Status Chovus Aug 19, 2023
Beat on 2nd hardest difficulty. It was a good thing the game could be saved at any time because it was very easy to die. The controls were not great. I mostly used relative movement, which was Resident Evil tank controls. The absolute movement made the guy go in the direction pressed, but it sacrificed fine tuning. I did experiment …
Beat on 2nd hardest difficulty. It was a good thing the game could be saved at any time because it was very easy to die. The controls were not great. I mostly used relative movement, which was Resident Evil tank controls. The absolute movement made the guy go in the direction pressed, but it sacrificed fine tuning. I did experiment with absolute movement on the big robots that could kill me in a single hit; it was easier to dodge but harder to actually hit them. The game was mostly about trying to see where enemies were by going along walls or from cover to cover. Then watch their movements to sidestep out at the right time to shoot them in the back. Sometimes I crouched behind cover and was able to pop up and down to kill enemies without taking a hit. Without cover it was a fight against the camera since it scrolled at certain points rather than keeping a fixed view distance. This made it difficult to avoid getting shot upon revealing new enemies. Occasionally they were hidden behind stuff from the isometric view. Far more often I got lost behind walls until I figured out the button to turn on transparency. That only stayed on while hidden though, and only worked on the immediate surroundings.
I was getting Command and Conquer vibes from the music and live actor videos, and a bit of Doom, Syndicate, Fallout, and Legacy of Kain. The levels were detailed and really made me take it slow and tactical. Cameras, motion sensors and traps everywhere that had to be looked out for, enemies that could easily kill me, and environmental puzzles. I hated the rolling explosive barrels. The game probably overused key cards and 3 digit passcodes. There were other times when I had to find hidden switches or destroy random machinery to turn stuff off. It was often annoying trying to figure out what to do, but never got to the point where I needed to look up solutions. I explored and looted as much as I could, even deliberately killing civilians to get more money. The game didn't acknowledge the morality of that at all. Occasionally they would ask to be killed by triggering the alarm, getting in the way, or following me. I used the smg and shotgun for most of the game, finding that I was always full on ammo for both. The shotgun was great for ambushing and destroying traps but sucked at longer range. I kept the smg equipped and only switched to shotgun when I seen a good opportunity. Sometimes I could snipe enemies from outside their aggro range if the screen was just right or if I knew they were there. I only ran low on ammo during the final mission. I bought every gun as it became available but never needed to buy ammo or supplies. I bought the upgraded smg and found the grenade launcher, which became my weapon for those enemies that could kill me in 1 hit. I really liked the trade off for energy weapons; no ammo but they used the same resource as the defense shield. Since I had plenty of ammo I only used energy weapons when an infinite energy station was available. The smaller energy weapons were not really worth buying but the plasma gun was even better than the grenade launcher, 1 hit killing all soldiers, and 2 or 3 hit killing the toughest robots. I hardly used the other 2 ammo weapons. The AR triple rocket launcher shot faster than the grenade launcher but the spread could hit things I didn't want to hit. The pistol thing that sounded like a rail gun could kill soldiers in 1 shot but also required a bit of energy to shoot, which got me killed in the final mission. I had plenty of med kits and energy packs but ended up selling a lot of the other tools. I did not buy the better batteries though I did suspect what they did. I was doing ok with the default energy bar until I found a better one during the final level. Detonation packs were ok for destroying stuff and finding secrets. 1 time I even got a guy through a force field. The god damn spider bombs were too annoying to use. Who thought it was a good idea to put proximity detonators on remote controlled bombs? I more often than not blew myself up or wasted them. I had to save before and after each use. They would have been more useful if they could go outside the screen. I wish there was a remote scouting tool; that would have been more useful than most everything in the game. At very late game I figured out I could spend a bit of energy using the EMP thing to disable robots. That made the game so much easier, but the end levels were still packed with soldiers that could kill in 2 shots. It took a few tries to beat the boss as she was invincible, and after a few attempts with different weapons I tried destroying machinery which got rid of her shield. Won with 30 seconds on the clock. That time limit at the end really didn't mesh with the slow awkward controls and inability to swap gear while paused, but the time was generous.
I loved the sound and music in this game. Every time the main theme came on I wanted to go Rambo and not worry about saving, because the music changed after going into the menu. There was also a cyberpunk song I really liked. This was a fun game which I could see playing again on the hardest difficulty. Apparently the Saturn version has better AI, which might be more fun because the enemies in this game were brain dead. It could have used several tweaks but the biggest flaw was the controls. I would have preferred using L and R to sidestep and adding in dodge rolls to the side for a combo press with square. That would help with the 1 hit deaths. The jump was also incredibly lame and made the few platforming bits annoying. The story and world building were cool, and it was satisfying to blow stuff up and kill enemies.
7.8/10
