's developers for their handling of texture pop. The level loads up in the background while you pick your character and loadout. So when you drop into the level, it is fully loaded! Amazing! I think it's pretty obvious that you need to do something like this if you are using Unreal engine, but most games totally ignore this concept and just have the textures pop in as you go, which looks incredibly stupid and kills any immersion they might have going on. Come on AAA games! You couldn't figure this out!

       Sanctum 2 occasionally has some frame rate drop when the action gets really, really out of control. There are two levels where this might happen and even when the problem shows up, it's not that bad, and the game runs smoothly otherwise.

       You can play up to four player co-op, and I can see how it is really designed for co-op play in many ways as the different characters are pretty varied and are much better at certain things than the others. The also levels feature situations that would allow for coordinated attacks and such. From what I hear the difficulty scales up as you add more players too. I still felt like I got a great, perfectly balanced experience playing solo though. Unfortunately I don't have the ability to test out the mulitplayer at this time.

       I am really jealous that the Steam version of this game has a lot of DLC with new levels, enemies, weapons, towers, perks, and even a new character. Even the 360 version got some of those things too. From what I read, the PS3 version of this game was a flop (which is insane as this is such, such, such a great game) and there are no plans to bring the DLC over. Sadness.

       Sanctum 2 is a nearly perfect game. If it had just stuck the landing on the ending and lost the framerate problem, it would probably be there. It is unique and executed almost perfectly. It's balance reminds me of the superb difficulty tuning of the Wipeout games. It's amazing that it does something so different and does it so well. The next article I write for the blog will be the 2^nd Annual Game of My Year Awards, and Sanctum 2 is a big contender. It is so close to a perfect score. It's deep, yet fun to play. It requires planning and strategy but also twitchy shooting skills. Its character, creature, and mechanical design are among the best in gaming. It's addictive and varried and difficult. It's a great game, tier 2.

Mega Man Zero 3 Review

       Mega Man Zero is a nice little series. It has some great hardcore Mega Man style platforming action featuring everybody's favorite red rampager and continues nicely on some of the cooler themes of the Mega Man X series. It also has some flaws of its own. Let's see where number 3 stacks up.

      Mega Man Zero 3 is a GBA game that I played on my DS as part of Mega Man Zero Collection. In it, Zero and his human companion Ciel face a new threat with the appearance of a scientist who has brought the giant, ultra-powerful reploid Omega back to earth. This guy was so powerful and dangerous that he was exiled from Earth to space. The scientist, Dr. Weil, claims to have him under control. It's obvious from the start that this guy is up to no good and is using Omega to complete his goal of using the Dark Elf for some evil purpose. Like all Mega Man X and Zero story lines, this one makes little sense and is mostly garbage. Ciel is as annoying as ever, as is everyone in the resistance base, and ignoring them as much as possible is a good idea. Actually, pretty much all the dialogue, including the mandatory conversations with boss enemies, is downright terrible. At least in this one, I didn't agree with what the bad guys were up to, which I did to a large degree in Zero 1 and 2. Having said that, Zero 3 does have some interesting themes and ideas. Most X and Zero games have this same dichotomy going on; the story is in general pretty bad, but with some cool themes. Zero 3's main interesting part is a giant truth bomb it drops on you near the end. There is some foreshadowing, but I was too dense to figure it out. I really liked this element, but after the big reveal, the game (story-wise) goes back to stupid mode and totally fails to capitalize on the bombshell it just dropped on you. It's a shame, but at least all the stupidity has a big bright spot in it, which is more than I can say for many games.

       Now onto what the gameplay is like. I felt like I could describe the story first since you probably know what a Mega Man game is like gameplay wise. In case you don't, you choose different stages that you must complete in any order. Each level is run by a boss, and if you get to the end, you must fight them. The 2d levels are pretty large and require traversal in all directions, but they all move from left to right in general. Enemies populate the levels. These typically take a few hits to kill. You have four weapons from the get-go this time around: the Z-Saber, a gun, the shield boomerang thing from the previous game or 2, and the new recoil rod. I used the Z-Saber and gun almost exclusively except for some specific situations. I equipped the saber to the b button and the gun to the R button as I found it easier to charge up a more powerful shot using a shoulder button as opposed to a face button. A is jump and L is dash. As usual you can cling to walls for a second before you start sliding down them, which means you can climb them by clinging to them and then continuously jumping higher and clinging again. You'll need to do this a lot to avoid enemy fire, traverse the level, and save yourself from falling down cliffs or into insta-kill spikes.

       Cyber Elves make a return in this game. These are basically one-time use abilities that are gone forever after you use them. You earn them by killing enemies and by finding hidden crates in levels. They do things like destroy enemies, damage bosses, or boost your score. As usual, this isn't a very well fleshed out system, as most of the elves aren't worth using. However, this time around there are satellite elves. These guys float around Zero when equipped, which is a cool visual touch reminiscent of a shmup power up. They grant him abilities as long as they are equipped, and they don't permanently die when used like other elves. I only found 3, and only one of them was really useful (the one that lets you slice bullets with your sword to block them), but that's better than nothing.

       The levels have a pretty nice feel to them. Dashing toward an enemy and slicing them just before they fire on you still feels amazing, as does jumping around at high-speed through tricky platforming sections. There are a few difficult jumping sections to complete, but overall they seemed less frustrating than previous games. Mini bosses pop up in a few of the levels, and they typically aren't very hard. My MO throughout the game was to use the sword throughout the levels and then switch to the gun to fight the bosses.

       Reaching the boss represents about 50% of the difficulty of each level as bosses are very hard. You must learn their attack patterns and be able to read when they are open for an attack. They can kill you very quickly if you are unfamiliar with them. This edition's set of bosses are pretty challenging. Usually in a Mega Man game there are a few pushovers, but in Zero 3, even the pushovers occasionally got a kill in on me. The design of the bosses is pretty good too. There is a really big guy with 3 life bars and also a tiny little boss that's really mobile, and everything in between. Most bosses have a weakness to one of the elements you can equip, but not all, and unlike some Mega Man games, you only do elemental damage with charged-up shots. Some of these bosses are in tight little rooms. Others are in less claustrophobic spaces that scroll a little bit. Some have you climbing the walls to avoid attacks, others have attacks that require you to hold still to avoid damage. Some have attacks that seem un-dodgeable until you notice the one little corner of space you can put yourself in and be safe. There is a great need to dash, jump, climb, and run in order to avoid certain death in all kinds of patterns and shapes.

       Once again, you have three lives to complete each level. That number is balanced pretty well. Unfortunately the very weird design flaw of not refilling your lives when you start a new level is in this game, as it is in many Mega Man titles. For example, if you beat a level on your last life, you will start the next level on your last life. Since there is no chance that you will beat a brand new level in one life, the best thing to do is purposely kill yourself so you can get a game over and then re-start the level with a full set of lives. This is terribly annoying. And if you save your game between levels when you are in this situation, you may have to repeat this process many times until you beat the level you are stuck on. You may even want to go into an older level, kill yourself, continue, and then exit the level and save again so that when you boot up you are at 3 lives. I had to do this once after I had to do the seppuku ritual many, many times while I was stuck on the last level.

         You may be aware that most Mega Man games end in a boss rush level where you must kill all of the bosses again and then face the final boss. This game is no exception. This time around it is especially brutal because, as stated earlier, the bosses seem a bit tougher this time and even the easier ones can get a kill in on you from time to time. I easily spent more time on the final level than the whole rest of the game; maybe even twice as much time. This is exacerbated by the fact that the last boss is super-hard too, and you can't recharge your health between the different segments of that multi-form fight. After many, many days of trying this level over and over, I decided to use some cyber elves to help me (I was abstaining on the one-time use elves up to this point because I thought I was too cool to need them). I used a couple that drained the last boss's health considerably, and was able to beat him that way. I felt a little dirty, but I was so ready for the game to be done, I didn't care. I usually pride myself on not using too many cyber elves in a MM0 game, but I think I did the right thing this time.

       Audio-visually, Zero 3 is ok. The sprites and animation are pretty smooth, but with some rough spots. Character design is pretty good. Two or three of the bosses are really cool looking. I especially like the little ice frog boss. Everything else is pretty standard though. Like most portable games, I played this one mostly on mute because I play in the break room at work while also having conversations. I don't feel like I missed out on too much though. The music is pretty good, although there aren't really any stand out tracks. Most of the sound effects are good, but there are a handful that are really annoying. For example, some of the bosses' voices that they use to scream before they do certain attacks are downright shriek-ey. There is also a satellite elf that when equipped will constantly fire bombs out. This seems really cool, but the sound effect of the bomb is really bad and you hear it non-stop as it continuously fires, so you pretty much have to un-equip it so you don't go insane.

       In both Zero1 and 2, I immediately played hard mode after beating the game. In 3, I was so ready to be done with it by the end, I definitely wasn't going to play on hard mode. It's not that it is a bad game; it is plenty of fun. I just didn't feel the need to challenge myself to a more difficult version. Maybe that speaks to the difficulty of Zero 3's normal mode, which I'm pretty sure surpasses 1's and 2's. I think it also speaks to the fact that Zero 1 and 2 where more engaging than this version. Zero 2 is the pinnacle of the series for me. It had an epic and inspiring last boss fight that is probably as hard as Zero 3's but much more engaging. It also had some great variations on the standard formula. The part where you fight 2 bosses at once especially stands out as one of the most epic Mega Man moments ever for me. 3 doesn't really have anything special like that.

       Looking over this review again, it sounds like I'm really trashing this game. Let it be known that it is a totally solid and fun entry in the series, just not a particularly stand out one. It's not as good as Zero 2, and I was disappointed that it didn't inspire me to high-level hard mode play, but it does have a nice set of challenging bosses. It's a mediocre game, tier 1.

Shinobi Arcade Review

       Last but not least in my recent set of reviews of games on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection comes another arcade game that isn't actually on Genesis: Shinobi. I played a bunch of Shinobi 3 a few years back and had a blast, so I was interested to see what this was like.

       First off, it has worse graphics than Shinobi 3, which I wasn't quite expecting since some of these arcade games, like Fantasy Zone and Alien Syndrome, have quite good graphics. It looks pretty decent though. The sprites are huge and pretty detailed. A lot of the sprites have pretty great animation, but the player character looks a little stiff. He walks like he's trying to get to the bathroom asap, and his jumps aren't really that ninja-like.

       This is contrasted by the way the game's action feels; it really makes you feel like you are a ninja fighting other ninja and enemies. You go through the 2d levels from left to right although there is some up and done and right to left involved to. You must find a certain number of hostages (who, hilariously, are all the same red-headed little boy in pink pajamas) before you can leave. You move with the d-pad, X is jump. You attack with square. If you are far from an enemy, you throw a shuriken (which are unlimted, unlike Shinobi 3). If you are closer to an enemy, you will kick them or slash them with a sword instead. You can power-up your shuriken to a mini cannon type thing that is more powerful by rescuing certain little boys. You can jump between foreground and background or between levels on a stage by pressing up and jump or down and jump. Triangle activates your ninjitsu attack, which is kind of like a bomb in a shmup. Everything freezes and you unleash a cool attack, such as making a ton of copies of yourself bounce around everywhere or summoning some elemental power. This takes out all of the enemies on the screen, and really has the feel of a shmup bomb as you can use it offensively to take out a big group of enemies or defensively to save yourself from a hit at the last second. This can be used once per stage per life.

     The levels are typically crawling with 3 kinds of enemies. There are regular dudes with guns, who shoot continuously at you. When you see them, you need to duck immediately to get under their bullets, which fly across the screen pretty quickly (although pretty slowly compared to real life). One hit kills you in this game, so you need to be careful. You can often get the jump on these guys while they are reloading, which is really cool. Then there are ninjas. These guys appear out of nowhere and try to get you with their swords. They are pretty aggressive, and unlike the regular guys with guns, they too can jump into and out of the background, so they are hard to get away from. They also take two hits to kill. Dodging their aggressive jump attacks and charges is challenging but well choreographed, and is a big part of why the game is fun. It really feels like you are in a dance of death with other ninja when a few of them suddenly materialize in front of you and charge. The third type are the guards who are always near the hostages. These guys throw swords at you that you must either duck under or jump over. The swords boomerang back to the guards, so you must watch for them on the way back too. That is unless you kill the guard, in which case the sword will keep going instead of boomeranging. This leads to interesting combat situations in which you must remember if the sword is going to boomerang or not and what level it will be flying at in order to avoid it. These guys also have shields so you can't pick them off from a distance; you must approach them and give them the opportunity to attack you. These guys stay dead when you kill them, even if you die and start the level over.

       Between groups of levels there is a first-person bonus stage where you throw shuriken at ninjas who are approaching you. If you kill them all, you gain a life. It looks really impressive; the first-person view of hands throwing ninja stars is cool, and when a ninja kills you see a giant, awesome looking sprite of it, but the levels aren't that playable and I was never able to get a bonus life.

       The final level in each group of levels is a boss fight. These fights seem pretty difficult until you realize that your ninjitsu attack will drain most of a boss's hit points, although you'll still have to get a few hits in the hard way. Even so, the bosses are fun and varied. They each require different tactics to beat, and some require some figuring out with some pretty cool “aha!” moments. The last boss is a really fun challenge. 

       The game's music is pretty cool. It has a bit of traditional Asian flair to it that sets the mood pretty well.

Curiously, you can't continue when on the final set of levels. The game is set to free play on SUGC, but if you lose all your lives in the last world, it's game over. This means if you just want to see the end, you need to save scum your way through the last few levels. I used 15 “quarters” to get that far. The last few levels actually aren't that much harder than the rest of the game (read – they are all really hard). The last boss is super hard though, and trying to figure him out with very limited lives and no continues would be quite a process without the magic of save states. Beating the game on one “quarter” is doable, but I'm not going to do it. Like all these arcade games I played, that would be a matter of months to do, and it doesn't merit that kind of replay.

       Shinobi is a fun take on the action platformer. Like I said, it really does make you feel like a ninja, whether you are taking out an army of normal dudes with guns, nimbly fighting it out with a handful of your fellow ninja, or summoning ninja magic to duel a boss. Some of the animation could use some work, but the sprite-work in general is really cool. It's a fun little nostalgic game. Mediocre, Tier 1.

Fantasy Zone Review

      It's funny that not many of the actual Genesis games grabbed my attention on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. I got more into the arcade games that are included as a bonus. Fantasy Zone grabbed me right from the start.

       It is a 2d space ship shmup, but you'll almost immediately notice that you can turn around and fly to the left at any time a la Defender (at least I think it is Defender that does this too). You'll also almost immediately notice the game's atypically colorful and even cutsey graphic design. In fact, if you look the game up on Wikipedia, you'll even see that it is considered one of the first “cute'em-up” games.

       Before we go any further, I want to warn you that just like Alien Syndrome you need to change all the arcade options to their easiest settings before playing the game. Seriously.

       In each level, you fly around from the left to right or right to left trying to take out 10 enemy bases. You can move left or right by pressing the direction button you want to go. The screen will then start scrolling in that direction. You can change direction at any time and the screen will start scrolling in the other direction. Each level is a loop, so if you go all the way to the right, you will be back at the beginning again. You fire your main gun with square (and you have to mash on it to make it fire quickly) and you drop bombs with X. Once you take out the enemy bases, you will fight a boss. During the boss fights, you will lock into the traditional left to right orientation. This really highlights the difference between a traditional shmup and what Fantasy Zone has going on. Dodging enemy fire is actually a lot easier when you are in traditional mode. When you are in the level before the boss fight, you can't move backward because you will just change direction. This makes many traditional shmup tactics unusable. You can't continuously dodge fire while firing yourself because when you move backward you turn around and are now firing in the other direction. This leads to you developing tactics that will work in Fantasy Zone's environment, such as hanging at the back of the screen and trying hard not to turn around, doing attack runs on enemy bases and then turning around to attack them again from the other direction, or buying weapons that can help you have enough attack power to run through the level without turning around or needing to dodge. These tactics give Fantasy Zone a great unique feel in a genre whose games can be pretty samey.

       Many enemies in Fantasy Zone (especially bases and bosses) drop money. At certain times in a level (usually at the beginning and when you collect a certain amount of money) a balloon that says shop will float by. If you touch it, time freezes and you go to the shop, where you can spend the money on power-ups. You can get new engines that make you go faster, powerful main weapons, and powerful one-time use bombs. It is basically required that you buy a better engine asap, as you are really slow by default. It's weird though, because two of the engines you can buy make you so insanely fast that you are impossible to control, so you pretty much always want the middle engine. If you're anything like me, you will need to buy a powerful main weapon to help you through most of the levels. There is a laser that blasts through bases really quickly that became my mainstay, although the seven way shot is great for taking on levels with lots of enemies. These weapons are on a timer, and when it runs out, you are back to your basic shot. The bombs you can buy are powerful, but expensive and very limited in usage. And like all of the powerups, you lose them if you die. I barely used bombs except in a few key places where they helped a lot. Lastly, you can buy lives. These increase in price dramatically each time you buy one. I was usually able to buy a few on my playthroughs. This is the only way to get extra lives. You can't continue by putting in another quarter or using free-play mode. The shop is great, but occasionally it won't show up when it usually would for some reason. This can leave you woefully under powered in a tough area, leading to a chain of deaths, which is very frustrating. But usually it appears right on cue to let you power yourself up.

       The bosses in Fantasy Zone are great. Some of them fire a well-balanced bullet curtain at you that you have to dodge. Some need to be shot in very specific places. One of them is almost exactly like one of the final bosses in Soldner X. And there are several that are really unique and do things I haven't seen in a shmup before. This includes the final boss, who has a really unique and interesting attack pattern. Most of the bosses are really well-balanced and smart fights that give you a challenge even if you've played them many times. The bosses all have really cool visual designs too. I was totally sold on the game when I saw that the boss of level 1 was a giant stump of wood. You'll also fight an angry plant, snowmen, and a bunch of other stuff (always with a face on it!).

       Actually, everything in Fantasy Zone has great visual design. The backgrounds of each level are colorful and feature great landscape... features and flora. There are strange lakes and weird forests and all kinds of stuff. Normal enemies are all pretty adorable or quite weird. There are little guys with faces, orbs with legs, spaceships, formations of drills and UFOs and more. The enemy bases you have to take out are often living creatures with eyes or wings or hands. The ship you play with is also apparently a living creature. His name is Opa-Opa, and his default engine is wings. If you are too far down on the screen he pops out some legs and runs along the ground, which is endlessly amusing.

       The music is also great. The levels are usually very cheery and catchy in a good way. The pinnacle is probably the ice level. Hearing that level's music makes me want to run outside into the snow and sled down a hill. It's really great, as is most of the other music. When you fight a boss, however, the music gets pretty serious and intense. It's a nice dichotomy that works well, especially since boss fights play a little different than the main game too.

       The game actually has a little story that is worth mentioning. It is explained through some text scrolls you can read at the beginning. It seems pretty generic at first glance, but it is kind of cool. And the ending of the game is actually pretty excellent, and probably not what you are expecting at all.

       This is an arcade game and a shmup, so it is very difficult and punishing. One hit kills, no continues, limited lives, then you start over from the beginning. I played it without save scumming for 2-3 weeks and was making a lot of progress and having a lot of fun. Then the progress really slowed to a halt for me, and I started to get antsy, so I decided to save-scum to beat the game. Well, let me tell you, I'm glad I did, because beating it legitimately would probably have taken another 1-2 months more of pretty regular play. It gets very hard at the end, and you have to learn by doing how to beat the bosses and levels.

       Ports of arcade games are always a weird thing. How do you reconcile the quarter-feeding nature of these games with home play? Ikaruga handled it by letting you earn more continues until you were in free play mode. But that feels cheap because once you are in free play mode you can endlessly continue your way to the end. Fantasy Zone on SUGC let's you save at any point, which can lead to frustration if you haven't gotten good at the game first. Fantasy Zone also doesn't have a continue system, so there is no free play option, which makes sense since it allows you to buy lives. I recommend playing it a lot regularly, getting good, and then save-scumming to see the end. The last few levels were still fun and interesting to me this way, and it's the only way a lot of people will be able to see the end of the game without a really, really big time commitment. Perhaps the best method of dealing with porting an arcade game for home play is what was done in the Metal Slug Anthology I played on PSP. In that collection you could set the difficulty and based on that you got a number of continues (aka quarters). So the normal setting gave you a realistic amount of virtual quarters that you could use to beat the game once you got somewhat good at it (which for a Metal Slug game, is like 15 or so!).

       Anyways, Fantasy Zone is 28 year old game that excels in its design, music, and gameplay. It's different. It almost feels like a modern indie game putting a few interesting spins on shmup gameplay. It's a real good time. I wish it had a better resolution of the arcade-game-ported-to-home conundrum, but that 's a tough one, especially for a game without continues. I guess the real solution to that is to man up and play it for a really, really long time. I don't think it quite merits that much attention though. But it does merit a few weeks of play to learn how to play it well, and then go ahead and save-scum to check out the last few great encounters in its endgame. It's a Great Game, Tier 3.

Alien Syndrome Review

        This review is for the arcade version of Alien Syndrome as included as a bonus on the PS3 disc Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. I found many of the games in this collection to be a bit lackluster, but I felt some kind of connection to Alien Syndrome the second I started playing it. It is fun and has a great look to it. It somewhat reminds me of the PSP sequel of the same name and license that came out a few years back, but it is instantly more likable (although the 2^nd half of the PSP version is quite fun).

       It is a top down shooter. You play as either a male or female soldier that control identically. You move with the d-pad or analog stick and fire with square. You shoot in the direction you are facing. That's it for the controls. Each level is a space station or installation. You must find ten humans and rescue them while fighting off hordes of aliens. Once you have rescued ten people, you can proceed to the exit and fight the level's boss. All the while a timer is ticking down, and if it gets to zero, the whole place explodes.

       You can find powerups in wall panels that replace the pea-shooter you start with. You can get a fireball launcher, a laser, and a few other weapons. You can also find robots that will follow along behind you and fire backward. Each level features a different layout. Some are mostly open but have a few seperate rooms. Others feature pits you can fall into. Later levels have a more complex layout for you to traverse. There are maps on some walls, and touching them will temporarily bring up a map of the level, including human locations. This isn't needed for the first few levels, but helps out in the last couple.

       Each level features a different alien species. The first level has these amazing pink bloated worm things that are stuningly animated (I think these are in the PSP game too, they seem really familiar). They mostly move in pre-set patterns, although there is a yellow variety that will hunt you down and even shoot a projectile at you. Then in the second level there are bipedal aliens that seem a bit smarter, shoot projectiles, and continuously spawn out of enemy generators. Things get weirder from there, with different appearances, behaviors, and strengths.

       Finally, each level features a boss. These are usually large, freakish beasts that aggressively attack you. The designers of this game obviously went to the Contra School of Freaky Creature Design, as there is more than one enemy that has a fetus head grafted onto it. Quite disturbing. Some bosses send minions after you. Others fire lots of projectiles. Others jump at you themselves, and there are a few other weird strategies they employ. One of this game's strengths is its diveresity in its levels, enemies, and bosses.

       Now after playing the game a bit, you run into some flaws. Mainly that you can only fire in the direction you are facing or moving, and you can only change your facing by taking a step in the direction you want to face. This leads to a lot of problems. If a game were designed around this as a feature, that might work, but in this instance it feels like a design flaw. There are a lot of frustrating times when you die because you couldn't aim where you wanted to while moving where you wanted to. This game looks like a twin stick shooter, but it isn't. That in itself isn't a flaw, but the issue of moving and shooting needs to be resolved. I think the solution would be to make it so you have a way to hold still and pivot in place, and possibly a way to lock yourself to one facing while still being able to move. Having it be a straight up twin stick shooter would change the feel too much, but implementing one or two of the above changes and then cranking the difficulty up a bit would probably make it more fun and less frustrating. Just to be clear, it's super-difficult as it is, but if you kept the difficulty the same and made these changes, that might make the game too easy. Know what I mean?

        As you might expect for an arcade shooter, Alien Syndrome is real hard. At the beginning of this version, you can change some of the settings (which, if I'm not mistaken, represents settings the owner of an arcade cabinent can change on the circuit board or a panel or something). Believe me when I say you need to set it to the easiest modes, and it's still going to be an extreme challenge. Is it possible to beat without using this version's ability to save at any time? Well, yes, I think so. But that statement is complicated by the fact that you can't continue by putting in another virtual quarter; the game goes straight to game over when you die. You start with 4 lives, and there is no way to earn another. That means you need to beat the entire game with only 3 mistakes allowed. Deaths come frequently and lurk around every corner in this game. It gets real hard at the end too. This feat is possible with a lot of practice. I didn't do it though. After playing for about 2 weeks or so without cheating, I got to the boss of level 4 out of 6. I started save-scumming and beat the game. It was still challenging and fun to figure out the levels and bosses, and I'm glad I did it, although I do feel a little dirty. I feel ok though since I played it a lot without cheating first, and really felt that hardcore arcade experience of being able to get further and further. It's just that at the point of frustration and lack of progress, I was able to leisurely play the rest of the game and enjoy it rather than just quitting. Several more weeks would be required for me to beat it legitamately, but I was ready to move on.

       Alien Syndrome is a fun game. It has amazing enemy design (if you're into the really weird Contra-style stuff), great animation, and a lot of variety in it's levels and encounters. The music, which is slow and brooding in the level, and then more frantic when you fight the boss) is pretty good too, as are the digitized screams and voice overs. It's extremely hard, but you should know that going in since it's an arcade game. You can see most of the game by playing it legitamately, but if you get stuck, it's still fun to play with cheat-saving as you still need to figure out how to navigate each level and how to attack each boss; you can't just force your way through. Its basic gameplay is a little flawed due to the above mentioned aiming and moving thing, but overall it holds up incredibly well for a game from '87 (I was 2 when this came out, and it's still totally playable!). It's a mediocre game, tier 1.

Space Harrier Review

       I've never been able to understand games where you are behind the back flying forward. Be it Star Fox or certain segments of Philosoma, I've never been able to dodge shots or aim properly in games that use that viewpoint.

       That certainly holds true for Space Harrier, an old arcade game from 1985 (making it exactly as old as me!) that I played on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. Now the reason you want to play Space Harrier is that the title screen features a dude sitting on the shoulder of a robot with a huge gun waving crazily at you. Next to them is a wooly mammoth with one giant eye. The game is full of this kind of crazy character design, and that alone is worth the price of admission.

       You play as a guy running on the ground who can also fly freely through the air. He is constantly running forward “into” the screen. The backgrounds have a scrolling effect, and the enemy sprites have a great effect where they get larger and larger as you get closer to them. You shoot with square, X, or O, your choice (no triangle, obvs), and move around with the d-pad. You shoot enemies and dodge their incoming fire. At the end of the level, you face a giant, weird boss. That is it.

       Like I said before, I have a lot of trouble playing games with this view. It could just be me, but I think it's because it's a bad viewpoint, or at least on that is hard to do right. It's certainly not done right here. It's super hard to aim or dodge. You just get hit constantly and miss constantly. Unless of course I am just incompetant at this type of game, which is possible. Fortunately, on SUGC, the game is set to free-play mode, so you can continue as much as you want to blow through the whole game. It took me about 15 continues (that's $3.75 in quarters, not bad!).

       Blowing through with infinite continues is how I recommend playing this game. I started to get bored even doing that. As an artifact of '80's game and art design, it's a lot of fun to witness. As a game, there's just not enough there to warrant much play at all since the bad viewpoint/collision detection/whatever makes it really hard to improve yourself. If I saw it the arcade, I would definitely pop some quarters in for the experience, but it's not a game I'm going to keep playing. It's a Mediocre Game, tier 3.

Kid Chameleon Review

       I just realized it's going to be hard for me to give a proper score to Kid Chameleon. Back when it was made in '92, there were many such games that you had to play over and over again until you finally beat that last level, no saving involved. Not many games had over 100 super-hard levels like Kid Chameleon though. It's really hardcore.

       Kid Chameleon is a 2d platformer for the Sega Genesis. I played it on PS3 on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. And I save-scummed like it was my job to beat the game. This game is extremely hard and has a seemingly unending torrent of levels. Even thinking of trying to beat it legitimately is nonsense. I understand that there are some warp-points like in Mario 3 that can let you jump forward many levels. Good luck discovering them though. Beating this game outright would take...probably years. In fact I was just reading an article by a guy who has the world's high score in the game, and if I was reading it right, it took him six years to initially beat the game. A few years ago I got into the game and played it a lot. I was trying to play it without saving, and I got to about level 10 or so. This time around, I just wanted to beat it and have some fun, and thankfully on SUGC, you can save at any time. So typically I would save at the beginning of each level and reload as needed, although several times, especially in the later levels where I was tempted to rage quit, I would even save mid-level.

       So, in Kid Chameleon, there is a virtual reality arcade game, kind of like a holodeck. It's final boss has started kidnapping kids (in real life). The player goes into the machine to save them. So each level is a level in the game within a game. That's so meta. You run around in these levels, which are often pretty big and feature multiple paths to multiple exits. You can jump on enemies heads to kill them. You often find power-ups that transform you into a new form, such as a samurai with a sword, a knight with lots of hit points, a tank that shoots skulls (?), or a axe-throwing Jason look alike. That's about half of the transformations, I won't ruin them all. Some of the later ones are amazing...

       X is jump, the d-pad controls your movement, and holding square makes you run. Circle activates your current form's special power. To use our previous examples, the samurai swings his sword, the knight can climb walls, the tank shoots, and the Jason guy throws axes. Some forms also have alternate moves or abilities. For example, the Samurai can stab downward if you press circle and down when in the air, the vanilla, un-transformed kid can grab onto blocks and flip himself up if you double-tap X, and the knight has more hit points and breaks any blocks he lands on with his feet.

       Speaking of blocks, they are everywhere. Blocks with a “p” on them contain power-ups and crystals and extra lives and such. You can also find clocks that increase the time you have to complete the level, as every level has a countdown timer in the corner, and if it reaches zero, you die. I found myself transforming a lot, as there are plentiful power ups and transforming re-fills your hit points. The crystals you find are used to activate special powers that each form has. You do this by holding square and pressing start. Typically these powers make crystals fly out and attack the enemy in a different pattern depending on what form you are in. There is usually a 20 crystal power and a 50 crystal power that is more potent, although one or two of the forms mess with this pattern. These abilities are quite powerful and can be a big help getting through tough spots, but unless you are really going after each and every crystal in a level, you'll only be using these powers once every 5 levels or so.

       The game has a bit of a Mario feel to it at first, but soon you realize that the levels have a much bigger verticality to them than classic Mario. You go up and down almost as much as you go left or right. That combined with the constant transforming really makes the game feel like it's own beast once you get a few levels in, and once you get really deep into the game, it feels nothing at all like Mario despite the fact that you jump on enemies' heads and punch blocks to make power-ups come out.

       Kid Chameleon has pretty great art and music. Each of the many forms have great sprites and animation, and the many enemy types are great as well. I especially love the humanoid killer whales that melt into skeletons when they die. The levels tend to have a blocky look to them, but when you beat the level, the holograms fade to reveal that you are still in the arcade machine, which is a very cool effect. The music is a bit less aggressive and in your face than most games in the genre from this time. It's less about melodies. Kid Chameleon's music fades more into the background. It's nice to have a different musical style in a platformer, which is a genre defined by its many tropes. The sound effects fit in well with the mix too. I especially love the enemies that yell “Die!” at you. That's amazing. If you enjoy seeing crazy stuff from the '90's, you'll love what you see and hear in this title.

       Kid Chameleon is a lot of fun, but it has two major flaws. First, it's really hard to control. You might not notice too much at first, but once the jumps start getting tricky, you will realize that the controls are insanely floaty. The kid controls like a blimp or something. When you jump, you can change direction in the air and your movement to such a degree that it makes it hard to land where you want to, even if you've been playing for hours. When you start getting into harder areas, this leads to frustration. Second, the game is insanely hard! Ok, first off, there's no saving because this is an old school game. I get that. But many, many of the game's levels require trial and error to figure out what to do. The areas that almost require you to sacrifice lives to figure out what to do outnumber the amount of lives you get probably four to one. Which means the designers want you to replay 20...30... 70... 80+ levels just to get back to the level you are on so you can blow through your remaining lives trying to figure out what to do. I would venture to say you would need to repeat that process hundreds of times to beat the game. If a designer asks you to do something repetitive, it must be compelling. Kid Chameleon is fun, but it is nowhere near compelling enough to merit that kind of intense play. In my opinion, that is bad game design (unless of course this was purely a hardware issue, i.e. there was no way to make the game save, in which case I apologize for the nasty stuff I'm about to say). I get that this game is famously super-hard, but what people have to realize is that (in this case) this means is your game isn't fun. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is a good counterpoint to Kid Chameleon. It is probably the harder game in terms of the pure challenge the levels throw at you. But because it has saving between levels, it is engaging and fun to throw yourself at its challenges over and over until you finally break through and beat a level. It is designed to be extremely hard, yet fun and beatable. Kid Chameleon is just way too hardcore for me. I really enjoyed playing it and seeing it all through save-scumming though.

       Kid Chameleon is not beyond hard. Like I said, Giana Sisters is probably harder. Kid Chameleon is beyond punishing though, and requires a life-time commitment to beat legitimately. What that means for 99% of the people who play it is that they will have a few days of fun with it and then give it up having not seen 70% of its fun levels. Whether you are a kid in 1996 or a modern-day person trying to beat an old school platformer without saving, that doesn't help you, it just frustrates you. You can have some fun times playing as far as you can get legitimately, or you can have fun seeing all the levels using save-scumming, but beating the game outright is one of gaming's toughest challenges, and one few will ever accomplish. And that's due not only to the insanely punishing nature of the game, but also to its impossibly floaty physics. The two or so people who do complete the game legitimately will probably feel more pain than pleasure. Kid Chameleon is a Mediocre Game, Tier 2.

Fatal Labyrinth Review

      I was excited to hear that there was a rogue-like on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (although I think this game was only on Mega Drive. I'm playing a few of the games on the collection now, and I just beat Fatal Labyrinth.

       The only other rogue-like I've played for any length of time is Shiren the Wanderer, which is an incredible game. I would probably give it a perfect score were I to review it on this site. Fatal Labyrinth certainly follows many of the rogue-like tropes I'm familiar with from Shiren. The game is a turn-based dungeon crawler that takes place on a grid. Unlike Shiren, you can't move diagonally. If you've never played a game like this, the turn-based system is pretty cool. You move or take an action as if you are playing a real-time game, but after your action, every enemy on the screen takes an action too, and then it is your turn again. This all happens so fast that if you are just walking around, it looks and feels like a real-time game. You are faster than most enemies in the game, so you usually get to move a few times for each of their moves, although in combat they attack just as fast as you.

       On the PS3 port of this game, you move with the direction buttons, pick up items with square, and open the menu with X. You close the menu with circle. Square also causes you to skip a turn, which is extremely useful to help yourself get into position during fights. This game uses the “bump to attack” system that many rogue-likes use; in order to attack an enemy, you just press the direction button toward the enemy when you are standing by one.

       So you walk around the dungeon levels looking for the staircase that will take you up to the next level. Your goal is to get to the top of the castle and retrieve a mystical goblet or something. Along the way, you'll find tons of gear and loot. You can find and equip weapons and armor, and find potions, one-time-use magic staves, and one-time-use magic scrolls. Almost everything you find starts out unidentified. For example, you might find a potion called “pink potion,” and you won't know what it does until you drink it. There are a few items that hurt you, so it can be an adventure trying different items out. Once you use something once, if you find another like one, the description will be filled in since you know what it does. There are staffs that shoot magic at enemies, scrolls that confuse enemies, and a ton of other effects (almost all of which I was familiar with from playing Shiren).

       You'll also encounter a bunch of different enemy types, such as slow-moving and weak slimes, ninjas that throw suriken at you from far away, wizards that put various curses on you, and snails that hold you in place so you can't retreat. Again, almost every type of enemy is straight out of Shiren (and, I guess, straight out of Rogue or other rogue-likes). The have really cool sprites for the most part. The art in general is pretty cool. Different weapons and armor even appear on your character when you equip them.

       There are 30 randomly generated levels to get through, and unlike a traditional rogue-like, if you die, you can continue from every 5^th level. Usually rogue-likes have straight-up permadeath. Permadeath is a staple of rogue-likes, so it's a bit weird that it's absent here. But I must admit I loved being able to continue the few times I died on my run through. That's mostly because the game isn't really engaging enough to be playing it over and over from the beginning, but more on that later.

       For a rogue-like, Fatal Labyrinth is very easy. I think I only died 2-3 times, and I didn't have that many life-threatening situations come up. Most rogue-likes are pretty darn hard. This one is certainly beatable, even if it did have permadeath, which it doesn't.

       There are a few big cons to this game. The music is good, but it is on a loop, and that loop is about 15 seconds long, so it gets old fast, and it only changes every 10 floors or so. The game is also really clunky. Going into the menu is a pain as whenever you exit the menu, you exit all the way out. Since you often have more than one thing you need to do in the menu, this means you are frustrated and inconvenienced almost constantly. For example, if you find a ring, you have to go into the menu to equip it, and then go into the menu again to look at it's description to see what it does. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but you'll be in and out of the menu constantly, so the time wasted really adds up. The menu also has all your items split up into different categories, meaning you have to scroll through different icons just to look at your stuff. Shiren just had all your items in one sortable inventory, which works infinetely better than Labyrinth's system. There is also no way to turn in place, so in order to change direction, you must take a step in the direction you want to go. This really hampers your tactics and makes long-range weapons almost useless. By the time you take a step toward an enemy so that you are pointed at them, they have taken a step toward you too, and the rooms are so small you are probably now standing next to each other. Because melee weapons are more powerful, that means you should just use your melee weapon at that point.

       I would say that Fatal Labyrinth is a good beginner rogue-like because it is so easily beatable and it doesn't really have permadeath, but the truth is it's so clunky that it would probably frustrate people unfamiliar with the genre. Beginners would be much better off playing something with an infinetely better interface, like Shiren. Veterans should also look elsewhere, as there isn't much to the game beyond very basic rogue-like tropes and a terrible interface. That means that the game is really for no one. It was ok to quickly blast through it though. That's why it's a mediocre game, tier 3.