Sispri Gauntlet (PC)

 Remember my review of Gal Pani X a few months ago, when I mentioned that I'd been unable to find a copy of this game? Well, thanks to the help of a good friend, I managed to get ahold of it, and it was worth the effort! It's a fangame based on a series of novels and a dating simulator called Sister Princess, with a premise so creepy that I'll let you go and look it up yourselves if you want to know, but luckily that doesn't really affect this game.

 

The title spells out the basic premise, really: it's Sister Princess characters, in a Gauntlet=style game. That's Gauntlet the old maze shooting game, not just the general concept of gauntlets. Of course, just like how D5 gave the Gals Panic games a boost of adrenaline with Gal Pani X, Sispri Gauntlet does the same to Gauntlet. The easy way of describing it would be to say that it's an enemy hell game. THere are constantly thick hordes of enemies assailing you from all directions, spawning out of (thankfully destructible) generators. So your task is to manage the flow of these enemies and get to the end of the stage, as well as finding keycards to open doors along the way.

 

There's various other complications too, like giant robots that walk around placing more generators, barricades that act like walls that block movement and you shots, but allow enemy shots to pass through, and the most panic-inducing of all: the time limit. Considering the amount of enemies you have to fight, the time limit is incredibly tight, and once it runs out, you're quickly murdered by an endless swarm of tiny red enemies that spawn everywhere in increasing numbers until you're dead.

 

One thing I didn't like is the way you use your super weapon: rather than being assigned a button of its own, you're supposed to tap a direction and the shoot button together to use it, though it's very unreliable and only registers about a third of the time. Also, it's only limited in that it takes a couple of seconds to regarge after use, announcing that it's ready with the "OK" sound effect from Giga Wing, oddly. This is a relatively small complaint, though, and overall, I think this is an excellent game. It might seem overwhelmingly difficult at first (and even after a couple of hours' play, I've only managed to get as far as the third stage), but with some perseverance and a little bit of strategic thinking, you'll get into the swing of it, and realise that stemming the flow of enemies and avoiding their bullets isn't as impossible as it first seems. If you can find a copy, I definitely recommend playing Sispri Gauntlet.

Critical Blow (Playstation)

 I originally played this game just because of the graphics, which are amazing. It's got a lot of charm in its low-poly anime style. But not only did it actually turn out to be a fun game, but also an all-round aesthetic masterpiece that really captured the feel of a certain culture at a specific time. Maybe even more than Evil Zone/Eretzvaju, Critical Blow is like a time capsule of anime fandom in the late nineties!

 

The way all the characters look the world they inhabit, the high-quality animated FMV intro, and even the music will take you right back to that time. It even infiltrates the way the game plays to a certain extent! One of the modes on the main menu is "Theatre Mode", which I assumed would be just a menu where you can view unlocked cutscenes (as well as the intro, there's also an animatd ending for each character in Arcade Mode). What it actually is is a story mode in which you play as the game's main protagonist Ricky, and have the game's plot told to you via a mixture of still images with text captions, and yet more fully voiced, fully animated high quality FMV cutscenes! Of course, whenever a fight breaks out. that's when the actual game part kicks in. 

 

As well as Theatre and Arcade, there's also another single player mode, called Trading Mode. This is an instance of something that was very fashionable in console fighting games at the time: a mode where you take a character, fight lots of opponents, and gradually increase their stats and unlock new abilities. It was probably popularised by Street Fighter Alpha 3's famous World Tour mode, but I think it might have started in the Flash Hiders games on SNES and PC Engine. It's fine I guess, but I think it speaks to the quality of Arcade and Thatre modes that it's easily the least interesting part of this game, and that's coming from someone who can't even understand any of the text or dialogue in Theatre Mode. The art and FMV are really that charming!

 

There are some bad sides to the game, especially if you're hoping for a well-balanced, competitive fighter. Like how the super meter is filled by any blocked or connecting attacks, including super attacks. So one character in particular, who has a long range, multi-hit super, once they have one meter, they essentially have infinite supers as long as they either hit or get blocked (and the super in question does a not insignificant amount of damage even when blocked, too). There's also a possible issue with the camera: as the fighters get closer to one end of the stage or the other, the camera will tilt slightly to make a dramatic angle, which does look really cool, but might raise some questions regarding fairness, especially among the kind of players who insist on always fighting in plain training stages, or banning custom costumes in modern fighting games.

 

Mostly, though, Critical Blow is a game I strongly recommend, especially if you're nostalgic for the era in which it was originally released. I think the music especially is going to make a certain section of my audience lose their minds when they hear it! I learned only after already having played it for several hours that it's also the sequel to game from 1996 called Genei Tougi, so that might also be worth checking out too (though I haven't played it yet, so I can't say for sure).