Tyrian 2000

Platform: PC
Developer: Eclipse Productions
Released: 1995
Genre: Shoot 'Em Up

The Story
In the year 20,031, terraforming is big business, and there's no one bigger than the megacorporation Microsol. And when they come across a strange mineral called Gravitium that can control gravity itself, they look to become even bigger still. But you can't conquer the market - not to mention the galaxy - without shooting a few people in the back, and that's just what they do to the only person who knows about the mineral and their plans and isn't willing to go along with it. Unfortunately for the megalomaniacs at Microsol, that person just happened to have a friend named Trent Hawkins. A friend who happens to be not only one of their most skilled terraforming pilots, he's also pretty handy with a weapons system as well and looking to give his now former employers a little payback.

After stealing a ship, Trent heads out for the nearest non-Microsol planet to spread the word about Gravitum and bring the corporation down. The only problem? The absolute shit-ton of battle-ready ships between here and there, all of them looking to silence him before the entire sector explodes into a corporate/government war.

The Game
[I]Tyrian 2000[/I] was originally just [I]Tyrian[/I] before it was re-released with a bunch of new stuff, like a new chapter in the storyline with new levels and weapons and the like. But even before that, it was just a little something cooked up by a couple of guys trying out some scrolling game architecture. Feeling they might be on to something, they started shopping what they'd made around even though it couldn't really be called a game at the time. A few folks at Epic MegaGames happened to like the looks of the ingredients they were working with, brought in a few more cooks from developers Eclipse, and voila! A few years later a tasty arcade-style treat was served to the general public.

Small game makes good. It's beautiful, man.

The Characters
Trent Hawkins is our main character, the man who's seat you're sitting several yards above throughout the course of the game. Though he doesn't really say too much, the walls of text that spring up in between missions and chapters let us know that he's not a very happy man. Of course, his best friend has been killed by the company he was working for, and now that company wants to kill him with extreme prejudice on the way to taking over the entire galaxy. Not many people are going to be at their best under those conditions. As a result of all these shenanigans, Trent seems to turn into an angry, bitter shell through the course of the game, and who can blame him? Most of the people in his galaxy are complete assholes.

I could probably learn a little bit about each of the main bad guys in the game and tell you about 'em. There are at least a handful in there, and they are kind of colorful characters. But in the end, their primary role in the entire game is just to be bunch of complete assholes. Microsol as a whole has gone completely nutty, it seems, and all of them are fully prepared to take whatever steps necessary to procure complete control over everything and everyone in the galaxy. It's quite possible that the Gravitium has some kind of mind-bending element to it, but from the way they talk in the game, it's also quite possible that Microsol was already entirely staffed with megalomaniacal, delusional, and totally psychotic jerks.

Don't let any of this turn you off from the game, however. I think they're all great. I love every single one of those unrepentant douchebags!

The Writing
When I realized that this was going to be a bullets-flying-everywhere-shoot-em-up extravaganza, I wasn't expecting there to be, y'know, a story. And yet there is one! It's a bit hard to follow at first since a metric shit-ton of stuff is suddenly thrown at you all at once, including a bunch of stuff that doesn't seem relevant at fist but becomes so toward the end of the game. If, that is, you're bothering to pay attention to the story. It's not explicitly necessary, as it's just kind of something to read in between missions and has little to no bearing on the gameplay whatsoever except one to justify there being any gameplay in the first place and two giving little hints now and again.

That prompts the question then, should one even bother reading the story of T2K? My resounding answer is YES!

Once enough has been revealed that you can start making some sense out of everything that's being thrown at you, there actually is a pretty good story amidst the technobabble. The tale of a vengeful yet reluctant hero singlehandedly taking on the various dangers of the sector and smashing them flat one by one. Trechery, betrayal, high stakes, all that sorta good stuff. And surprisingly enough a great deal of humor, mostly of the absurdist and meta types while incorporating a lot of satirical jabs at some of the staples of science-fiction writing.

Sure, you could just blast through one level after another, taking suckahs out without thinking twice about why you're doing it, but I'd recommend giving the data cubes a chance before blasting off to your next adventure. You might just be pleasantly surprised at what you find.

The Gameplay
The basic setup is that of a basic overhead shoot 'em up. Bullets - yours and theirs - flying all over the place and basically obscuring everything on the screen as you weave back and forth and left and right. Crush your enemies, take the stuff they drop, crush some more. Virtually every level ends with a boss fight against some very large and very deadly ship or monster or construct of some kind.

But like the writing above, there's actually much more to it than one would expect. There's a great deal of customization you can do with your ship, even from the get-go. The ship and weapons upgrade system is very deep and changes slightly with almost every level depending on what kind of gear becomes available between missions. And despite there being different prices for each weapon, that doesn't necessarily mean that more expensive is also more better. I spent most of the game sporting the cheapest and most basic forward gun, simply upgrading its power level again and again as I got more cash. Why? Because I wielded it as pure death, bringing destruction to every dumb motherfucker that got in my path, that's why. For the most part, none of the other guns worked near as well for me.

But that was just me. There's several different kinds of weapons to choose from, and which is the best depends a great deal on what kind of strategy you take while playing.

I really liked the generator/shields/armor dynamic the game has going. Your armor is the basic structural integrity of the ship itself, and better ship models have more armor. Protecting that are your energy shields, which gradually get refilled by the generator. Better generator means better shield refill, and if you've got the best of both then ramming other ships becomes a completely viable option in a pinch. Keeping an eye on all of this during the game adds a nice layer to the challenge as well as giving you another slightly unconventional weapon in your arsenal.

The Challenge
The natural progression of challenge is to get harder and harder as you go along. In this, T2K is not quite natural. The beginning of the game is frustrating as shit as you start out with a little underpowered vessel and almost no idea what you're doing with the upgrade system. Once you start figuring out what combinations work right for you and get access to some of the better stuff later on in the game, things quickly shift in favor of the player. Eventually survival is just a matter of holding down the fire button and weaving from side to side, filling the screen with hot lasery death from which nothing can escape.

Which I gotta admit is fun, and it felt like a nice reward for having to put up with the constant deaths that plagued me early on. The backwards challenge scale doesn't really seem too out of place, and instead it's just nice to feel like a big damn badass toward the end.

The Sights
Wow! Many of the levels have their own kind of theme - set up by the storyline stuff between them - giving a wide variety of scenery to look at. And without a single exception I can think of, they are all absolutely gorgeous. Even when I was dying and starting each level over again and again, the one thing I didn't whine and moan about was the chance to see the pretty backgrounds again and again as well. They manage to shine through even when over 50% of their area is obscured by weapons fire.

The enemy design, while not exactly inspired as they all sort of run the basic sci-fi shoot 'em up gamut, is still very well done and eye pleasin'.

The Sounds
The default music setting is set rather low, leading to an interestingly low-key soundtrack overall. For the most part I didn't even hear it over the sounds of my own lasers blasting through the air and the explosions of my opponents. And in the end, those two things are really the only music you need for this merciless path of destruction. But on the few occasions I did take the time to stop and listen to the BGM, I would consider turning the music up to a more audible setting. It's actually pretty nice, if a bit incongruent with the war-like setting of the game.

The Bottom Line
I'll admit it. I went into Tyrian 2000 expecting a samey piece of junk as any other quarter-eating arcade overhead shoot 'em up. At first glance it certainly did look like it was going to go that route. And even though it did contain that sort of thing within it, T2K surprised the hell out of me by being an almost completely different sort of experience, going above and beyond to deliver something more. Beautiful graphics, a good story, a well thought out weapons system, and ridiculous amounts of comedy, all wrapped up in the comfortable trappings of a blow-the-shit-out-of-everything package.

It's good and it's free, so go out there and get it!

Flight of the Amazon Queen

Platform:  Computer
Developer:  Interactive Binary Illusions
Released:1995
Genre:  Point and Click Adventure

The Game
A stray bolt of lightning strikes the Amazon Queen, a passenger airplane flying over the Amazonian rain forest, stranding its pilot Joe King (get it?), Skip the mechanic, and famous actress Faye Russel in the middle of the jungle.  While Joe tries to find a way for them to get back to civilization, he gets embroiled in the vile machinations of Dr. Ironstein, a German scientist determined to create an army of dinosaur Amazon warriors in order to take over the world!

FOTAQ is a pastiche of various pulp fiction stories and movie serials popular in the 1940's and 50's, and more specifically it was inspired by Indiana Jones (they even have a crystal skull, more than a decade before Indiana Jones did it!) and the Monkey Island series, and it contains several other George Lucas based references, primarily from Star Wars (including one of the voice actors, who was Porkins in A New Hope!).  One wonders why it wasn't actually published by LucasArts, but I'm sure they enjoyed the free advertisement anyway.

If you, too, wish to play this game but don't want to spend time trying to find or build a really old computer to do so, then you're in luck!  Just head on over to the ScummVM website.  "ScummVM" stands for Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine, and it enables new computers (and other digital devices) to play several point-and-click games from that era.  Including, as the name implies, Maniac Mansion.  "But, Jim!" you wail helplessly.  "I don't have the disks for Amazon Queen!"  Well worry not, whiny peoples of the internet, for FOTAQ is one of a few games that have been offered up for free use with the ScummVM system!  Just head on over to the downloads section of the site and grab it!

The Characters
Our erstwhile hero is Joe King (get it this time?), a rough-and-tumble airplane pilot who somehow manages to get into all sorts of weird adventures, including an ill-defined incident in Borneo.  He's a likable fellah with a jocular wit and isn't afraid to get his hands dirty in order to get himself and his friends out of a scrape.  This isn't to say he'll resort to violence, however . . . at least most of the time.  He does get a couple of good punches in, but for the most part he'd rather use his noggin to solve the many mysteries of the Amazonian jungle.

Along for the ride is Skip, the wide-eyed mechanic with a penchant for Commander Rocket comic books, and Faye Russel, an aggressive film star prima donna who naturally blames Joe for everything and lords over him every chance she gets.  You'd think she'd be the natural love interest in that case, but no, that role goes to Princess Azura, the strong and beautiful leader of the Amazon women.  Because naturally there would be a tribe of strong and beautiful Amazons.

Dr. Ironstein (how about this one, do you get this one?) is your typical mad scientist, using his mad science in an overly convoluted manner as part of an overly convoluted plan for world conquest.  He's got the lab coat, he cackles madly, and he's got an army of German goons - some competent, some not - working for him.  Also working for him is Hans Anderson, a Dutchman who sounds like he's doing a bad Sean Connery impersonation and stands as Joe's rival in the passenger airplane business.

And then there's the ton of minor characters with which Joe must interact to proceed through the game, including but not limited to a tribe of pygmies (even though they aren't pygmies and pygmies are from Africa, but they call themselves that in order to beef up their tourist trade), Trader Bob (an Aussie bloke who runs a convenience store out of the pygmy village), Jimmy and Mary-Lou Cook (missionaries who failed in their attempts to teach the pygmies and are now concentrating on spreading the Word to the monkeys of the jungle), the ferryman (who, as a skeleton dressed in a long black robe, looks suspiciously familiar), and various others.

The absolute best minor character in the game, however, has to be the gorilla.  I won't spoil it . . . you've just got to play the game to meet up with this fine specimen.

The Writing
Point-and-click adventure games tend to rely equally on two things: the quality of the puzzles and the quality of the writing.  And in this case, the writing definitely pulls through and delivers.  The humor of the game ranges all over the place, from silly puns to subtle wit to parody to pop culture references to pure absurdism.  The dialogue is tremendously clever, and it's worth reloading from your last save point just to go through each conversation multiple times just to hear all the different ways they can go.  The voice acting is superb as well, making what might seem like kind of a dud line when you read it instantly funny when it actually comes out of Joe's mouth.

The writers were obviously going for a combination mockery and homage to old pulp movies, and they captured that exact feel perfectly.  They threw in basically everything they could find, including fantasy, science-fiction, action adventure, monster movies, lost world tales, pseudo-Nazis, and a little bit of romance.  The entire experience is just a fun romp through the old tropes and cliches those various genres have to offer.

The Gameplay
It's pretty much your basic point-and-click setup, so there's not really that much to say.  It all works just about as well here as it does in any other adventure game of the time . . . there's a reason that kind of interface is a classic.

Still, there were a couple of very minor points.  Having to scroll through a ton of different items to find just the one I wanted would get a little annoying from time to time.  And while Joe is moving, you can't see the names of anything you scroll the pointer over.  You can still activate it (thank goodness), but if you don't know something's there already, you might miss it unless you wait for Joe to stop walking and then have a look around.

But like I said, very minor.  It doesn't really get in the way of enjoying the game.

The Challenge
FOTAQ does not in any way work on moon logic, for which I am extremely grateful.  Having done several moon logic puzzles in the past, I have learned to hate them with the burning intensity of a thousand suns.  The puzzles here, thankfully, all use a logical progression of thought and the sensible use of your various tools.  It's still challenging to figure out exactly how some certain things go together, but overall it's nicely balanced.  Difficult, but not painfully so.

The real trouble, especially as you get toward the end of the game, is figuring out exactly where you're supposed to go to get or use certain items.  The various areas in the game are pretty big, and Joe isn't exactly in a hurry to get anywhere, so you might end up searching for a very long time for just the right room to use your sticky bat in.  And at one point, I wandered around for what seemed like forever all because I couldn't tell that the darkest section of a dark section in a dark room was a door, so there was an entire pathway I kept missing, no matter how many times I walked around the temple.  What made it worse was that it was just over another door on a lower level, so that when my pointer was saying "walk to door", I thought it was just registering the door I could actually see.

But besides those little upsets, the basic challenge level of the game is just right.  As long as you pay attention to your surroundings and use your noggin when trying out various item combinations, it should be clear sailing.

The Graphics
I'd played this game before, but it still strikes me just how pretty it is.  The character models have a great deal of expression to them and the backgrounds are lush and simply awe-inspiring.  And thank goodness, because spending hours waltzing around from one side of the jungle to the other looking for stuff would get pretty damn boring otherwise.

The characters in the cut scenes are a little creepy looking, but everything else around them looks so good that I'm willing to forgive that.

The Music
At first I was prepared to just say "What music?"  It wasn't until I was about halfway through before I even realized I should be hearing music but wasn't, since there was one puzzle in which Joe specifically comments on the music playing.  After a great deal of searching for answers and fiddling around with the settings, I figured out that the music options need to be set on "AdLib" for some reason in order for the music to play.

Sadly, as soon as I had the music turned on, I kind of wish I'd left it off.  It's not bad, per se, and in fact it's kinda toe tapping in places and I wouldn't mind just listening to it by itself.  The problem is that it's distracting.  I'm trying to listen to the pygmy chief tell me about the mystic crystal skull, and all I can hear is the "piddle pink tink da da da" music playing in the background.  Even after I turned it down a little, my ear still kept getting drawn back into it.  I would have turned it off again, but I needed to suffer through it for the review!

So my verdict is, the music on its own is good, but as a part of the game, it's bad.

The Bottom Line
Hilariously written with challenging yet logical puzzles, great voice acting, and beautiful scenery.  One of the best games I've ever played, and it's free!  You can't beat that!

Comix Zone

Platform:  Sega Genesis
Developer:  Sega Technical Institute
Released:  1995
Genre:  Beat 'em up

The Game
Sketch Turner is just your regular rock musician who decides to try and make a comic book when he's suddenly zapped by lightning, which somehow causes him and the big bad of his story to switch places!  Now trapped within the pages of Comix Zone, Sketch has to make his way to the end of the comic, all the while dodging the obstacles put into his path by the sinister Mortus!

Comix Zone is the brain child of a fellah named Peter Morawiec, who first presented the idea to Sega back in 1992 via a concept video called "Joe Pencil Trapped in the Comix Zone".  You can check it out here, which I highly recommend, 'cause it's pretty damn slick looking.  Oh, and by strange coincidence, the movie Cool World was released that same year.  Hmmm . . .

The Characters
Sketch Turner is a typical 90's rock musician/comic artist, and his wardrobe does everything it can to confirm this fact.  He's even got the ponytail and small, round sunglasses.  I can imagine him touring from coffeehouse to coffeehouse, belting out the sounds of alternative rock in between righteous sessions with his sketch pad.  Seriously, dude.

Roadkill is his pet rat, who is also trapped within the pages of Comix Zone and helps Sketch out by finding hidden items, flipping hard to reach switches, and acting as bait for certain baddies.  He's a pretty cool little dude.  Respect the rat, yo.

Alyssa Cyan is the requisite hot chick of the game.  She is the first of the comic's characters to greet Sketch, ignoring his protests in order to send him out on a dangerous mission to defeat the mutants.  She spends most of the adventure back at the New Earth Empire base, radioing Sketch to give him helpful pointers of how to get past particularly difficult spots.

And finally there's Mortus, the leader of the mutants . . . aliens . . . or whatever they are.  Though Sketch doesn't actually face him until the very end of the game, Mortus' presence is still felt throughout as he uses his unique perspective to draw new enemies and other obstacles in Sketch's path, all in a bid to destroy Sketch, become real, and start wreaking havoc in the real world.  He's a bit of a bastard.

The Writing
The story of Comix Zone is somewhat interesting in that there are actually two stories going on at once.  On the one hand, we've got the main story of Sketch and Mortus switching universes and Sketch's quest to get to the end of the comic and get back out again.  And on the other hand, we've got the story of the comic itself, a tale about the human race mounting a defense against invading monster alien mutants.

But who cares, right?  The story is basically just a prop for the game's gimmick and to push the action along.  Still, for all that, it's a very well constructed and entertaining gimmick/action-pushing prop.

Almost all of the writing in the game is conveyed through the use of caption boxes and word balloons . . . 'cause you're in a comic, get it?  It's a pretty neat conceit, actually, right up until some of the word balloons end up hanging right over the action and you're just swinging blindly, hoping you're hitting that nasty mutant alien monster thing instead of the other way around.

The Gameplay
Combat is quick, intense, and nicely intuitive.  There are a surprisingly wide number of combos you can use that don't take horrifically convoluted sequences of button mashings to execute.  It's all pretty simple, moving everything along lightning fast while also being satisfyingly varied.  A lot of fighting games could probably learn a thing or two from Comix Zone, in my opinion.

The item system is pretty basic, but that's all it really needs to be.  You can pick up three items at a time (with one of the items generally being Roadkill, when you haven't got him out and scampering about and he hasn't run off a cliff somewhere), most of which do some sort of damage to enemies and/or objects.  Usually you won't find more objects than you can carry, so that limitation isn't a very harsh mistress.

Sketch's movements are pretty fluid, but he has a tendency to be a little too broad in his gestures.  One wrong tap of the directional pad can mean the difference between a living Sketch standing five feet away from a landmine and a crispy fried corpse sitting on top of the remains of an exploded landmine.

The Challenge
If I had to rate it on a scale of one to ten, I'd place Comix Zone's challenge rating at a definite AW HELL NAW.

I mean come on, guys, I'm pretty sure we were supposed to have left the Nintendo Hard games behind about three or four years before this, right?  I shouldn't be playing a mid-90's game and be wanting to throw my controller and myself out the window!

And what really sucks is how much of the difficulty curve is obviously artificial.  The fact that the bad guys are blocking gods from the very start is bad enough, but the fact that destroying objects - doors, crates, etc., many of which you are absolutely required to destroy in order to continue progressing through the game - causes your life meter to drain . . . well, that definitely takes first prize in the "Cheap Bullshit" competition.

When the developers start throwing in things that you have to do that also hurt you, then you know they've just run out of ways to make their game naturally challenging and just don't care about creating a balanced and enjoyable experience for the player whatsoever.  They might as well just come to my house and slap me in the face personally.  I really don't think it would be any more insulting.

The Graphics
Damn, but this is a pretty game.  It really looks like you're fighting your way through a comic book.  It's not quite as fine looking as the concept movie I linked up above, but I figure that's pretty understandable, and it looks damn fine enough as it is.  Sadly it does have a few minor glitches here and there, but overall every stage is beautiful to behold.

The Music
Man, to be honest, I don't really know.  I was too busy fighting for my life to notice the music very much.  What little I did catch seemed pretty rockin', and having looked up some background stuff on the game, it seems that they developers were proud enough of the soundtrack to release it on CD back when such things weren't as commonplace as they are now.

The Bottom Line
Comix Zone is one of those games that I love to hate and hate to love and all that nonsense.  It's a wonderful idea, beautiful setting, and interesting game mechanic that gets dragged down by it's horrific difficult level and brutal brevity.  It plays much like an arcade game in many ways, like it was designed specifically to eat up the quarters of bratty little kids who have been let loose at the local mall.  But it isn't an arcade game.  It was made specifically for console gaming, and it should have therefore been easier (or at least been given a gentler difficulty curve) and longer.  I'd definitely be willing to play it again, but never to actually beat it again . . . just tooling around in the first couple of stages would be fine for me, leaving my blood pressure more or less unmolested.