Cross Wiber: Cyber Combat Police for PCE

Image: MobyGames

Cross Wiber: Cyber Combat Police

Don't miss those canisters

Genre: action - punch n kick

Publisher: Face

Year: 1990

System: PCE

Gameplay Score: 1

Gameplay Notes:

Slow movement and only a punch/kick attack make for a boring an plodding gameplay loop. Unlike the first game, there are no power ups, no move, no gimmicks. Nothing. Bare bones at best. You've got a jump and can attack while jumping though this is only useful for attacking the canisters that fly by with precious health pickups. Without these you have no chance of completing the stage and with them all it's virtually impossible not to finish the stage. Sorry for the double negative, but I hope you get what I'm saying. All you need to do is walk right while mashing attack as enemies swarm you. Grab the health and you can plow through but miss even a couple of them and you have no chance. It's barely a question of skill. Stage 3 introduces a shmup stage with extremely basic mechanics.

Level Design Score: 1

Level Design Notes:

Enemies absolutely swarm you. For the most part they all go down with a single hit and come at strange angles and lead with their fists, making it impossible to avoid damage. The stages feature no platforming until stage 4 which has a high, medium, and low path. Enemies only appear on the bottom two so if you can get up to the top you can walk through most of the stage. Every other stage is simply a straight walk to the right like this is Kung Fu for the NES. Terrible. The only saving grace are the interesting backgrounds which at least give you something to look at while plodding along.

Theme Score: 2

Theme Notes:

Futuristic 80s sci-fi theme. The story is presented with a wall of genetic text before the first stage and no presentation beyond that. Underwhelming to say the least, but I like sci-fi themes.

Art Style Score: 3

Art Style Notes:

Uninspired but colorful, with a few good sprite designs. The backgrounds range from NES quality to impressive, especially the cityscape in stage 3 and the animated train in stage 4. Still, the sprites are tiny and have tremendous flicker. Massive improvement over the first game.

Audio Score: 3

Audio Notes:

I like about half of the music. It's energetic and each stage has it's own track. The sound effects, on the other hand, are hilariously bad. Some sound like they were ripped from an Atari 2600 title while others don't begin to match the action they correspond to. So bad they're funny.

Overall Score: 29

Review ID: 8022