LogFAQs > #939119633

SpikeSetsFire posted...

Hahaha! Great review, Utility Man! So much so, I now want to hunt the game down and experience it myself!

I actually did give this game a review back when I played it over Youtube. It's not great but this was like 12 years ago or so. lol
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YOU ARE DIRTY HARRY............yea that doesn't sound as good.
Well as far as this game is concerned, you're going to wish you weren't Dirty Harry. In fact, you're going to wish you weren't even playing this game.

Here again we have another platformer, but this time it's a very bad one. You know the usual platforming, you jump and you have a button that punches/kicks/shoot. But no, this is one of those where you have to push both buttons to jump. Fair enough...except sometimes the jump doesn't come out because the controls are bad. Normally I wouldn't bother, but I feel like going into detail about how bad the controls are because it's a large part of what makes this game bad.

Controls
Instead of having 1 button jump, you have 1 button that punches/kicks and 1 that shoots. Fair enough I guess but there's one problem with this, when you run out of bullets the other button is absolutely useless. He will still try to fire the gun but of course nothing will come out. Why could they not have just made 1 button fire the gun and then punch/kick once you were out? Yes I know...you might be thinking it's a good way to conserve ammo, but let me tell you, if you try to play this game without shooting you WILL die, no there is no maybe, you WILL unless you're cheating.
About the punch/kick button, if you just press it you do a punch and if you hold up while you press it you do a kick. Seems simple enough, but the kick is more powerful so why wouldn't you always want to do that? As for the gun button, and this is really where it gets stupid, if you hold down you do a standing punch......WHY? Why can you do a standing punch with BOTH buttons? This is why there should be 1 button to attack and 1 to jump.
As for the Shooting part, you press the button he shoots, simple enough. But wait...enemy above you let's press up and shoot and miss him....why you ask? Because if you press up you don't aim up, you aim diagonally up. if you press up again then you are finally aiming straight up. Same with down only you can't shoot straight down. Now you may be thinking these are just minor annoyances that you need to get use to and they present no real problem, but they present a very big problem as I'll demonstrate.
You of course will not be fighting 1 enemy at a time, so even if you get use to the shooting you will get hit. You have an enemy straight up, you shoot him, then an enemy is coming from below and you hit down to shoot him and instead of pointing the gun down it goes back to pointing it diagonally up so you get shot. But what if the situation is reversed? You have an enemy coming from below, you hit down and shoot to shoot....but it does a standing punch and you get shot. For anyone who didn't already see the problem, which I'm sure all of you did, this is it! Now to add on to that, you have no way to know how many bullets you have left without pausing, so if you're there fighting off tons of enemies and you all of a sudden run out of bullets not even knowing it was coming, you're screwed.
So let's get this straight...You have no jump button and 2 buttons to attack. 1 button does 1 good kick and a half decent punch, the other shoots and does the same half decent punch which means the punching is completely useless, but it's already stupid that you have 2 buttons to attack and no jump button anyway. When you do try to use the gun button it will never fire the way you want it to, and if you run out of ammo which often you won't even know you're about to you're dead.

Control rant over

So now that we've established that the controls are half the reason the game is awful, let's move on to the other half. If the controls are half the reason, the other half is simply everything else.
Terrible level designs. Random enemies who spawn and can often hit you before you hit them. Some enemies which you don't know how to kill and the game doesn't tell you. Terrible TERRIBLE platforming elements that require very precise jumps on a not so precise moving character often resulting in you dying instantly. Bosses that will sometimes kill you even AFTER you beat them. (And no, not like Sigma) Poisonous gas that actually lags your game as it's damaging you.
I could go on and on....but there's really no reason to. Let's just give a quick rundown of the levels.
First level is pretty much a maze. You go through buildings and alleys trying to find your way to the end of w/e street you're on. You'll encounter various gunmen, snakes that you have to jump on to kill (which isn't obvious given that you can shoot downward which does nothing), poisonous gas vents and of course fall damage..
Then once you make your way into the sewers you will have enemy water drops, electric short circuits and even toy cars that blow up when they touch you. All of which I'm SURE was in the movie. *Glares at exploding toy car* I know what you're thinking punk...you're thinking did he put 4 batteries in that remote control or only 3.

Second level is the docks level. This one is actually not that bad, and if the whole game had been like this one I wouldn't have hated it half as much. Yea it has a couple annoying jumps, but other than that it's actually a decent attempt at fun. I of course would not want to play it, but I wouldn't hate it if the whole game were this way. You're only real enemies here are again various gun men and guys that attack you like Donkey Kong by throwing barrels at you. And also a guy in a boat firing shots at you.

Third level is the prison, which is actually pretty difficult. Random mines all over the place, guys coming from every direction, and of course the final boss. I only want to mention 2 things here though. 1. The mountainous part is some of the poorest platforming in history. You're not even sure what you can or can't jump on and most of it blends in with the background pretty well. Not only that, there are parts where you have to use a grappling hook to get across and it's hard to tell because again you don't know what you can and can't jump on. 2. The final boss looks like The Kingpin from Spiderman (Maybe all Kingpins look this way).

Overall, very poorly made and tedious game, I really don't want to say too much more about it because this writeup is long enough already. So go ahead Dirty Harry, make my day.......miserable. Because that's exactly how I felt playing this game.

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