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Axelay
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1992 Treasure - Konami - SNES
Storyline
It's been a while since I read the instruction booklet, but the game says enough itself I guess, not all the details though. Ah well . . . the storyline goes something like this:
The planet where humans live (Earth, one might guess) has been attacked by aliens and I think just about all of it has been ruined and a lot of people have been captured as slaves. The humans do have one small ounce of hope for survival though--their spaceship Axelay. Axelay is the humans' greatest spaceship made for battle and able to equip fearsome weapons. The pilot of Axelay has lost his entire family thanks to the aliens so he's very eager for revenge and is going to KILL THEM ALL! (I bet he's Will Smith, even though he's white. The pilot, that is. No, I don't think Will Smith is white.)
So, he takes away in the spaceship to fight the aliens in six different locations. The main purpose why Axelay doesn't go straight to the last level is because it has to take back its lost weapons from the enemy, weapons needed to defeat the alien army at a final showdown. Why the aliens would steal and keep the weapons like this is of course utterly stupid, but eh, it's a video game.
I think that's sort of how the story goes.
Gameplay
It amazes me how many old games there are that have great controls compared to new games, which tend to have complete fucking shit controls. That goes for this game as well. The controls are amazing. As you probably have figured out by reading the Storyline-part, you play the pilot of a spaceship, and that basically means that you play the spaceship.
There are six different levels in the game and three different difficulty levels. All the levels are very different from each other both from a graphical point of view as well as gameplay. In some levels you get to control the ship from a top-down view (scrolling up) and in some stages you get to control the ship seen from the side (scrolling to the right). Before each level you get to equip your ship with three different weapons that you can choose from your currentl arsenal, which increases by one after each stage. The first time you play this game your weapon of choice will be very random. When you have played the game at least once and know what kind of levels are coming up you can be better prepared by choosing the right weapons for that level. Your choice of weapons has a lot to do with what kind of view you get to play from and the amount of enemies.
Like I said earlier, the levels are very different from each other and take place in very different locations. The first level takes place on a cloud covered planet where the enemy has built flying fortresses (made out of ROCKS!) armed with all kinds of weapons for protection. The fortresses mainly look like, I repeat, ROCKS with a bottom of metal-thingies, so how they fly is beyond me. Each level has a boss at the end, and some of them also a miniboss roughly half way through the level. Even on the first level you'll get to see how impressive the bosses in this game are. They are fucking massive and take up most of the screen, but you never feel like you need more space to fly around in, so they've managed to balance this quite well.
Graphics
The graphics are excellent in this game. Great animations with a unique touch to them (the explosions being a prime example). To be honest, just about everything in this game impresses me. All the enemies are very well drawn and the bosses are huge and awesome. The backgrounds are great as well, but some of them might feel a bit monotone.
The levels that impress me the most are the fourth and the sixth. The fourth level takes place in the caves of a planet that has been ruined from radioactive waste of some sort from the enemies' factories. There are all kinds of plants that grow on the walls of the cave and the bottom of it is filled with water. I don't really know how to explain the graphics in this level, but I'll quote an old friend of mine as he saw it for the first time when randomly walking by as I was playing:
"DAMN! Look at the graphocs! They are fucking awesome!"
The sixth level takes place at the enemies main battle ship. The ship is huge and I love the design of it. All the parts of the ship are filled with details which conveniently conceals many of the enemies as well. Definitely makes you pay more attention and not just shoot anything that moves (although, I guess you still do that).
Sound
Great sound effects and great music. It fits extremely well into the levels and brings a great atmosphere to the game. There is also this alarm and poorly recorded voice that goes off before every boss battle. I may say poorly recorded, but it's still sends a chill up my spine every time I hear it. I feel like I'm really repeating myself now, but, again, this is great.
Replayability
What can I say . . . I've owned the game since '94 and not even started growing tired of it. The replayability is great--you can sit down whenever you want and just just play the game over and over again. Well, at least I can, and this is my review and no one else will ever read but if you do and you disagree you can fuck off and then buy me a cookie or two. Oh, and a soda. I'm out of soda.
Originality
This feels like an unique space shoot 'em up. I don't really know what's so great about it, I guess everything about it contributes. The enemies and bosses are original and so is the weapon system, and the individual weapons themselves. The same goes for most of the levels. It isn't exactly grund breaking, but there is still something there.
Overall
In short: This game is fucking amazing.
It has great controls, level design, enemies, bosses, weapons, music, background, just about everything about it is great. If you like space shoot 'em ups you will have to get hold of this game one way or another. Even if it's ten years old. BUY IT!
Ratings
Storyline: 5/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 9/10
Replayability: 10/10
Originality: 6/10
Overall: 9/10
Screenshots
//Benny
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Staff Comments of Awesomeness
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August 4, 2011 - 07:25 BST - Nate
It's time to end this somewhat hiatus and start writing video game reviews for no one again. Funny that after all of these months of college and unemployment I start wasting time with video games and shitty reviews once I finally get a job.
Also, maybe I'll start reviewing games that have been released within the past six months for once thanks to my new disposable (heavy emphasis on this word) income. Maybe.
June 12, 2010 - 15:30 GMT - Benny
I got an urge to collect crap for my chao in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. I had quite a lot of fun until I realised that I already had a chao with 99 in all stats. That took a bit of the fun away but I have another 16 chao I can level up. But now I'm in a mood to play Zelda instead.May 31, 2010 - 15:53 GMT - Benny
I'm quite glad I went through with this The Green Shell idea. Combined with Hair, I've managed to build up a little backlog of updates that could last me at least a week. Although I have a feeling I'll put out a few of them at a time, which means I'll run out sooner. But yeah, while it's not necessarily easy to come up with shitty ideas for it, I have been looking around at a lot of random video game stuff over the last 12 hours and it's quite fun. I also need to play some more Star Ocean; I've got reptile aliens to kill and annoying girls to ignore! My hatred for Welch has gone down a lot since I got Lymle into my party. That annoying fuck pisses me off, 'kay.
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