Tag: Retro Monday

Retro Monday – Gunstar Future Heroes

Gunstar Future Heroes is the sequel to the classic Mega Drive game Gunstar Heroes. It was made for the Game Boy Advance and like its predecessor was developed by Treasure and published by Sega. It was released in 2006.

Gunstar Future Heroes is a run and gun game, that plays like the previous title in the series. But there are differences. For example, there’s no throw so you can’t throw enemies around. Also, instead of having weapon pick-ups and the varied combos they create, you get three pre-set gun types you can switch between.  It also has a similar story to the first game, Red and Blue (the protagonists) are trying to stop the villains (Green, Grey, Pink, and so on) from getting treasure gems to revive the Destroyer. The previous game’s villains are the same people as in the first game. Even the fights with them are the same or very similar, but the heroes are different people. It’s set after the first game, but really re-tells the same story.

The gameplay is fast and frantic, and you don’t get much time to breathe. You have to keep shooting enemies all the time. That’s great but of course at the same time there isn’t massive variety . While playing I stuck to the one gun, as I found Blue’s standard starting weapon to be the best for gunning down the enemy. I assume there are benefits to the other weapons for them to be there, but I didn’t really feel the need to use them. As I mentioned, the bosses seem similar to the previous game. Green, who you fight in a mine (again), even has the machine Seven Force and the mods are almost identical. But it’s fun to take on the bosses with a slightly different move set to Gunstar Heroes and with different weaponry.

Honestly, I liked the game. I want to play more, and want to play it to completion. Gunstar Heroes is a game I go back to almost yearly to play through, and I think Gunstar Future Heroes is a great sequel – even though it doesn’t manage to reach the highs of its predecessor.

Verdict: Highly recommended.

Join Pedz for Retro Monday on GRcade’s Twitch channel every week, and vote on what he plays next on GRcade

Retro Monday – Tomb Raider: Curse of the Sword

Another week in which I get a game I know nothing about,  Tomb Raider: Curse of the Sword was released in 2001 on the Game Boy Color and was Developed by Core Design and published by Eidos, it’s also a sequel to Tomb Raider on the GBC.

Where do I begin with this? It’s hard to say because I disliked pretty much everything about it. Let’s talk visuals. The visuals in the game to me are pretty bland when it comes to the backgrounds and the like, the sprites while not the prettiest have great animations, Lara is really fluid and the animation of her hitting a wall and bouncing off and hitting the floor is great – but there wasn’t much to look at elsewhere.

The sound wasn’t much better. It starts off with this pretty good tune in the title sequence and then you have a cut scene with some more appropriate music, then you get to the level and no music, you just get sound effects of Lara running and that’s about it, and the sound effects of her running aren’t great either.

The gameplay to me was pretty boring, it’s a side-scrolling platformer where the controls are unbelievably awkward. You press up to jump and half the time you’ll jump forward instead of straight up. which can lead to you jumping off a platform, or you’ll run to jump a gap press up and boom, you didn’t jump and just fell to your death. What’s also odd is if you jump forward, even if you don’t press up again, but hold forward you keep hopping forward like some deranged frog. Honestly, I looked at reviews and see it got 7.5s and 9s and so on back in the day. Was gaming that bad back then that trash like this got highly rated? Or is it the case the game improves in the later stages? After what I played I’m not willing to find out if the latter is the case. A game needs to start off at least good/interesting to keep someone entertained to get to the best parts and sadly Tomb Rader: Curse of the Sword completely failed to do so.

Verdict: Avoid.

Join Pedz for Retro Monday on GRcade’s Twitch channel every week, and vote on what he plays next on GRcade

Retro Monday – Descent

 

This week will be no review for Descent. I, unfortunately, didn’t get to play it myself due to my better half accidentally spilling coffee over my mouse and keyboard breaking both. Luckily Cheeky Devlin was able to step in and take over for the stream, so while there’s no review there is a stream that you can watch and enjoy.