Building Crush! (Playstation)

 This is a hard post to write, and one I really hoped I wouldn't have to. The reason it's a hard post to write is because Building Crush! is an awful game, and everytime I loaded it up, I dreaded actually playing it. The reason I hoped that I wouldn't have to write it is because I'd originally planned to write about a differrent Playstation game, Buckle Up. Buckle Up is a pretty interesting semi-open world driving game that I think is kind of inspired by Dukes of Hazzard? But unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to get past the first mission, so here's Building Crush! instead.

 

Building Crush! is a colour-matching puzzle game themed around the idea of competitive building demolition (or crushing, if you will). You and your opponent each stand on a window-washer's platform in front of a tall building. The buildings are made of cubes in various colours, most with windows on them. The windows are constantly opening and closing, and you have to throw bombs into them when they're open, then detonate them. When you destroy a cube in this way, any cubes touching it that are the same colour will also explode. Furthermore, the cubes above will fall down, and if they do so in a manner that creates a formation of four or more touching cubes of the same colour, those formations will then explode, creating the traditional competitive puzzle game chain reactions. 

 

So far it doesn't sound too bad, right? The main problem is that the game is incredibly slow. Moving around is slow and throwing the bombs is slow (and made worse when a window closes and your bomb just falls down uselessly). The only way to win a round is to destroy every last cube of which your building is composed, so rounds take several long minutes to finish, and each stage is a best-of-three match. Making things worse is that some cubes don't have windows, and can only be destroy either by linking them to same-coloured ones that do, or by repeatedly (and slowly) hitting them with many bombs until they eventually crack and disappear. And no matter how well you plan things, you'll always end up with at least one of these at the end of a round.

 

Another complication comes in the form of random objects that sometimes fall down from the 'bove. If they hit you, they actually slow things down in two ways! First, you're momentarily stunned. Then, a witch will fly onscreen and change one of the windowed cubes onscreen into an unwindowed cube. It's all a shame, as I'm sure the basic concept of the game could have been fun. It needed to be a lot faster, louder and more manic, and maybe have a lot bigger explosions and maybe some numbers flying around the place when you score big chains. As it is, it really feels like the developers were anxious about possibly over-stimulating players or something, like they might have had a good idea once, but stripped away all the fun and excitement, chasing some theoretical puzzle game player that won't play anything that isn't sedate. That's all conjecture on my part, of course. I doubt there's ever been or will ever be a developer interview related to a low budget Japan-only console-exclusive puzzle game from 1996.

 

Obviously, I don't recommend Building Crush! That exclamation mark at the end of its name is the most exciting thing about it. I guess it's also worth mentioning that your character has a little animated facepic thing that appears (and blocks your view) when you're doing well, and you actually make the face using a little photofit-type thing before you play. That's mildly impressive. Also one of the stage backgrounds is a photo of some people (presumably the developers) having a nice time in a nightclub, which is the kind of thing you don't really see in commercial videogames anymore.

Run Saber (SNES)

 There's a few interesting things to point out about Run Saber before you even get to the game itself. For a start, it's a Japanese game that was only released in North America and Europe (which means there' no chance of ever being able to afford a copy). Furthermore, it was developed by Hori, the famous and popular makers of high quality controllers. It's the first of six games they put out, according to Moby Games, spread out over the course of the nineties. Finally, and this is a lot more subjective than the other points: it kind of looks and feels more like a Mega Drive game than a SNES one. The gritty OAV-like sci-fi setting full of weird monsters, when from SNES games, you expect more of a kid-friendly TV anime look and feel, don't you? Like I said, it is more subjective than the other points I raised.

 

What is the game, though? It's a platformer, in which you select either a male or female character (if there are any differences between the two, they're very minor. I think their attacks have slightly different hitboxes, but that's all), and you traverse a few linear stages killing monsters with energy swords, and there's several boss fights per stage, too, which is nice. You could, if you wanted, call Run Saber a Strider-like, with its superhumanly acrobatic protagonists and their quick-swinging energy blade attacks. But that would be a little simplistic and lazy.

 

Instead, you should call Run Saber a Strider-like because of the way its paced! You're constantly being usher forward into the next big weird setpiece, whether it's a bunch of spiky traps to maneuver around, a wall to climb while fighting off enemies, or one of the game's many boss fights. Just like Strider! I'm joking about the first comparision being lazy, of course: the characters do move and feel a lot like Strider Hiryu, and if someone from the development team came out and said it was originally intended to be a Strider sequel but a deal with Capcom fell through at the last minute, it wouldn't be a massive shock. You do have a couple of new moves, though: a jumping spin attack, a dive kick, and a non-offensive slide across the ground.

 

So with all that in mind, is it actually a good game, or is it just a Japanese Strider Returns? Luckily, it's good. On your first play, it'll feel slightly stiff and odd, and a little too difficult, but somehow that literally only applies to your first attempt at playing it. At least, that's how it went for me. My first attempt, I lost most of my lives over the course of the first stage and got a game over shortly into the second. But every attempt after that, I've easily been able to get well into the third, and sometimes fourth stage! (According to what I've read online, there are five of them).

 

The bosses are cool enough that they aren't a slog or a nuisance, either, instead being fun and quick enough to get through that you do feel like you're a powerful, heroic character charging through all these evil monsters. And they're pretty interesting too. There's a green mutant-man who bursts out of a metal canister, a demonic fighter jet that grows heads to attack you while you're standing on it mid-flight, a big red meditating demon in the background who detached his head to get you, a giant zombie woman (who was apparently designed as a giant living woman, but Nintendo of America thought that was the same as a positive depiction of domestic violence, presumably because there are worms in their brains). A varied bunch of monsters and freaks to fight, and like I said, the fights go by pretty quickly, which feels like a fairly unique trait in this kind of game.

 

Run Saber is a pretty good game, in a style that really stands out on the SNES. It's definitely worth playing. Even though it won't keep your attention for a long time, you probably will enjoy it while it does.