Night Slashers (Arcade)

It's like killing monsters... Actually it's just killing monsters.

Data East has a history of hit and miss gaming. This one is more of a "skewed off to the side" kind of game. In the same vein as Final Fight, Mutation Nation, Violent Storm and other such brawlers, Night Slashers takes a sort of Van Helsing approach to gaming and pits three characters (The Heavy, All Rounder and Nimble Minx) against a medly of monsters from various franchises and source materials and you get to beat them up in a variety of fashions and ways.

How's it "uncanny" if he knows lots of martial arts?

You've your strong character, a mix of cybernetics and cheesy rock with a dash of California in there. Capable of picking up monsters and leaping around while using combos and attacks others can't. Your all rounder character that looks very synonymous to Van Hellsing while having a balance of combos and moves and then there's the token bonus nimble character that nobody really wants to pick as they can't take a hit as well as the others and has more moves than most people will bother to try and learn to be effective with them before having to select another character as they've just lost their last life... again. Night Slashers knows its cliches and falls into the same trap as almost every other similar game (Undercover Cops... Monster Maulers... Dynamite Cop 2... I'll stop there...)

...maybe

INTROOO!!! Actual fighting is not as fun/easy.

Plot wise for Night Slashers, you get various monsters roaming the world and these 3 people are going to fix it. By killing everyone and not looking for a cure. Zombies are roaming the streets, Doctors have gone mad, Frankenstein's Monster is stalking in the shadows, a pastiche of Dracula causes trouble, someone gets to punch out a helicopter, a Mummy fights using wrestling moves (not bad for an emaciated guy...girl...dead person), all because some demon is returning to this plane of existence and your characters need to kill it. (No spoils but if you've seen certain episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, you know what to expect. Yeah that episode with the possessed book that got scanned into a scanner...)

Give it now! Cut this 'running away' shit and get to the fighting!

Graphically, Night Slashers is certainly riding high in the blood, guts and gore department. Everything you fight and kill dies (un-dies?) in a violent or gruesome fashion while cut-scene images look impressive and reek of 90s comic book stylings which adds to the cheesiness of the game but not in a negative manner. Likewise, getting critical hits on enemies throws up a comic book style effect to illustrate that you just hit harder than you ever hit before and often resulting in an instant kill with standard enemies. The largest problem, graphically speaking, is that the animations of the creatures and the characters becomes less fluid depending upon which movements the characters are forced to go through, usually getting up or moving more dynamically beyond the point of the generic "menacing walk" down the street.

At least he has an idea of what to do

Having said that, the audio in Night Slashers tries its hardest to give the player an experience with the music that ultimately falls flat in places but ambles along amicably enough to set a suitable mood without the emphasis on being too serious while not being overly slapstick (the graphics and Over The Top violence do that already), and while it's impressive to hear digitised speech and sound samples for the combat, it's rather repetitive to hear the characters repeating the same words over and over, ad nauseam, every time they get up or do a special move. The first few times it's ok, after that it simply becomes dull and monotonous.

Obligatory lift level

There's little here to come back to for Night Slashers, after the first time the game is beaten, aside perhaps to see the excessive violence and cheesy horror setting and in all regards, even that isn't enough to determine more credits from pockets. Repetitive gameplay despite the option for more attacks and combos and an awkward control system coupled with monsters and bosses that get stupidly high levels of priority in attacks, bury any chance of a real replay interest with the very undead it has with its own monsters.

Don't care, kicked your arse already.

Super Smash TV - SNES

Big money, big prizes, I love it ~Mr Emcee

It's been a long time since I last played this game on the SNES, I remember seeing it on display on an old 24" TV (flat screen? what the hell is that?) and seeing the near-arcade replication and thinking to myself "I must have this game" I wasn't disappointed at the time and in looking back, seeing the game recently again and experiencing it again, I've found that it's one of those that managed to survive the test of time and be almost as incredible as I remember it to be.

 

Secret rooms not listed. (Hint: it's the blank room of the 3x3, approach from left)

The concept is based off The Running Man, a Bachman book that was actually Stephen King, which then was HEAVILY adapted into a film with the ARHNULD, before becoming a free-for-all bloodbath (and thankfully so) with Super Smash TV. The idea being across all of them, that there's a TV show where contestants are allowed to submit themselves to be hunted down and killed LIVE on TV. In the book, it's set in the outside world, in the film it's a game show against specific "gladiators", in the game it's against an army of enemies and huge bosses.

 

Mine, grunts, walking bombs, oh my!

Controls are simple and I'm thankful for that much. The D-Pad moves your character around and the 4 buttons are your attack directions, giving it a bonus over the arcade game in that the twin joystick just wasn't as accurate as this set up. Collect items and weapons by just running into them and they're automatically selected or dismissed as soon as you collect them, particularly weapons as you'll lose what you had and immediately gain your new weapon replete with ammo, at the cost of your previous weapon's armaments. You also can collect landmines, in the 'immediately blowing up your body' sense.

 

He's big, he's bad, he's... immune only to standard bullets, grab the weapons.

Oddly enough, the arcade game gave away free lives if they players could collect them and that's carried over onto the SNES version in that the game has a limit on the number of continues the players can use. Having said that, the rest of the arcades power ups and systems are in place, ranging from the enemies that you'd find in the original from mobs with clubs, to robots with lasers, rolling tanks, turrets, snake trails, snake segments, buffalo, small snakes, snake men (why the snake theme guys?) and including the bosses in all their glory.

You win! But it's not likely you'll live long enough to collect it.

It's a very faithful adaptation, all the powerups are still there from orbiting orbs that double your firepower until they're touched, five shuriken shield, invincible shields, socks/speed up, presents for points, cash for points and finally (as I like to call it) the breath-taker, a nuke or smart bomb that gives you a few moments of peace to take a quick breather. Unless I start to really dig into the game there's very little here that's NOT in the arcade original and in some cases there's MORE than the original arcade had.

 

ORBS! No really, there's orbs coming.

These bonus extras include the secret rooms with their special pickups that can unlock the super secret room later on as part of the pleasure dome to give you the best ending of the game. It's a monster of a room that likely has more fighting going on in that one room than most of the game has to offer. The game really does love to throw everything at you, including the kitchen sink, which it will happily beat you to death with around the head and neck if you're fortunate. If not, it will CONTINUE to beat you around the head and neck long after they're gone and all that remains is a pair of crappy shoes. Yeah I'm not impressed with what you're wearing.

 

See, told you it was in the bottom right.

Key grudges for this game is that it is significantly, undeniably, slower than the arcade original. How this is the case I'm not sure given that once you've beaten the game, you get the 10x speed option to play through and it runs that very well indeed, maybe doubling the normal speed and having 5x speed just wasn't an idea that came to mind for the developers. Oddly as well, nearly all the sounds of the game sound like they were sampled from the arcade rather than converting the files down, nearly every sound effect has a slight, and it is slight, hiss behind the noise that gives away that it's been recorded and re-sample in this manner. Despite this, the third level has its own music rather than the arcade version (which ran the first level music again) and I must say it's well worth hearing.

 

Outnumbered? yes. Out gunned? No.

Two players working together should be able to smash (ha ha... god that was terrible) this game with relative ease and one player, playing diligently, ought to be able to beat the game barring some very unfortunate moments. My advice, stick the game in hard mode and leave it there, playing on easy or normal will stop the game after the first and second level respectively, play it in hard and enjoy it for what it is, fun, mindless, chaos.

Bring on the gore!

Silent Hill: The Escape (iOS)

Possibly time for the brown trousers.

It's no secret that I love the Silent Hill series, except for maybe Homecoming and possibly Silent Hill 4: The room. So I was rather surprised when I hadn't heard of Silent Hill: The Escape which sits on iOS machines and retails in around £1.49 mark, so I was a little apprehensive on the grounds that the rest of the games I'd bought for about £20 and wondered how this was going to factor up to the plot intensive, atmospheric games that had only so much explained and the rest had to be deduced and worked out for oneself (Especially the first game, mmmm.... Silent Hill 1 on PSX...). Which left me with mixed feelings for this one.

Certainly not an advocate of the "Do No Harm" idea.

You are Captain NobbyNobody, a generic human who somehow wakes up in the worst place imaginable, a lift. (Elevator I suppose to some) Upon awakening you realise you have with you a 5 shot revolver, a lead pipe and a torch. You will now navigate ten different and increasingly more complex mazes on the quest to find the key and then find the exit while being stalked and hunted down by various denizens of the Silent Hill world. While trying to remember who you are. I always find that odd at times, "I don't know who I am, but I know how to load, aim and fire a gun at key critical points in monsters to kill them more effectively and the idea of wandering around a haunted place doesn't upset me in the slightest" is a weird stance to take for someone with no personal memory.

Here's the plot.

Ok, so the plot is out of the window on this one. That's the extent of it and if you beat the game you unlock other characters with which to run through the game in various fashions of comedy that make sense only if you a) Know Silent Hill and b) Got several of the UFO/Comedy endings for the game series. Those in the know, understand when I say "Mira" and those who don't should doggone look it up!

Reload time, steady hand now!

Game play uses the tilt within the iOS systems to be able to aim your targeting reticule while the movement and turning is done by placing your finger upon the screen and stroking in the appropriate direction, effectively making a directional pad appear under your finger when you press down upon it. Tapping the revolver icon in the corner will let you reload but you'll need a steady hand to be able to slam all 5 rounds in otherwise you'll end up with far fewer and less shots before needing to reload again, and a steady hand is far from your concern when ANY monster is bearing down upon you. For you are also, Captain One Hit Wonder! Master of dying at the brush of a feather from anything more dangerous than an ant.

Thankfully, this time I have the key.

Enemies are fairly varied within the game, from faceless nurses that meander about and take 1-2 shots depending if you hit the critical points. Wheelchairs that trundle along and can catch someone unawares as they're low down on the visual plane. Hanging flesh things (I forget the name, might as well be called Dave) that encourage the player to aim upwards and the more demanding enemies later on that have psychic shields and take 5+ shots before being downed. Not that there's an abundance of ammo lying around either, you've got 25 shots and that's it.

It could be around the next corner.

What this game does have, if you let it draw you in (and it will if you stick at it) is atmosphere. Ignoring the simple maps that lack stairs and walls bending at anything other than 90degree angles as if we stole the Wolfenstein 3D engine (it's not, I know, but might as well be), the graphics and ambient music build up to a rather claustrophobic fear, especially when considering that the game is entirely in first person so no more peeking around corners. What doesn't help is the "Danger" heart beat that pounds when something is close but not what it is nor where it is, just that it's close. This could be on the other side of a wall and no ACTUAL threat but you won't know that. Late levels also include grates across various walkways that don't show up as dead-ends so relying solely upon the compass and small localised map isn't always advised.

At least I'm accurate.

Another interesting touch to the game is that the torch will dim and eventually fade, meaning the game does have a time limit on how long you can spend wandering each maze though there are also batteries that refuel this torch and your sole means of observing whatever it is that's coming at you otherwise it's wandering in the dark time and that's going to get real deadly, real fast.

Batteries, pretty much a first for Silent Hill games.

It's certainly different and as a game, it's not really a Silent Hill game aside from having a few featured enemies and the name Silent Hill plastered across it, but it's certainly worth the asking price for what is an experimental twist upon the horror franchise that goes fairly well if you let it get to you. It's almost minimalist in its approach to the idea of horror that what you can't see is what's the most terrifying and seeing the danger icon blinking but not being able to see the enemy or know whether it's around the next corner or the one after is certainly of that ilk. Once you start backtracking and waiting while turning to the sides to see if something is sneaking up on you, then it's worked and you're caught by the atmosphere.

Sadly I mistimed the photo, but it's the key.

Though don't play it on a bus. Unless it's late at night, you're the last one on the bus and the lights suddenly go off and you realise the bus driver isn't there anymore. Though but that point you're already in Silent Hill, grab a torch.