Time Trax (1994)

Beat on Hard. Did not work on my main emulator, but there was no need for faster game speed. It started off pretty easy as a single shot was enough to stun enemies enough to close in to finish them with melee. I later discovered that some enemies were easy to kill with shots, others could be stunned by shots but only took damage in melee, and that the tougher enemies would hit back in melee once that stun wore off. The controls were pretty good with fluid running, jumping and hanging. The same button was used to shoot and melee, depending on distance to the enemy, with a quick punch while standing or a slower longer range kick while ducking. I hardly used the time slow ability as the enemies were not all that challenging. Hazards, traps and those unkillable spiders were the main source of my damage. The bosses were a little gimmicky in that it could take a little while to figure out what to do. The first boss was immune to shots for some reason and had to be meleed. The crane boss was tricky to dodge at times and a little confusing to figure out what to shoot at. The final boss gave me a hard time because he was at less than half hp and my guy was at 1 hit left by the time I figured out how to damage him. I was trying everything I could think of; jump kicks to the face, head shots, melee from behind, shoot his missiles, but it turned out it just took a lot of shots to deplete each hp bar. The fight was easy then. I don't remember if there was another boss. There were 2 vehicle stages that were pretty much the same boss fight. I liked how the choppers took locational damage based on where you shot them, but the mechanics of the fight were stupid because each little section had to be individually destroyed. Made it very tedious to hit the last couple pieces. Instead they should have given the choppers a health bar and kept the location damage as pure visual flare. Decent enough game, though it would have be better with more useful power ups, and more than 1 weapon, to reward exploration.

6.0/10