alienjesus wrote:So, with Asterix - some of the levels are the same regardless of which character you play, but some levels are entirely different stages - it's worth playing the game twice and choosing the opposite character for each stage if you want to see everything the game has to offer. I personally really like the sequel too!
Cool, I'll have to go through with Obelix then as I did a pretty much 100% Asterix run. And yeah, I've got the sequel coming soonish. Bought it pretty much as soon as I finished the last game. Noticed Master System stuff is starting to get up there now in price but hey ho.
MrPopo wrote:I think Super Star Wars is the hardest of the trilogy to beat because of the lack of passwords. Super Empire has the hardest levels, but you can practice them all without having to go through half the game first each time.
Hmm, thanks for this, I wasn't aware. I may have to scout out a copy of Empire and Jedi then.
If Asterix and the Secret Mission comes before February starts then Disney's Action Game Featuring Hercules, as it's rather ponderously know here in Europe, is...well an action game based on Disney's Hercules.
Quick story: a demo of this game's Big Olive level came on certain discs with the Playstation around 1997 when I got my first PS1. I played a lot of it and really liked it thinking it like an updated Aladdin, what with the platforming and sword slashing. Never bought it though, could never find it in shops. Had a million copies of Tarzan and Quack Attack in my local Electronics Boutique but never DAGFH.
Hercules is an interesting title. It's a Eurocom game which explains a lot. They tended to make solid 7/10 games, stuff that could have been really great but for a few flaws. Thinking of The World is Not Enough and 40 Winks here. With Hercules they've made a very solid 2D platformer with lush graphics, great music, some cool bosses and set pieces but then let themselves down with some stiff controls and a bunch of redundant features.
So the controls are kind of a given for this sort of highly animated type of game. Everything seems to have a delay and it can get a bit tiresome when you're doing some of the trickier segments. It also easy to get swarmed by enemies and be hopelessly slashing at the air half a second after you asked. This stuff sucks but it is manageable and the game is fairly generous with health and lives to mitigate this.
What is most bothersome though are stuff in the game that is just pointless. At the lesser end of this is the punch move. It's slow, doesn't have as much reach as the sword and while your sword can be temporarily powered up, you fists can't. Pointless.
Worse though is the game's continue and save system. Throughout the games 9 main levels you will find letters that spell out our titular heroes name. Collect all the letters and you get an extra continue. Pretty sweet, eh? Well not really as the letters are so well hidden and gated by the toughest platforming challenges it's more than likely that to find them all, you're already so proficient at the game you don't actually need them.
Saving is even worse. In each level there are pots. These pots can either give you an extra life or, if you get four non-life giving ones, allow you to save on completion of the level. Again though, the pots are so well hidden or trickily placed that to get them all on one run, you will probably not need to save anyway before the showdown with Hades. Really bizarre. There's a password system anyway which means these days it takes as much effort to get back to the level you were on as a google search.
Still, searching for these bonuses is kind of its own reward, despite their lack of functionality. At least Eurocom learnt their lesson for Tarzan and made the secret items unlock bonus games and clips from the film.
DAGFH is a £5 game to me. Graphically it still holds up and the game mixes things up with a few chase sections and even one pseudo-shooter level to compliment the pretty standard but quite enjoyable platforming. But it's also hella short, pretty easy (the final boss is a joke) and prone to spurts of bad design.


