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Review: World Heroes [Sega Genesis] |
The other day I was walking to the bus stop to catch my daily ride to college when I stepped in a tiny pile of some small animal’s dry excrement. Taking the end of a twig to the sole, I scrapped what I could off the bottom of my shoe and on to the ground. This is when it happened – I suddenly remembered World Heroes for the Sega Genesis.
Fortune smiled upon SNK when World Heroes got picked up for a Genesis port, but not by Takara, but by Sega. More specifically : Sega Midwest Division. Never heard of ‘em? Same here. The comedy starts here folks, for World Heroes (on Genesis anyway) is one of the worst pieces of disgraced software coding ever made. Everything about this game reeks half-assed effort, and more importantly, seriously lacking coding skills.
Wait, sorry. Skillz.
It all starts wonderfully though, as soon as you start a game you can choose an elite member of the World Heroes universe. Now, I’m afraid that sarcasm won’t get my point across here, but these characters are lame. LAME! Look at this guy, Rasputin. Every one of his hits consist of hitting the opponent with weird looking glowing hands and feet. But that’s okay considering he’s VERY GAY… he twirls around like Marilyn Monroe, imitating the same pose she was famous for. All the characters are devoid of any intelligence or even say, good-taste. Another would be Brocken, a German military man who’s supposed to be a robot. He stretches… like Dhalsim. But it’s a scary day when Dhalsim seems like a baron of style compared to that German fuck. Oh, and you get your usual Ryu/Ken guys as well, but I didn’t bother remembering their names. My bad.
This game however, does have what I consider, the most entertaining story line to a fighting game, ever. As you pick your character, a scientist (with no eyebrows mind you, like all good scientists) tells you that he’s going to send you through time to fight other World Heroes, and tells you it should be an interesting battle. No fucking around, heh buddy? Who said I’d consent to that! Either way, off you go to your doom, or should I say : to play a boring SF2 clone…
Interesting enough, the game plays like a relative to SF2. The kind of relative everyone makes fun of for banging head first into the wall and then repeating it over and over. This game fumbles on so many gameplay aspects, it’s hard to keep track. First, I’ll just start from the most memorable. The hit detection. Watch as your limbs go right through the opponent. Look mommy! I’m defying science! … well it seemed funny to me. In this game, it’s just as fun to smack the opponent to death with loose controls as it is to probe a skunk’s ass : these controls respond well to button taping, thank god, but when it comes to direction motions… don’t even bother. I had done the qcf + punch motion over 10 times, and once in that cycle (usually random) I’d get results in the form of a projectile from the Ryu knock-off. Whoa, imagine if SNK had implemented the raging storm motion in this game 0_o
The AI is so atrociously bad I’ve given the virtual cerebral coding it’s own paragraph. Ready? Okay – There is none! Seriously! The attack plan seems to be jump in, launch a flurry of quick kicks, back-off. Repeat. WELL THANK GOD! Thanks to the ingenious way of using a standing punch on most characters as anti-air, I knock them back… but they get up and approach you once more. GO AWAY.
There is one last option in this game of minor importance : You can choose between playing the arcade mode, or playing deathmatch mode. In DM mode, the sides of the stage are hazardous. So don’t go near them. Or push the CPU character into them :D
* starts swatting the air in front of his PC *
That was a visual demonstration of the strategies needed to finish this game. In fact, after fighting the limping roster, you end up facing a boss who looks and acts like T-1000 from Terminator 2. He transforms into other characters and *jumps* at you, since he has no moves of his own. Fine, whatever. But it’s all worth it for the final pre fight cut-scene…
“You are the winner! Congra–
OH NO! IT’S GEEGUS! HE’S HERE TO DESTROY THE EARTH!”
Unfortunetely, I’m contractually obligated to defend the earth.
