This will be a short review because, honestly? This is a short game. Difficult as hell, but short.
Like Mega Man, you begin the game with a select screen targeting some of the Surfer’s greatest enemies. Or, you know, just a grab bag of odd dudes. Possessor, Fire Lord, Mephisto, and many more. They all hold pieces of a “Cosmic Device” that Galactus wants and so you blast through 5 stages divided up into three levels to collect the bits of a random machine. Once complete, Galactus sends you through a portal to the Magik Domain to get the last part from a giant purple dude with a machine gun and his army of leprechaun hats.
This “bullet hell”-lite game is notoriously difficult but, honestly, with a little patience and some good memorization skills, you can tear though this game in very little time. The trick is to keep moving. But you have to be mindful of your surroundings at all times and that’s where the difficulty spike really comes into play. Some levels are top-down and other are side-scrolling, and never is there a time you can breathe. Between enemies, bullets, walls, rubber ducks, and just general activity in every inch of the game field, the Surfer can’t stop, can’t slow down. To stop moving is to die, but, then again, to move too much is to die as well. It creates moments – such as the top-down level over a large body of water – where the tension is overtaken by the general unfairness of it all, resulting in numerous deaths to unseen enemy fire, a tree, or – hell – the tip of the Surfer’s board just touching anything wrong. Or at all.
The game uses a pretty generous password system, a decent number of lives-per-points, and enough power ups that, once you get the hang of it, the game actually gets fun. Blasting ghosts and jack-o-lanterns in hell is almost a treat. Even if most levels are just random enemies with little rhyme or reason throughout the very short run-time. Seriously, you can beat this in 30 minutes if you’re good at it. I got good at it.
There is a second quest-type thing to do after but there is very little incentive, since the game offers enough of a challenge without increasing the difficulty. Once you beat the purple dude at the end, you won’t be eager to jump back in. And why is the boss a purple dude but the icon is Mr. Sinister?
I’m glad I finally beat this game, but my god. Will I never, ever touch it again. I will, however, always love the soundtrack to this game. God damn is it good.
Final Thoughts:
The boss fights in each stage’s third world are all easy. EASY. The real boss battles are the two levels that precede each boss fight, just getting through them. Jesus, the Emperor alone is such a joke.
skylerbartels 