AJ's games beaten 2024:
1. Yakuza 3 Remastered PS4 *NEW*
2. Gley Lancer Mega Drive *NEW*
3. Flink Mega Drive *NEW*
4. Zero Wing Mega Drive *NEW*
5. Super Bomberman 3 SNES *NEW*
As usual, I'm way behind on reviews, having not posted any yet for 2024. So here's my first attempt to play catch up. These reviews bring me up to February 18th in terms of games I beat this year, so lots more to come yet...
Yakuza 3 Remastered
I’ve been slowly working through the Yakuza games over the past few years and loving the series. However, they seem to come out faster than I’m getting through them – there were 3 new entries in the series in the last year! I decided this year I would do my best to get through the series a bit so I can start to catch up, and so the first game I properly dived into in 2024 was Yakuza 3, the next entry in the series for me.
Yakuza 3 is often considered one of the roughest experiences for new series fans because many start with Zero, and then play Kiwami and Kiwami 2, modern remakes of the first 2 Yakuza titles. Yakuza 3 on PS4 however is simply a remastered PS3 port and so feels like a big step backwards in terms of controls, visuals and polish as it’s the likely oldest title in the series new players will encounter. I found that was somewhat the case, as the mini games and fighting definitely felt less refined and a bit more janky, and the game balance was a bit off with way too much blocking from enemies making fights take longer than they should. That said, I actually thought it held up pretty well overall – there was much less of a difference between this early PS3 title and the new titles than you might expect.
Storywise, Yakuza 3 has some highs and lows. The overall plot I thought was a bit messy, with unclear villain motivations and stakes, and one of the weakest villains so far in my opinion. However, I thought the character moments in the game were some of the best in the series so far, with Kiryu’s interactions with the children of the orphanage he runs and the local Okinawa mafia group being really charming.
It's probably the weakest of the Yakuza games I’ve played thus far, but I feel that saying so does Yakuza 3 a disservice. I still thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game despite some of the quality of life improvements being missing, and I’m still keen to keep working through the series. Definitely a ton of fun, but I’d only recommend it to people who started with Kiwami or Zero and want to continue working through the ongoing saga.
Gley Lancer
Gley Lancer is a shmup released for the Mega Drive only in Japan. It’s been a bit of a cult game with a hefty price tag over the years, and it was finally released in the west on Wii Virtual Console during the Wii era. Unfortunately with Wii VC going the way of the dodo, it was unavailable again for a while but more recently it’s seen a bunch of rereleases – not only an improved port to Switch, but also several official reproductions for the Mega Drive too.
My play-through of the game was on original hardware using the retro-bit reproduction of the cartridge, and I’m glad this is how I experienced it, because Gley Lancer is a really impressive title for the system. The game opens with an animated cutscene explaining the plot, where your father is abducted by an evil alien empire, and your character, a young girl in the military, steals an experimental fighter ship and goes after him. The quality of the animation is fantastic, and this continues into the graphics and music for the actual gameplay, which is equally stunning. Stage 1 features an awesome parallax effect as you pilot through an asteroid belt, and the music is really something special – definitely go and check out the OST, it’s some of the best music on the Mega Drive.
Thankfully, the gameplay also holds up as well as the presentation. It’s a fairly simple horizontal scrolling shooter with a few different weapon options you can pick up, and options which surround your ship and shoot alongside you. You can choose how you want these options to behave at the start of the game, with multiple behaviours to select from. I chose the option that homes in on enemies on screen which I feel was probably the most beginner friendly for the majority of the game.
The game is reasonably ‘easy’ at least by shmup standards and offers infinite continues, although you’ll start from the beginning of the stage when you use one so you still have to play well. It’s also a surprisingly long shmup, with 11 stages to play through before you hit the credits.
I’m really glad I sat and played through Gley Lancer, because it really is a great game, and one it’s a shame the western world missed out on originally. Now it’s a bit more readily available, I’d definitely recommend this to anyone who likes old-school shmups. It’s great.
Flink
Flink is a platformer for Mega Drive where you play as Flink, a wizard who sets out on a journey to defeat an evil sorcerer named Wicked Wainwright. It was developed by Psygnosis, and it’s immediately apparent it is a European title from the distinctive graphics which look fantastic for the system, and the distinct soundtrack which sounds completely unlike most games on the Mega Drive, but which I ultimately found a bit disappointingly generic despite that.
Flink has the usual set of platformer control options being able to jump on enemies and slide down slopes. He can also pick up items and throw them to defeat enemies. More distinctive though is his ability to cast spells. You have to learn these spells by mixing different spell ingredients you gather throughout the game. You can use trial and error to figure these out, but throughout the game you will get scrolls which tell you how to concoct them, or at least provide some hints towards the correct combination. These allow you many options, such as growing plants to use as platforms, summon a familiar or attack enemies with lightning and help the game stand out.
The games levels are all pretty simple but decently designed. There’s a lot of them too, with the game taking quite a long time to get through. It doesn’t suffer too much from some of the worse elements of European platform design either – you get ample invincibility frames after taking a hit and there’s not much forced damage, nor one hit kills – instead opting for a sonic style system where you drop your magic upon first hit and can gather it back up before taking another. I think there are a few of the classic water drops which hurt you though! Difficulty wise the game isn’t too bad but lives aren’t super abundant and I did find I frequently needed to return to an earlier level to grind for lives by replaying it over and over as continues were limited and losing my progress in such a long game would have been devastating.
Flink was a game I thought was pretty OK overall. I don’t think it’s a must own for the system but it was fun enough and it had some interesting ideas and a unique presentation. Worth a try if you’re interested, but I wouldn’t go out of your way to get it.
Zero Wing
How are you gentlemen!! Following on from Gley Lancer, I jumped into another, better known, mega drive shmup. Zero Wing was released only in Japan and Europe (North America, what happen?), and is of course mostly infamous for it’s iconic introduction cutscene where somebody sets up us the bomb. It’s a pretty generic story for a shooter, but the amazing Engrish translation really manages to make it feel more distinct than many of it’s contemporaries, and prepares you to take off every ‘zig’ for great justice.
Zero Wing has a reputation for being on the easier side, but to that I would say ‘what you say!!’. It’s certainly not amongst the hardest for the console, but there is some teeth to Zero Wing that it’s chunky rounded art style tries to hide away. The game starts off pretty manageable, but in a few of the later levels I felt that you are on the way to destruction. If you can’t match the sudden difficulty in pace then you have no chance to survive make your time.
The gameplay of Zero Wing is pretty basic – you can switch between a few different weapons by collecting power ups and they can be powered up further by collecting another of the same weapon type – you know what you doing. However, the game does have one unique mechanic with it’s tractor beam – you can use this to pull in enemy ships which you can then use as a shield to protect you from bullets. Bigger enemies can also be pulled in but due to their weight they will constantly pull you down towards the ground, requiring you fight against gravity and slowing your movement. Thankfully you can fire them back out as projectile at other enemies too, which seems harsh but alls fair in love and war and war was beginning
Zero Wing is ultimately not a particularly amazing shmup. It’s decent fun and reasonably well made, but other than it’s distinctive intro it really doesn’t stand out much. The gameplay is basic and has a slightly wonky difficulty curve and the graphics are a bit basic. Thankfully the music is pretty good so if nothing else that’s a great reason to have your main screen turn on and give this one a play. Zero Wing is a fun little time but nothing that will set your world on fire.
P.S. All your base are belong to us.
Super Bomberman 2
Super Bomberman 2 is the second entry in the Super Bomberman series (obviously) but is the first one I’ve played. An interesting thing about the bomberman series is how it feels there are multiple different distinct story scenarios and canons, and yet the gameplay feels pretty consistent across entries. This one is no different.
You come up against 5 dastardly bomber enemies who capture bomberman in a prison, and you must blast through each themed world of the dungeon to escape whilst defeating the dastardly bombers along the way. Each has a different set of powers you have to combat, and world themes related to their abilities – for example magnet bomber’s world has magnets that can push and pull bombs depending on their polarity if they are in line with them.
Each of the 5 worlds contained multiple levels, a battle vs one of the dastardly bombers and a final boss fight against a bigger mech. The game follows the old-school bomberman approach of needing to defeat all enemies on a stage and then exist through a hidden portal. Accidentally blowing up the portal releases a bunch of extra enemies into the stage so best to be careful with bomb placement. It’s fun, but I preferred some of the refinements of Bomberman 94 and Saturn Bomberman where they had defined level ends and interesting power ups in the form of Louies and Dinos you could ride.
Super Bomberman 2 is a bit of a fan favourite for many I think, but in my mind that’s mainly due to it being one of the more widely available Bomberman titles of the era. I had a good time with it, but there’s better Bomberman titles out there I’d recommend first. I’d recommend Bomberman 94/Mega Bomberman as my 16 bit bomberman game of choice.
