by alienjesus Mon Feb 17, 2020 10:36 am
I'm a little behind on updating this thread.
First of all, I've finished up The Firemen. Overall, I found it to be a solid title that just narrowly misses being truly top-tier on the console. The gameplay is a ton of fun, but a little too difficult for it's own good towards the end - each level comes with some obscenely strict time limits towards the end, with tons of opportunities to take damage too. Your scanner which detects lifesigns nearby also stops working, which is problematic because rescuing people rewards full health restores. The game also has limited continues (3, with only 1 life per continue) and a game over means restarting from the beginning.
I feel all of these problems are the games way of addressing it's biggest flaw - it's actually super short, surprisingly so. There are 6 levels, each taking about 10 minutes each, so you can play through the game in an hour or so. In all honesty, this game would be better if it was longer and had a more gradual difficulty curve, but I suspect it was a bit niche to justify the extra cost.
Which is a shame, because The Firemen is otherwise pretty great. The gameplay is fun generally, and I enjoyed the back and forth dialogue between the characters in and outside the building. Even though most of the enemies are 'fire' they manage to make different behaviours of each type of fire feel distinct and challenging, and they also throw other unexpected obstacles at you, with backdraughts, explosions, falling scenery and more as you progress. It's a bit too pricy to get the European copy if you ask me (and I should know, because that's exactly what I did for this Together Retro) but if you can play a patched Japanese version or emulate via some means, I'd recommend it. It's pretty great.
I also played through Bishoujou Senshi Sailor Moon for Super Famicom. This one did get a PAL release, but only in France, where it's pretty rare and pricy. The Japanese copy, on the other hand, cost me less than a tenner, so I'll stick with that.
I actually didn't really know much about Sailor Moon, so I watched a few episodes of the subtitled anime to bring me up to speed a bit. I didn't get very far into the series (the sailor scouts other than Sailor Moon havent showed up yet) but I'm glad I gave it a go - I recognised a lot of similar elements and musical themes in the games presentation to the show, which I would have otherwise missed had I not watched it.
My wife was a fan of the dubbed Sailor Moon growing up, so I managed to convince her to give the game a go with me. It's a beat 'em up game with 5 stages - we played through as Sailor Jupiter (me) and Sailor Venus (wife). There's not a hige variety in moves or enemy type in all honesty, and the music is bizarrely low key for a game about punching dudes - it's a fairly basic beat em up. But it's clearly had some effort put into it with how it looks and animates, and whilst it's unremarkable gameplay wise, it's also not bad, and we enjoyed it well enough.
Early signs indicated that we might not be able to beat the game - the first boss has a super unreasonable hitbox and shredded through quite a few lives. Weirdly enough though, he's probably one of the hardest bits of the game, and we cleared through the rest of the game without too much trouble, and finished it on our first attempt. It's fairly easy overall.
Anyhow, those were the 2 games I had planned for this month. I'm not too sure I have anything else that fits the bill to play now that I've not beaten before, but I look forward to seeing everyone elses updates over the next 2 weeks!
