Sunday, July 27, 2008
Aurail
Labels: 3 stars, MAME Review, sh'mup 0 commentsAurail
Forcing yourself to play through a game can do funny things to a guy. Making yourself trudge through the final level of something like Altered Beast can make a grown man cry, whereas sometimes you actually have fun with a game you otherwise might have put down after a couple of minutes. Aurail falls into the latter category.
Aurail actually has a lot of appeal before you start playing. It's made by the indomitable Sega, it has an attractive art style, and you get to play as a mech. Don't hate, mechs are frieking sweet, no matter the context. Put some mechs in a Lifetime made-for-tv movie, I'll watch the ****. What do I care, I have no pride. Anything for a little mech action.
That initial excitement, however, is probably going to wear off the second you get your hands on the controls. The first thing you're likely to notice is that your mech is about as graceful as a drunken fat guy trying to run from the cops. Movement is slow and fixed grid-like to 8 directions, bullets also stick to said grid, you can't walk and fire at the same time, and there's no strafing or dodging of any kind. You would think that the game would make enemies and bullets similarly clunky in order to make up for all of this, but you would you be wrong. So very, very wrong.
Bullets fly towards you at mach speeds from all directions. Homing missiles relentlessly lock onto you. Lasers scream towards you without warning. In short, Aurial is hard. Scratch that - Aurial is a mother ****ing monster that will break your spirit and make you question whether or not you can truly call yourself a hardcore gamer.
Here are just a few excerpts from one of my playthroughs.
It's easy to get pissed at the game because of these design choices. At some point, however, you start to change the way you play in order to accommodate for these things. It's then that you realize that yeah, the game is seriously difficult, but it's also possible; it just requires skill, memorization, and a lot of luck.
The analogy that immediately came to mind was the Resident Evil series. While it would be easy to dote on things like the controls or the camera, those are just things that were a part of the design intended to make the game a more frightening experience. Even Resident Evil 4 doesn't allow you to strafe, and it's looking like RE5 isn't going to change that. Just think for a second what it would be like if you could strafe though - all of a sudden, you're looking at something more akin to a run'n'gun than a survival horror action game. Knowing that you either have to back up or turn in your spot and then move totally changes what goes through your head as the zombie hordes close in on you.
Some people are bound to hate that aspect of Aurail, just like many hate those things about the RE series. However, despite those limitations, it's entirely possible to become a badass killing machine...and once you get into the groove, the game really starts to shine. You'll be amazed at some of the feats you can pull off, weaving in and out of bullets, utilizing sound strategy, and compensating for your lack of maneuverability. Just check out what it can look like when you really start owning some fools.
Strategically, this game gives you one real choice to make: offense or defense? You have a single power gauge, and you can choose to either use up chunks of it to give you a shield (your mech dies in one hit, and each unit of shield adds another hit to that), or slowly drain it by sending out your attack drone. While your drone can be useful at times, you also have no way of telling it who exactly to attack, and the mechanic for turning it on and off is a bit too unresponsive for my tastes. Still, it's nice to have a choice like that.
In a turn for the lame, though, Aurail also throws in a handful of first-person segments. Ugh. I know it was supremely novel at the time, but seriously, this kind of crap just does not hold up. The hud is a disaster, it's impossible to tell where things are coming at you from, you'll often die without having a clue what happened, and hell, even the environment is boring.
Speaking of boring environments, you could also say that about the regular sh'mup sections as well. They look nice enough at first, but soon you'll realize that every single level in the game uses the exact same tile set. No running the gamut of various cliche'd environments, it's the same grassy/beachy place the whole way through. The repetitiveness mars the entire presentation, and it's a shame, because with a little more variety that could've been a standout area of Aurail's package.
One last complaint before I put this beast to bed: the checkpoint system. WTF? Two games in a row that just can't get the checkpoint system right. Again, like Atomic Robo-Kid, it's totally random. Sometimes you'll start at the halfway point, other times at the beginning of the level. Hell, don't ask me. I don't make these games, I just review 'em. Thank God this one at least doesn't start you back at a previous level like ARK occasionally would, but it's still ass-tastic nonetheless.
File this one right next to Alex Kidd and Atomic Robo-Kid as a game that appeals only to those hardcore enough to put aside their frustration to learn the ins and outs of it. Like those games, Aurail has the potential to be either painfully disastrous or brilliantly old-school in design and philosophy, depending on whose perspective we're looking from. Personally I think this kind of design has been phased out for a reason, but it still stands as a testament to the fun that can be had from a game that simply refuses to be played casually.
Before you put that quarter in, though, remember this: you have been warned...
3/5
Posts
0 comments: to “ Aurail ”
Post a Comment