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44) Apache You know that classic Action 52 feel? That feel you'd like been trying to avoid since you eyed through the feature of the NES version I had written? If for whatever reason you wish to relive it with the Genesis version, Apache is likely the best game with which to do this. See, much of the NES Action 52 was broken. No, I don't mean broken in a 4/10 at 1UP sort of way (which I believe was their old demarcation for the said rating). I mean broken in an 'Incomplete - return when you've a finished product/Wait, fuck you asshole' sort of way. Much of it is a completely unplayable lost cause. I mean, some of the games were little platformers where taking falls of more than four hairs would kill you. Some of the games had terrible image palettes that seemed much larger than the enemy appeared because of the way the enemy was drawn. The game was so poorly programmed so that sometimes it's more or less impossible to not be killed by enemies, and other times it would be impossible for them to pose a harm. Sometimes the game would crash when you played for a few minutes. Sometimes there were too many sounds going at once and the sounds screeched through your speakers. Sometimes the game would crash just as you tried to access it - apparently it knows better than you. First of all, I found the music, while still the apex of the game, to grate my speakers more than any other game on this collection - and many of the games on this collection had sounds of speaker-grating quality. Secondly, I noticed two times when I was playing and the game crashed - once when I shot down an enemy and once when I crashed into one. Third, often times, enemy tanks will be rendered immobile and harmless placed on the side mountains and corners, as well as bullets going through enemies, no doubt because of faulty programming. Fourth, I noted moments when I was distinctly a pixel or two away from the enemies and still got nailed for a crash. As far as non-NES Action 52-specific foibles are concerned, yeah there's one: horrid level design. First off, the helicopters in the game must be flying at some dangerously low elevation because your bullets defeat both enemy copters and enemy tanks. Secondly, what's up with those little grey areas ya can't fly over? Are we to believe some very narrow stones protruding some 10-20 feet in the air, like a statue of an erected penis? All things considered, it makes the worst non-Action 52 scrolling shooters seem like Gradius III, but because it's a relatively fresh experience, as far as this cart feels, we could do worse. Never thought I'd be saying 'we could do worse' about a game that so strongly reminds me of the Action 52 of old, and a game for which they don't even accomplish 'at least they kinda do what they set out to do,' but lo the times we live. |
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