G is for....

Galaxy Force II

Megadrive

Galaxy Force is your standard space ship rail shooter similar to Space Harrier but unfortunately just slightly not as good as it just lacks the charm of Space Harrier.

In all honesty I’m really struggling to say anything positive or negative about Galaxy Force. It’s just an average shooter that’s not brilliant but not particularly bad either. You have your ship flying along shooting enemies, get a power up every now and then and that’s about it. Your life gauge is a huge energy countdown in the middle of the screen and once that gets to the bottom you die. Some of the missions have sections where the energy goes back up a bit not always massively and you do really have to be quick on every level to have a chance of completing the game.

One thing though is the level select. There are five planets in the game which progressively get longer and more difficult but you can choose the levels in any order instead of going through them as shown on the select screen. Unfortunately due to the 15 minute time limit I didn’t get a chance to see what happens if you say start in the middle and work through and also to see if you progress onto the next world after one mission or whether each world has numerous missions to progress.

Within the 15 minutes: Had completed two missions.

Will I play it again? Maybe.

Ghen War

Sega Saturn

Unlike Exhumed; you’ll find that Ghen War is a FPS set in outer space though it is slightly different by having the main character be inside an exoskeleton shaped like a power loader which does include quite a few nifty weapons.

From the outset I had about seven different weapons which included a standard weapon alongside missiles, rockets, land mines and even a decoy robot to distract the enemies. For the first mission at least ammo for all of the weapons seemed to spread quite a lot around the level meaning that I never ran out of any of the weapons, though a message at the beginning of the game informs you that later on the enemies will get harder to kill so ammo may start to actually be in short supply.

One small criticism is the map. It’s a blank canvas but as you walk around it gets filled in with lines of the exact route that you are walking. The problem is that the lines look like someone has given a five year old a crayon and told them to colour in the lines after you. It’s a bizarre look but eventually you do get used to it.

Within the 15 minutes: Was on mission 2.

Will I play it again? Will give it another shot at some point.

Ghost House

Master System

I’ll be honest and admit that I found Ghost House to be a bit of a tough game. I found to be alright but a bit on the hard side.

Working your way through the aforementioned Ghost House for most of the level you just use your trusty fist to defeat the bats and ghosts. You can collect weapons in the form of arrows and swords by jumping on them as they fly across the screen at you. Where they fly from I have no idea as no enemy that I saw actually had any weapons. Some enemies can be quite tough with one in particular needing about four punches to kill whilst shooting fire at you whilst others like the bats just one good clobber to kill.

The aim of level one was to find and destroy five Draculas which is a lot easier said than done. The level consists of your standard platforms, ladders and spikes but also has portals that just randomly drop you at other sections of the level. I decided to have a moment of going through the portals to see where I ended up and after going through about three of them I did actually manage to end up in the same place. Going back to how tough the enemies can be, once you find a Dracula they can be quite hard to kill as they change into bats which fly around and knock you about and when it does stop and transform into Dracula form it’s usually on a different platform to what you are on which obviously isn’t good.

Within the 15 minutes: Trying to complete level one.

Will I play it again? Might give it another shot.

Golden Axe: Warrior

Master System

I could probably sum this entire game up in just ten words. Those words being: Is almost exactly the same as the first Zelda game. Normally that would be a compliment but not in this case unfortunately.

As far as I can see this game rips off the first Zelda game so much that I wouldn’t be surprised if Nintendo had sued back in the day. I’m actually convinced that if you put the two games side by side most of the screens would be the same or very similar (obviously having slightly different main characters and slightly different enemies). Even the plot is pretty much exactly the same, replacing Tri-force pieces with crystals and dungeons with labyrinths.

Sadly for me what the developers didn’t seem to take from Zelda was the charm and although Zelda can in places seem to be a bit of a grind this felt like that from the start and wasn’t fun at all in the slightest. I think even without it being a Zelda clone I still wouldn’t have enjoyed it.

Within the 15 minutes: Wandering around looking for a dungeon.

Will I play it again? Never.

Gotcha Force

GameCube

Imagine if someone merged the film Small Soldiers with Transformers and then sprinkled a dose of Pokemon on top. Imagine that and you’ll end up with Gotcha Force.

The basic premise is that Earth is being attacked by little robots called “Gotcha Borgs”. Luckily for us a young boy finds a good borg and with some friends (each with their own borgs) creates the Gotcha Force to stop the bad guys. It’s a simple enough premise which is shown in the form of a short Manga video at the beginning of the game.

The game play than consists of you and an ally taking on enemy borgs in fight after fight. In the 15minutes I completed at least ten fights as unfortunately at the beginning of the game at least they are pretty easy and don’t last long at all. There wasn’t really any skill involved either as it was just a case of shoot and hit as quick as possible. One thing about Gotcha Force is that after some fights an enemy borg can be selected for you team but these have to be bought using points collected during the fights. By the time I stopped playing I had a knight, ninja and gunner added to my team.

Within the 15 minutes: Had completed 10+ fights.

Will I play it again? Yeah, easy but seems alright.