Altered Beast - Various

Save your time, play something else.

There's a lot of nostalgia factor with this game. Many will look back, or vaguely remember this game, rather fondly along the lines of "Oh yeah, that was awesome you could punch zombies and turn into a wolf thing" and the oft quoted speech "Wise fwom wor gwave" which only goes to show that they never got past the first level and I don't blame them for that.

"Wise fwom wow gwawe"

As an arcade game, it runs along the lines of the ancient story of girl gets kidnapped, God raises the dead to fight through Hell to get back girl, fighters turn into monsters and beat up a demon. The same old story. Being an arcade game there isn't much in the way of real substance here from "Move right and fight" although the addition of a pseudo-cutscene between each level is an interesting addition to the idea of a developing plot but really is just a monochromic powerpoint display.

Looks cool, isn't.

You start as a simple undead/rather-fleshy soldier that burst from his tombstone and begins immediately by punching, kicking and jumping your way through the level, taking on some rather disfigured enemies. However you will find yourself hopelessly outmatched unless you kill specific white double-headed dogs that release power orbs and allow you to "POWER UP" as the game happily announces. Each one making you more buff, harder to hurt, more physically imposing and doing more damage until you reach a third orb and then you turn into a monster with much a much more powerful moveset and the only real way you can even attempt to fight the boss of each level.

Snail...Dragon? Snaildragon? This become pokemon suddenly?

If you're unable to transform in time, you will fight the boss in your weaker form and that's on the assumption you even get that far. There's 3 chances to acquire the orbs at each stage of the level, but after the end of each stage you WILL be swarmed repeatedly by enemies you cannot realistically hope to defeat unless you transform at the next available instance. These white dogs are almost gleefully lampshaded by the game with the preceding brown equivalent dogs that will leap in first, usually knocking you to the ground, before the white one leaps in and past you while you get back to your feet.

This... is just shit.

Woefully unfair, the game pounds further with the idea of absolutely NO mercy invincibility after being knocked down. So each time you get back up, you can be on the end of a fist of pain and knocked down again, and again, and again until your meagre health bar is depleted and you're cursing at the arcade for being cheap. Coupled with almost entirely unavoidable boss-fight patterns, you'll soon find your safest route through the game is to walk away.

Yep, chickenleg is in Golden Axe. Go play that game instead.

But the fun doesn't stop there, your human character has barely any reach in fighting and only really becomes any actual use when they transform. Upon which your move set changes and you have to quickly learn the new controls and moves and how to use them effectively while still being attacked by your enemies. (Lovely bit of thinking on your feet really). While to add further misery, your move set's effectiveness is heavily dependent upon the creature you become. The werewolves have a fireball and fast kick move that serves very well against everything but airborne adversaries, the dragons have lasers and electric fields but are huge targets and move too slowly to avoid attacks. The bears are almost entirely useless having no range attack, just stone breath and a spinning jump that puts you next to enemies if you miss. The tigers have a vertical kick attack similar to the werewolves and a fireball of sorts before the last level gives you back the werewolves and by this point, you'll be very grateful for it.

Artsy, but nobody really cares.

It's hard to pinpoint why so many people like this game when really, it's a rather difficult and unplayable mess of a game, hampered by its own controls and almost deliberately infuriating the player to the point of them walking away from the game itself in sheer maddening frustration at once again being butchered by simply not being as powerful as the game wanted or by not realising the limitations of the characters brought about by the oddly coded movement and combat engine.

Hurry up and kill it, I'm bored.

The audio in the game is a mixed bag, while the slightly muffled sound samples are amusing to hear, the rest of the game's effects and music are rather drab and uninspired. It's also quite likely you won't hear it anyway as you'll be too busy shouting at the inept control system, confusing set up of directional attacks (Down and kick, kicks upwards?) and realising that level 3 is such a pain in the arse to contend with that you'll likely not bother and go play something else.

Why do I even bother...

Surprisingly, that sums up this game. Remember it fondly but don't go back to it, go play something else and leave this tired mess alone in the days where people forgot how to rate games appropriately.

Troddlers - SNES (and other formats)

It's the title, run now and don't come back, thank me for it later.

Take the idea of lemmings, you know, those blue-bodied, green-haired suicidal little beasts that mindlessly run back and forth along levels until you build them, block them, blow them up and cause little fireworks. Now remove ALL the functionality from them and make them run up walls and across the ceiling like they've got the stickiest shoes in existence. Still with me? NOW, put in a playable character that can make blocks appear and disappear and you've basically got Troddlers.

No foes... I can't die sooner rather than later.

Troddlers, the "fun" game of block building where 1-2 players get to help guide the haplessly little minions from starting point to ending point by building and placing blocks strategically so that the little pets can happily and mindlessly make their way to the goal and thus, you can beat the level. Unless of course you've also got to collect specific items during the level.

More walking than the Lord Of The Rings films.

While doing this, you have to get your character around the same level while using the SAME blocks in a mash-up of puzzler and platformer. So not only are you guiding the Troddlers into the exit, you also have to make your own stairwells and platforms in order to get to be in the key places that will allow the Troddlers to meander their way to the objective. Now do we start to see where this is going wrong?

It only LOOKS interesting.

Throw in a bad, unresponsive and reliable control system and you've got the recipe for a thunderclade shitstorm of frustration. If only it was that bad. Troddlers can be minded up, burned up, tripped, flipped, crushed (and in some cases they HAVE to be) and so on that you need to prevent their demise through strategic placing of blocks. You also need to make sure YOU don't die from enemies and more.

New sprites, same dull gameplay.

To add more chaos, there's zombie Troddlers that can kill the real ones and SOMETIMES (depends on the level) hurt you upon contact, while some enemies will injure you and others will kill or make things more awkward for the Troddlers. The rules are fairly inconsistent on this one.

Good Knight, I've had enough.

But let's not stop there, you can also have multiple blocks! Standard blocks for walking and moving, ice blocks to reduce traction and stop Troddlers walking up (or down) them, Mines for blowing things up (including Troddlers), Arrow blocks that flip Troddlers through the block. Bouncers to stop Troddlers from dying upon falling too far, and finally Slowdown blocks that do exactly what it says on the tin. In truth, most of these are just annoying and make the level more awkward than it already is.

It took 9 minutes to get here.

The game isn't without merit, I just don't know where to find it. But having said that it has a fair charm to it with the graphics and the levels at least look unique enough from Space levels to Pyramids and such, but the block structure and mechanics leaves you realising that this is just a grid game and soon you don't even see the aesthetics, just where blocks go, can't go and what to do. It loses its charm rather quickly.

There's fire, but it can't get to you, how disappointing.

The music however is decent enough with some rather chirpy and catchy little tunes that sadly become dull and repetitive when you're playing on levels for 10 minutes at a time because one little Troddler is insistent upon walking ALL THE WAY AROUND THE LEVEL because you didn't quite get to the one point you needed to be in, in time. The sound effects however are dull, uninspired and rather bland.

The most accurate depiction of this game. It'll send you to sleep.

It's not a great game, it's dull, slow paced and too unforgiving and awkward with the controls for it to be any real fun and once you've seen a few levels, you've effectively realised all that is on off and can happily switch it off, blend the cartridge and go play something more fun, like in traffic.

Shaq Fu (Megadrive)

Umm... Ego much?

Shaq Fu, it's been said that this game is monumentally bad. I however had never played the game until recently and decided that maybe it'd be worth taking a look and seeing what redeemable features (if any) this game has. Ever one to support an underdog and play Devil's Advocate in such circumstances, I picked up a copy for the Megadrive (....Genesis.¬.¬).

My brain hurt itself with the level of sophistication shown

30 seconds in and I'm ready to shut this off and throw it out the fucking window into a wood chipper with acid-coated blades. The music is like listening to something I'd expect a 5 year old to generate on a synth when they're doing it just to be annoying. The tones and shift of the music are painful and I'm still yet to press the Start button on this bastard. Not really setting itself up well at the moment.

I envy Shaq, I wish I was knocked out for this game.

Oddly, it proudly touts Delphi Software as a developer, the same group that brought us Another World, Flashback, Operation Stealth... Future Wars... Fade to Black... Ok, starting to see a trend now. Though games were made after Shaq Fu, it certainly helped hammer a few nails into the coffin it would seem.

The setting, detail and backgrounds look stunning, but then so did Rise of the Robots

Shat Fuqup however is a beat-em-up for those who don't know. Featuring Shaquille O'Neal, though barely recognisable when in game, the game focuses on Shaq decided to pop into a shop while sight-seeing, get accosted into the back room and ends up in a world where some mummy has kidnapped a kid. A mix of The Mummy and The Golden Child if we're taking film references for inspiration.

I won't be back, Mummy Boy, and return the Legion of Doom's shoulder pads.

The story mode has Shaq running around a central hub/map and going to locations and fighting someone there. There's no build up in story other than "Here's Shaq, arse will be kicked" or at the very least, something might happen. There's no real reason for the fights from what I can see other than "Shaq turned up, now we must kung-fu fight" which makes far less sense than say, Street Fighter which is about a tournament and justifies why people are fighting. Here it's Shaq running up to someone's home, knocking on the door and then punching them in the mouth and running off until he finds the right door with the kidnapped kid behind it and punch the kidnapper in the mouth before running off.

Fight and already taken damage, seems fair to me...

However, the fighting... Well... Where do I begin? The AI tends to start the fight before you even do, "Begin" you're told and already you've gotten a boot to the face. Combat is a series of single attacks from kicks and punches with the directional control modifying the attack slightly. I.e. Towards and Kick is a lunging kick, while Kick on its own is a standard straight kick and back with kick is a round house. Each character has 2-3 moves that barely can be said to be moves for some characters, while other characters have such overpowered attacks with little cool-down after that makes them effectively death-on-legs, assuming you can time the move well enough to pull it off.

No life... Ironic really...

The responsiveness of the controls is shit-and-miss at best. Jumping and attacking is... A lottery at best of who wins which attack and how. The special moves are almost impossible to pull off without inadvertently doing another move instead or just standing there and back flipping into an oncoming attack. 2 player duelling is just a hammer fest of buttons and good luck trying to counter any attacks or time it well enough to hit someone after they've been blocked before they hit you again.

Shaq ignores the metallic body gear however.

Graphically speaking it's a mixed back. The background and setting look impressive as one might come to expect from Delphine Software, but the characters in fighting are tiny by comparison to games like Mortal Kombat and it's as if they reused their own Point and Click engine to make this game, where in each command is just another command you'd find in something like Flash Back or Future Wars. It just doesn't work and makes the game unbearable to view, even less so with that annoying music in the background that doesn't fit but seems more at home in a hospital on a life-support machine while I'm reaching for the plug!

Thank God, it's nearly over. Yes that few pixels on the bridge is YOU.

It still seems to me that this was originally going to be something else and the fighting was thrown in at the last minute, then someone up top decided that the fighting was going to be the ONLY thing. Before this pile of abuse was hurled to players around the planet. Avoid it, steer clear as I wish I had.

Golden Axe (Megadrive)

1989, a good year, no idea why

It's an old game, but a good one over all and depending upon which system you play it upon, you may end up with more levels than you realise. Golden Axe IS still a good game and one that stands proud as part of the golden age of the arcade brawler with its multiple characters, spell system, combos and various attacks and multitudes of enemies, mounts and bosses (see: palette swaps).

Green, Blue, Red, in order of attack power and reverse order of magic power

The story is simple enough, some prick has a giant axe of gold and rules the land, you need to go drop an anvil on his head in the form of slaughtering his army one-by-one until you get to him, settle your differences and then maybe go on to fight his boss as well. It's a storyline taken from nearly every swords/magic/might/barbarian type of film going that it's effectively made it into its own little interactive film.

NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUKE!

You start with your character, either the blue themed barbarian with his sword, muscles and very little else being worn. The red themed Amazonian type warrior woman, wearing slightly more than the barbarian and having a smaller sword but the most magic potential (i.e. summon a dragon to cough up all over your enemies) and then there's our green diminutive coloured dwarf, who thanks to an incident in Ireland many years back I will dub "Murphy".

Yes, the last boss IS using that dragon on you.

Murphy and Co. will run the gauntlet of levels, enemies, dragons, odd chicken monsters and more to get from left to right in order to punch faces, stab bodies and hack up fuck ups everywhere. Liberating a giant turtle, giant bird and some identical looking villagers (sprite limits etc). While punching out small baldy, big baldy, skeletons, dragon riders, warrior women, ghosts, knights in full body armour, some muscle bound nutcase with a giant axe and magic powers, some muscle bound nutcase with a giant axe and even more magic powers and his two immortal skeleton bodyguards. It's a BIG list of enemies for a small game and colour swapping is RIFE.

As you can see, it can quite action packed on the screen from time to time.

As you wander the land, you'll meet some really quick-footed and ANNOYING little bastards that will drop magic potions and meat. Magic potions fill your magic meter and the more you have, the more powerful your magic attack will be when you unleash it all at once (except in beginner mode) and watch as something happens, enemies get hurt, then usually get up to keep fighting until you kill them that little bit quicker. The more magic you have when you use it, the more damage you do.

Looks like a fair fight...

You'll quickly learn to treat skeletons as hell spawn that need to killed quickly before they do some heavy damage to your health bars, while most bosses are too slow to be a real threat, it's about their backup that's the issue (except Death Bringer.. his backup never dies). While certain moves are more powerful and that the enemies will not nicely wait while you beat up one of them and if there's more than one, one WILL try to flank you and get behind you. It happens every time but it's nice to see the AI was written to give a challenge, more so than quite a few brawlers I can think of.

Oh ok, an eagle, like I care just get me to the last level!

The music is fairly standard, nothing really to write home about but you'll find yourself humming the initial bars to the first level here and there and the sound effects... well let's just move on for now. Ok they're shat for the most part, some repeated and recycled poorly for the wrong enemies too.

Like the dwarf, I was very unimpressed by the opposition.

Gameplay is the usual arcade affair, you'll likely play it a few times and even less if you manage to beat it, but there is the co-operative play for a friend or the solo basement dweller can opt for the duel mode which is a gauntlet of levels with ever increasing enemies until you beat it or die trying. It does add a quick play mechanic to the system and works rather well as both a challenge and a warm up to playing the main game.

That's just embarassing.

It has its glitches and it has its exploits you can use, getting caught between two enemies at once is a pig when the engine will let them wipe you out in a combined twitch-up of a combo, but for the most part it's a good, solid game that can be enjoyed even today.