This game was a rather fun little downloadable game I happened to get free on the Playstation network. I had seen previews for it, and it just happened to be the free game of the month so I decided to not only download it, but also play through it. It is very old school and it reminded me of the old Nintendo game, Contra. There are several differences though as there are not just the two characters that were within that game a red and blue guy. No, here we have characters based on old action stars of the 80's and 90's with a couple of them being newer than that. There is also blood and gore...well, as much blood and gore as a game that has a 16-bit look can have anyway. It was by no means perfect as it did get rather repetitive and once you unlock all the characters, you tend to want to just get to the end as the levels kind of lose their charm when there is no longer a need to rescue people in order to unlock the next character, but overall it is a pretty fun game.
The story is very deep and boils down to you being part of a special forces unit that has to stop Satan! You go to different countries and for the most part they all look similar. The game could have been a bit less monotonous had they used some more backgrounds and stuff. As I've said, they have a ton of characters like one based off Rambo, The Terminator, Commando, Mad Max, Blade and the list goes on and on; however, it does end and that is when the game becomes a bit less fun and more frustrating. I didn't mind dying when that meant I could start a level over and rescue more people and boost my total towards the next unlock. Once all the characters are done though, I felt the need to just win the game and that is when I became irritated. That last level kept going on, the final boss has a couple of forms, more than a couple I should say. I just wanted it to be over!
The game play is like Contra and other side scrolling shooters; however, the difference is the number of characters. Each one possesses a different weapon and specialty. The Rambo one simply used a machine gun and tossed grenades. One based on B.A. from A-team used a flame thrower and dynamite. Still others use swords and one even uses his fists. The characters you get to start a level are randomly generated as far as I can tell and even when you rescue a person, you will switch to another random character. At times, this is kind of annoying, but does make the game more challenging. So many times I was doomed to fail as soon as that McGuyver guy popped up!
So it was a pretty good download, but not without its flaws. One I noticed playing it, was a pause that seemed to take place when each level started. The character would just stop moving for a brief period. Not sure if this is something in the game or something in my system. It was annoying and at times it made a level more difficult than it should have been. Still, it was pretty fun just blasting away and I would like to try to use the multi player feature this game has. Something tells me, just like in Contra, that it doesn't make the game any easier, but instead incredibly more difficult!
