Astro Boy |
GBA |
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Review by Matt Paprocki |
Sega |
Action |
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Graphics: 8 |
Sound: 8 |
Gameplay: 9 |
Overall: 9 |
If you own a Saturn, chances are you either own or plan to own "Guardian Heroes" or "Radiant Silvergun." If you own a Genesis, "Gunstar Heroes" probably tops that list. One thing brings these titles together: Treasure. "Astro Boy" is the latest title from the hardcore gamers dream developer and their solid style brings to life the popular anime character in one of the best games this system will ever see.
Solid game mechanics follow the game all the way through to completion. The shooting stages are above average, yet few in number. The finger laser makes for a potent weapon here. On the ground, you'll beat down enemies using super strength, knocking them into each other with spectacular results. The sheer amount of mayhem on screen at once does cause a few minor moments of slowdown, but if anything, it lets you get a handle on the situation. Creating huge masses of on-screen explosions/sprites is a company trademark, and "Astro Boy" keeps that tradition fully intact.
To make things interesting, once Astro Boy has met a new character, he can power himself up. How you choose to make him stronger is completely your choice. You'll never need one of the six sections fully powered-up to make it through a segment. Once the game is over, you are free to revisit any stages to find anyone you might have missed (there are 50 characters in the game total), though by then you should be maxed out. Beating the game is really the only cheap move the developers made. Once through the seven stages (with multiple sub-stages in each), you must go through them again. The storyline sends you back in time to fix what has gone wrong in the world, but on your quest to right everything, nothing changes. All of the stages play the same until you finally get to stage 8. Even worse, you have to figure out a certain way to proceed through the stages in order to advance the story with the stage select screen. Sometimes the clues are obvious. Other times, not so much.
Underneath the action runs a great soundtrack, though it does get lost in the on-screen mayhem. All of the cinemas are course done with text and the only voice samples are some screams when robots/people take damage. It's excusable, but know that there are A LOT of cinemas crammed in here. All of the sound effects round out the package nicely. Amazingly, this is a far better game than the home console versions. It's simplicity makes it accessible to anyone, the storyline can be followed by even non-fans of the show, and sheer amount of carnage keeps things fun up until the final battle. You have to be disappointed when you realize you basically have to play through the entire game twice (more in actuality) to see it to the end, but you would probably play it multiple times anyway. |