Strider 2 (1999)

It's always strange playing an arcade game in your home. Arcades are overwhelming environments, built to instill the guest with a false sense of urgency. Mimicking the claustrophobia of a casino without any of the performative hospitality. The games seem to mirror this sentiment. Compact, slippery and hostile. Completing an arcade game requires a combination of genius and stupidness. The reflexes to both master the gauntlets and the naivete to keep coughing up your quarters in the hope of mastering the gauntlets.

Strider 2 requires neither genius nor stupidness. It just requires 1.5 hours of your time. It's a brilliant 1.5 hours. Every other enemy is a unique boss that usurps the last in absurdity. A mechanical mammoth that shoots lasers. A knight that commands floating skulls. A six headed dragon operated by a man on a floating platform.

It would all be beautiful if death in Strider 2 held any meaning. Dying may lower your end grade, but it carries no other penalty except having to press start within 20 seconds. I never felt like I earned the death of a boss after dying twice. Why should I be intimidated by a teleporting mutant wolf when I'm immortal? This game design makes sense in an arcade when several mistakes cost you 50 cents, but here it feels numbing. It's rare I play a video game made with so much passion that ultimately makes me contemplate the purpose of my hobby. All I know is that if I was born 15 years earlier, in the era of the arcade, I'd be broke.

Strider 2 has a couple of tricks up its sleeve, but it's similarly frustrating and slippery compared to its predecessor, even with plenty of set pieces and 3D graphics.

2000 years after the original Strider, the Grandmaster rises again, only to be fought by another Strider Hiryu. This one can walk, crouch, slide, dash jump from wall to wall as he climbs, do a slash in the air using the up/down buttons, and initiate a boost mode. Much like the first, Strider must get up close to the enemy and slash away, but the boost allows some long distance slashing that's necessary for some (cough final cough) bosses.

The difficulty of this game is toned down a slight bit, but still just as mind-wracking. A lot of bosses demand only the strategy of stand in a single point and tap the slash button, but tiny mines, laser beams, and another Strider make the fiendish arcade difficulty of this sequel apparent.

As for graphics, Strider lacks that future Soviet design of the original and the blurbs of the arcade soundtrack, but the 3D graphics mixed with 2D sprites and the well-drawn cutscene screens are pleasant enough. That said, this sequel doesn't feel like it needed to improve upon the predecessor's mechanics, which means accidentally jumping or falling off, sticking to a point where you mean to climb, etc - it's pretty sure that Strider 2 just wants to be more Strider, and that's not the best thing.