1. Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide (PC)(Action)2. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (SNES)(Fighting)3. DRAGON: The Bruce Lee Story (SNES)(Fighting)4. Eradicator (PC)(FPS)Eradicator was released in 1996 in the waning days of Accolade. Unfortunately it didn't receive the marketing it needed to survive in a competitive FPS environment, so the game now holds Hidden Gem status for the few of us who have managed to play it. It has a simple enough plot featuring a bio-mechanical creature inside an alien world suddenly waking and taking over a facility to produce an army. The player has the option of selecting one of three(or four once you beat the game) characters with different stats, though their weaponry ends up relatively comparable and the differences come down more to speed versus toughness. I chose the miner character, as he had average stats all around and therefore makes for a good baseline.
The game excels in its level designs; of the three major regions (Security, Factory, and Bio Labs), each has its own design and appeal, and there are subtle rule changes to gameplay, such as all liquid hurting the player in the Factory area but not necessarily in the Bio Labs. Over time the enemies become tougher, though they range from robots that look like something out of the movie Short Circuit to exploding drones to monstrous humanoids armed to the teeth with missile launchers and mine-throwers. Yes, many of them look the same, but sometimes the same types of monster will pack considerably different weapons, so you have to be on your toes. After all, you're not sure if the flying bio-skeleton coming towards you is packing a flamethrower or a rocket launcher.
Aiding you in your mission to stop the evil bio-robots are a variety of ammo types which apparently change your weapon's firing mode. That's right, you don't find weapons, you just find ammo, which unlocks the weapon immediately. I liked this, and I really liked some of the weapons that you could find. Yes, there are the tried and true types such as a shotgun, flamethrower, and rocket launcher. However there was also an explosive RC car that I could swap to manually control for both spying and remote detonation. The exploding ball bearing launcher filled me with glee, and I loved the weird full-auto crossbow. I even got boomerangs and exploding bird drones.
Of course, these are the miner's weapons; the other characters' weapons feature the same basic functions but don't always match up quite the same way. Still, I'll taking exploding RC cars any time. Also impressive is the screen-within-a-screen function, which would let me keep a POV of missiles or certain other weapons to ensure they hit their target. With the right item in hand, missiles even became fly-by-wire, so I could direct them through the level to wreck havoc on fleeing enemies in hard to reach places. And then there are the Lil Buddies, which not only float around and shoot at whatever you shoot at, they also absorb damage for you and act as a surrogate shield. You can have two at once, and let me tell you, unloading on someone with two Lil Buddies and under the effects of a weapons chip means it dies, and it dies
fast.
There are also a variety of items you can grab, such as an item that gives you health for killing enemies, a small turret, anti-gravity boots for higher jumping, a defensive wall, and so on. Most of these I never found necessary, and the small turrets had such a limited range, they were basically a joke. The anti-grav boots were awesome though, and I admit they saved my butt a couple of times with the nastier platforming segments. Yes, there is a lot of platforming in the game, which is tough in a first person view. Thankfully you can swap to third person if you desire and play the game that way. Also I have to give Eradicator props for having one of the best and most informative mini-maps I've seen in an FPS, which shows rooms and general layouts, platforms, your location, and items (and denotes between health or ammo items) while also giving relevant info such as objectives, secrets, number of enemies killed versus total, etc.
Is it all roses? Well, no, not entirely. I had some weird problems with the music audio setting and resetting itself to the maximum value for some reason. It was loud enough my girlfriend could hear the game pumping through my headphones while on the other side of my apartment, so be wary and don't go deaf. This stopped about halfway through the game, but it was frustrating while it happened. The game also defaults to the darkest setting possible and doesn't tell the player anywhere that you can adjust brightness settings with the F11 key. At times the game is pitch black, so that would have been a nice thing to know. Also I don't like platforming, so there were some definite sweaty palm moments, and the ending is incredibly weak. That's pretty much it though for my complaints, and none of those are gamechangers. If you like FPS from the mid- to late-90s, Eradicator is well worth playing. I fully recommend it to fans of the likes of Duke Nukem 3D, Redneck Rampage, Powerslave, and so on.
