Chakan: The Forever Man
If Spawn wore Link's Iron BootsGenre: action - hack n slash
Publisher: Sega
Year: 1992
System: Genesis
Gameplay Score: 1
Gameplay Notes:
The dual sword thing is pretty awesome but the movement and platforming in this game is absolutely, positively atrocious. Unforgivable. Unworkable. And I swear they designed every level to make every single jump require frame perfect inputs. It's a waking nightmare. To illustrate the point, every platform seems to have a rounded edge so when you get close to it while walking, you'll slide right off and when jumping you think you get there and then you roll backward off of it. It's infuriating. The developers seem to know this would happen and gave you unlimited lives. Each time you die you go back to a hub world. The sword play combat is bizarre but workable. You can attack while jumping but not while standing on the ground. Instead, you hold down on the attack button and point in seven different directions (all 8 except for down). Your character holds his sword in that direction and you wait for an enemy to bump into it. This works okay for enemies that die in one hit but anything that takes multiple hits can just plow right through you and cause damage. Enemies don't have a hitbox so combat is not fun. Oh, and movement is unbearably slow. If your character moved twice the speed, I think the game would be playable, but it's terrible as is. The controls also seem to drop inputs constantly.
Level Design Score: 1
Level Design Notes:
I mentioned this previously but the levels seem designed to highlight the game's flaws. There's a lot of platforming to do which requires precise jumps. There's a ton of blind jumps. I like the idea of the hub world to pick which level you want to tackle, but it's also a little confusing to figure out where to go and what to do. I'm honestly not sure what I'm trying to achieve.
Theme Score: 5
Theme Notes:
Basically you're the Quaker Oats guy if he became Todd McFarlane's Spawn. You're on an eternal quest to destroy all evil in order to save your soul from hell or something. I love the dark and spooky atmosphere. I really want to like this game!
Art Style Score: 3
Art Style Notes:
The sprites are okay but the game features no color whatsoever. It's just brown and black. There's some parallax scrolling but not much animation going on outside of your own character.
Audio Score: 3
Audio Notes:
It's got kind of a heavy metal soundtrack with the Genesis synth sound going on. Enemies and sword slashes and whatnot have a metallic sound to them. I like it but it's not something that I'd listen to outside of the game.
Overall Score: 32
Review ID: 818
No comments:
Post a Comment