Gungage (Playstation)

 Something that I've been thinking of with regards to current videogames is the way in which certain control schemes have become ubiquitous, and the way in which this makes it difficult for games to have their own identity beyond feeling like reskins of the same basic concept. "Current" isn't really accurate of this phenomenon, come to think of it: I remember playing Gears of War and Army of Two on the same day at a friend's house fifteen years ago, and they felt like exactly the same game, except one had you shooting aliens, and one had you shooting people of colour.

 

Those are both third person shooters, and obviously, both are hurt by the way in which that genre had become "solved" and homogenised in the years leading up to their release, causing the situation which I described in the first paragraph, whereby it becomes more difficult for games in a "solved" genre to carve an identity for themselves. Gungae is also a third person shooter, from a much earlier point in the genre's existence, and as such, it doesn't use the now standardised controls of "left stick to move, right stick to aim, right shoulder to shoot". It's got controls that, on paper, sound like they'd be awkward and difficult to play with: the d-pad is used for turning and moving forwards and backwards, with strafing mapped to L1 and R1. (Note: Gungage did come out after the Dual Shock controller, so could theoretically hve used the standard control scheme. In fact, Love and Destroy, which released on Playstation six months after Gungage actually does use that control scheme!) 

 

Anyway, despite the entirety of the past two paragraphs, I'm not saying that the modern standard 3D action game control layout is bad, but rather it's the monolithic ubiquity of it that's bad: You can make games that control differently! It's okay! (Furthermore, the same thing can be seen in other genres to a lesser extent. I think if you were to release a Mercs/Commando/etc. style top down shooter now, you'd get people asking why you didn't use twinstick controls.) So Gungage, then. The reason I'm using this game to talk about this subject is that it has a bunch of playable characters. Four in total, though I've only been able to unlock three so far: Wakle Skade the typical late 90s protagonist, Kard Berdysh the big rectangular military officer, and Steyr Harquebus the rebel terrorist girl.

 

What's significant is that though they go through the same areas (albeit in different orders, and sometimes with different enemies and slightly different layouts), and despite the fact that they're all obviously in the same game, all the characters feel completely different to each other as you play as them. It's not as simple as Kard being tougher and slower, or Wakle being the all-rounder, but they also have completely different main weapons, their super-weapons work in completely different ways, and the way they move all feel differently to each other. Wakle's got an automatic pistol, Kard has a big cannon with four different firing modes for different situations, and Steyr has a gatling gun that's as tall as her, yet she can run around firing like nobody's business. 

 

More important than them all feeling different to each other, they also all feel great to play as. Wakle introduces you to the way movement and aiming work in the game at their most basic levels, Kard has you trying your hardest not to get hit while firing your slow, devastating arsenal (as well as picking the best of his weapons for each situation), and Steyr has you running and flipping around, shooting enemies and dodging their attacks with agility and grace, almost like a character from a more modern character action game like Bayonetta or the later entries in the Oneechanbara series. Furthermore, the stages themselves are designed in such a way that they're interesting to traverse and explore. You never feel lost, but you always feel like you can run around and seek out secrets. AND! The fact that the different characters do reach them at different times, with different enemies, and so on, really makes them feel like actual locations, where different things are happening in them at different times. 

 

Gungage is an excellent game, and one that's worth the time of anyone with even a passing interest in 3D action games. It's a mystery and a shame that it's not more well known. It actually did get a western release, and I don't remember anyone talking about it at that time. I didn't even see it in magazines! A new 3D action game from Konami, a year after their massive hit Metal Gear Solid, and it somehow just slipped under the radar? Madness. Fix the mistakes of the past, and play Gungage now. (But as always, don't pay the ludicrous online prices it fetches.)

Nosferatu (SNES)

 It's incredibly easy to explain the idea behind Nosferatu: it simply asks "what if Prince of Persia was a beat em up and also Castlevania?". Though, it seems that the beat em up element gradually withers away as the game goes on. But anyway, that's the main thing: your main character (an average American teenage jock) runs and jumps and slides like the aforementioned Prince, but he's got punch combos and ducks and weaves like a boxer.

 

The plot's barely worth mentioning, so this is all it's going to get: your girlfriend's been taken by a vampire, and you've got to go and save her. This vampire is even more wealthy than most, owning several mansions, castles, and other large domiciles that you've got to get through to get him, and of course, they're all full of various minions to fight. Including, as the second boss, a pair of evil orangutans, which was fun to see.

 

A lot of effort has clearly been put into your guy's combat prowess, with his main stock in trade being punch combos, but he also counts shoulder tackles, roundhouse kicks, and more in his repetoire. There's even a vague kind of levelling system: collecting red crystals gradually unlocks more moves, but it's not permanent, as falling over (whether through monster attacks, traps, or general clumsiness) makes you drop your crystals. With all that in mind, it's a surprise that as the game goes on, it seems to de-emphasise combat in favour of platforming challenges.

 

There are still plenty of enemies as the game goes on, but fighting them becomes so inconvenient and time-consuming that they're more like aggressive, mobile obstacles that you're better off going around than through. Instead, the game starts to focus more and more heavily on platforming challenges, which really shows a lot of confidence on the part of the stage designers: everything hinges upon how well they're put together and they can't just rely on taking up more of the player's time by increasing numbers here and there, especially since the game also imposes pretty strict time limits. It's a testament to that skill on the part of the designers that I was just barely able to scrape through to the third stage.

 

Getting that far already required near-perfect timing and dexterity, and having to maneuver safely through multiple traps and stage elements at a time. I think anyone looking for proper spatial platforming challenges is definitely going to be satisfied by Nosferatu. Most people will probably hit a brick wall in their progress pretty early on like I did, but at least while they're getting to that wall, the game looks and feels luxurious. It could just as much be an early Playstation or Saturn game as it is a mid-life SNES game, and no-one would bat an eye. There's even some psuedo-FMV CG cutscenes! Either way, Nosferatu is at least worth some of your time.

Moldorian: The Sisters of Light and Darkness (Game Gear)

 Long before this game had an English translation patch, I was curious about it. The boxart looks interesting, and there's something about the title that made it sound like it might be a little more interesting than most 8-bit RPGs. Like, "Moldorian: The Sisters of Light and Darkness" sounds like it has a more specific vision in mind for its story than more vague titles like Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, and Dragon Quest, right? Unfortunately, in most aspects, it's as generic as can be, and as soon as I stop typing this review, I'll probably immediately forget everything I know about it.

 

The game starts with a bit of ludonarrative dissonance, as everyone seems eager to tell you what a useless milksop you are, and how you'd be long dead if your childhood friend wasn't always looking out for you. But then you and said friend go out into the nearby forest on some minor fetch quest, and she's significantly weaker than you in every respect. Then, when it comes to entering the deeper forest where the first boss is, she gets scared and waits outside. This turns out to be a bad idea, since it's durig this time that she gets kidnapped by a flying monster. And so, your actual quest starts: to save the weak and defenceless damsel who's also you big sister figure who always has to protect you.

 

I think I've played about six to eight hours, and the story doesn't get any more interesting or original in that time. There's a part where you have to take a secret exit tunnel out of a palace that's gone into lockdown, part where you have to get a rare fruit to make special medicine, and so on. The one interesting plot element that turned up is that a werepanther rescues your party at one point, before running away again. I suspect that this werepanther might be your dad, who went missing after going to rescue your friend slightly before you did. But this dangling thread isn't enough to keep me playing the game, so I guess I'll never know.

 

There's something in the game's mechanics that's kind of unique, but unfortunately, it's not in a positive way. Instead of picking your commands from menus in battles, you instead press a combination of a direction and a button to do each possible thing you might want to: right and button one to attack, up and button two for you're mage's fire spell, and so on. The problem is that you've got to memorise all of these things (though in the time I've played, I've only just got a character who can use magic, and she's basically just a healer, since her attack magic is so much weaker than the other party members' normal attacks, which don't use MP), and you only get about a second to remember and input the command you want, or the game just skips your turn and goes onto the next character (which is probably an enemy). I can see what they tried to do here, and it's just a shame that they didn't dump it after realising it was no fun.

 

This isn't a game that's completely without merit: it looks okay, and I think, in 1994, an RPG that's somewhat on par with the console RPGs of five or so years earlier with a running time to match definitely had a worthwhile place in a handheld's library, even if it is a bit generic. Unfortunately, it's not 1994 now, and I think every Game Gear RPG is available (officially or otherwise) in English, and I'm pretty sure that the only that isn't better than Molodorian is Defenders of Oasis. And even that game has the advantage of having a more interesting setting than this one.

Hashiriya - Ookami-Tachi no Densetsu (Playstation)

 There's a certain look that I really like in racing games, and unfortunately it's very much a product of its time. Grainy textures, low poly models, driving around empty roads in the dead of night, all that stuff. It's mostly seen in drift racing games inspired by the manga Initial D and the 90s Option VHS magazine that people used to post lots of gifs from on Tumblr many years ago. Hashiriya is not only one of the best-looking of these games I've ever seen, but it's also definitely taking a lot of inspiration from those two sources.

 

The main single player mode has you picking from a bunch of characters, each with their own cars, and each a member of a different faction. They all also each have their own storylines, told in lengthy dialogue scenes between races. It'd be nice if someone translated these someday. There's no decision making or anything in these scenes, and you can definitely 100% play the game without being able to read them, but these scenes are unskippable, so it'd at least be nice to be able to understand what's happening in them. But yeah, you pick a character, and you have to win a bunch of races as them to get through the story. It doesn't seem like you unlock anything for doing so, though. Which is fine, I guess.

 

There's also a time trial mode, and a mode where you can set up single races how you like. Especially nice in this mode is that you can choose the time of day, so tracks that are always night time in story mode can be played in the daylight, and vice versa. It'd be even better if there were weather options, too. All of these features and nice graphics and such would be worthless, though, if the game didn't feel good to play. Luckily, it does! It's not quite Ridge Racer or Daytona USA, but it's still nice, it doesn't feel like you're constantly crashing the car, nor do you feel like you have to crawl around the tracks to be able to take corners adequately.

 

It was a big relief for me, as when the translation patch for Racing Lagoon came out a while ago, I was kind of disappointed to find that I didn't enjoy how the racing felt in that game at all. Of course, that game looks amazing and it's by Squaresoft, so naturally my expectations were high. So a story-heavy racing game with really great-looking graphics that also plays well was a great find for me, especially since, like I said, being unable to read the story doesn't block you from being able to play through the game.

 

This is definitely a game worth playing. It's fun, looks great, and has a really nice atmosphere. It only has a few tracks, which is a little disappointing, but it's also actually pretty standard for racing games of the time. The massive array of tracks in Ridge Racer Type 4 is definitely the exception rather than the rule. But if you like this kind of racing game, then this is a very good example of it. It's a little surprising it isn't more well-known outside of Japan, to be honest. I would've thought the graphics alone would have gotten it some attention.