Beat on a mix of normal and hard as the guy. He had gold armor, a plasma cannon that reminded me of Samus and Megaman, and rocket launcher. From watching a video, the girl's machine gun seemed to be far more effective than the plasma while her grenade launcher seemed a little worse than rockets. Also seemed like the N64 version gave him a shield and her a melee attack. I started off on Hard and the first level was ok. The controls were not good at all; the default had R1 and R2 as moving forwards and backwards, D pad for looking, and face buttons for strafing and other stuff. No way am I playing with that. The 2nd preset had D pad up as move backwards and down as forwards. Who would play like that!? Using the controller upside down? I used the 4th preset and rebound much of the buttons to be sensible for my PSP. R1 and L1 for strafe, D pad for forwards, backwards and looking left and right, triangle for look up, square look down, X shoot, O jump, and crouch and change weapon on the stick. I turned on auto aim, which automatically locked onto targets at medium range, but not at point blank or long. There was also a night vision mode that prevented movement while giving auto aim at long range, which was great for sniping. I hated the reloading mechanic because there was no reload button so I often fired the last few shots to get back to full. The basic weapons had infinite ammo so it really added nothing to the game to have clip size and reloading for those. The other weapons did not even need to reload. I could not figure out how to change weapons until well into the 3rd level. It turned out that the weapon swap button did not cycle through weapons or bring up a menu, like in a sensible game. Instead it did nothing by itself and had to be combined with a different button for each weapon. So stupid.

I almost gave up on the game entirely at the 2nd level because it was so badly designed that I had to look up a video to see if it was even possible. It was a rail shooter on a monorail car with a shitty machine gun while going at a slow pace through dark as fuck tunnels against melee bugs that ran up to suicide. Jesus fucking Christ. It was literally impossible to get past without taking damage, and Normal was only a little easier. It took 20+ attempts and required memorizing the entire sequence just to be able to scrape by with a sliver of hp (for the car) left on Normal. Call of Duty Black Ops on veteran was not even this bad with it's rail shooter sequences! I also had to change the look bindings to put up and down on the D pad, because no way was I beating that with square and triangle aiming. There was also no auto aim for some god awful reason. This level would have been 100 times easier if the guy got off the stupid car and fought on foot. Made no sense. I got stuck on level 3 because I needed to use explosives to open a gate. Once I figured out how to swap weapons I ended up sticking with the base cannon for most of the game because it was the only weapon with auto aim. It was much easier to circle strafe around abusing auto aim than using manual aim for more powerful shots, plus most enemies were melee rushers and explosives did self damage. I did manage to beat the first 7 levels on Hard (except that damn rail shooter), including the first boss. I barely past the boss not because she was hard but because the flying bugs she spawned were very difficult to hit with the game's aiming, so they almost killed me. I did fail some levels due to unknowingly walking into the end of the level without all objectives completed, which pissed me off. Why would they let me leave the level without objectives completed? Why wasn't there any kind of warning or indication about the level exits? This annoyed me and was a common thing throughout the rest of the game, leading me to refer to a walkthrough to get a heads up about where the end was, and to put the difficulty back down to Normal on repeated attempts. Not because it was too difficult but because it was frustrating to have to repeat entire levels due to poor design.

Then the volcano levels brought new frustrations. The first level was the usual getting to the end without all objectives completed and being whisked off against my will to the mission failed screen. Then the second introduced instant death platforming (oh joy my favorite thing), and a pitch dark underwater sequence. The game was annoyingly dark most of the time anyway, and that night vision mode did not help see. Instead I had to use IR goggles with even worse fov than the normal view. So the 1st time I played this level I could not even see to get in the water because I had missed those goggles. The 2nd time I drowned because the goggles only changed 0 visibility to like 15% visibility, as I flailed around trying to figure out where the hell to go in those pipes. 3rd attempt I missed the jump over lava and died. 4th attempt I managed to make it through by mapping out the pipes in my mind and making frequent trips back to the entrance for air. It was actually a small area but I had to navigate using that mental map instead of the visuals the game offered. More instant death platforming after so this level took a few more attempts and watching a video to show where to go. The 3rd level was kind enough to put a think fast or die lava flow chase near the end, then a timed sequence with multiple potentially fatal jumps to do while on the clock. I of course walked right past everything and exited the level without completing the objectives. I tried the boss once on Hard, cheesing through the small window at the start. Unfortunately after phase 1 when I had to destroy the arms she could hit me through that window and I died shockingly easily. I beat her on Normal by strafing around outside and it would be doable on Hard.

I liked the next area Egypt because it was bright and I could actually see easily. 1st level was good. 2nd was too, until the very end with 1 little crack in the walkway that had to be jumped over during another time limit. Of course I fell off on my 1st and 2nd attempts. Level 3 was another rail shooter while manning the turret on the VTOL. It was a little easier because I was high above the bright sunny desert but the enemies all had ranged attacks that did massive damage. It did not help that the god damn pilot suddenly jerked the aircraft at very inopportune times. Dude just hold her steady at long range because my gun had longer range than the bugs. It should not be that difficult. Again this level would have been a breeze on foot with proper sniping distance and strafing to avoid shots. Or even better if I could control the aircraft. It was instead very sweaty spraying and memorization until I could beat it on Normal without taking any damage, so Hard should be the same. But I failed the level twice due to killing the objective and reaching the exit without completing the objective, so there was even more rail shooting. The 4th level was quite long with a single death jump near the end, then a tough boss. You know game, checkpoint saves were invented for a reason. I failed the boss 1st try because her lightning attacks were hard to dodge, and then fucked up that jump. At this point I gave up on Hard difficulty. I cheesed the boss by shooting from a safe space off to the side as she paced back and forth. The walkthrough said there was a ladder to get up high but I did not find that. Once she got to 25% hp the cheese broke and I had to go fight her up close by abusing those pillars.

I found it hilarious that the commander was replaced for the final chapter and that these levels had the least amount of bullshit. The new commander even warned me when I approached an exit in one level. These levels were a little large and confusing but heavy on combat and straightforward on objectives. The 3rd was an escort mission but I beat it 1 try so I have no idea how annoying it could be if too many friendlies died. Level 4 had some bullshit by way of extremely dark tunnels. The video I watched had IR goggles but I did not. Seemed like he carried them from previous levels while every time I died and retried I lost everything. I didn't really notice until then since I mostly used the base infinite ammo gun. I managed to make it through those tunnels by walking backwards once it got too dark so I could navigate using the light from the entrance. This level took a few attempts due to some foolish mistakes from walking into acid and shooting a rocket point blank while low on hp. I used rockets to kill the infinite spawn tubes faster, though I later realized it was better to hang back and snipe to avoid triggering the swarms. Then was the final level, which was full of instant death red stuff around the walkable areas. It was easy to get knocked into it or accidentally touch it while kiting enemies. The final boss was a huge pain because I had aim snap turned on, which reset the view while moving. I was circle strafing around the boss with X held down and constantly tapping triangle to keep the crosshair high enough to hit the boss. This was very annoying and could have been avoided if the options menu could be accessed during a level. I eventually got to the final phase but took too much damage. I decided to do 1 more attempt with aim snap off, win or lose this game was done. I got her to 10% when I died while looking for hp pickup. It was much easier not having to fight to keep the crosshair up. This was close enough to beating the game. I watched the very lame ending on YouTube and it seemed like there was a flying enemy that killed me. In the video it was mowed down as collateral damage while shooting the machine gun at the boss. I should have played as the girl.

The only good thing I can say about this game is that it was competently made. The mechanics worked and I only encountered 1 thing that could have been a glitch when I fell down an elevator and a bug fell on top of me and I suddenly died, or something like that. This game was poorly designed and more frustrating than fun. Lame story, pointless voice acting, clunky controls, mostly boring weapons and enemies, and abysmal level design/balance. It is far better experienced in a video rather than actually playing.

4.5/10