Silent Debuggers for TurboGrafx-16
Review #7068
Silent Debuggers
Aliens: The dungeon crawler
Gameplay
This one was hard to classify. It looks and plays like a dungeon crawler but features real-time shooter combat. So it's not quite a dungeon crawler, nor is it a typical first-person shooter. Your objective seems to be to find and destroy all of the floating-head monsters that are infesting the corridors of a derelict space station. The designers had obviously watched Aliens recently.
Gameplay is first person and moves like a dungeon crawler - one tile at a time. Monsters appear in the hallway ahead whereupon you can press and hold I to shoot your gun or press Start to fire a grenade. After 4 or 5 enemies you'll run out of ammo and be forced to return to the armory to refill. This is the by far the worst aspect of the game.
Level Design
It's a dungeon crawler, so you wander around a bunch of identical looking corridors. There's a barely helpful on-screen map that shows which direction you're facing but none of the corridors. It's just a big black square. Either the map should've been improved or the 8 different areas of the space station should've been colored to help you orient yourself. But getting lost in a dungeon crawler is expected, huh?
Still, I liked it more than most dungeon crawlers.
Theme
You're some sort of bounty hunter investigating a derelict stace station overrun by monsters. Wait. This sounds vaguely familiar.
So yeah, there are definite Metroid and Alien vibes, but the toher inspiration I sense is Cowboy Bebop. Your radio buddy briefs you for your mission and has an 80s anime look. It's good stuff all around.
Art Style
Very nice artwork, but there's precious little of it. All of the monsters are pallette swaps of the same sprite so once you've seen it you've seen it all. The gun effects are severaly underwhelming. The first time I shot my grenade launcher I was expecting an earth shattering KABOOM but it had the same impact as my peashooter did. Disappointing.
Oh and the corridors again are well drawn but they all look the same.
Audio
Minimal music and sound. The pulsing of your radar is the main sound you get to experience.
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