Since I am not in a very good mood today I decided to review a crap game! :)))) Anyway...produced in 1993 by Sony Imagesoft this game is based on the nice flick with Sylvester Stallone. Sony in 1993 took the biggest movie licenses of that year, Dracula, Hook, Last Action Hero and Cliffhanger and attemped to make games with them...I say 'attempted' because the results only 'games' they weren't (just read the review for Last Action Hero for a laugh :)). Anyway, as you will see, this game has almost nothing good to offer...

GRAPHICS:
The graphics are passable. The sprites are small but nice and their animation is decent. The problem is that there is not much variety in the enemies. The backgrounds are decent as well, but there is virtually no variety...you will see only snow and mountains...Level 6 is similar to Level 1...of course the programmers could't act differently since the film had only snow and mountains...:). Between the levels there are some 'digitized' stills from the film (redrawn actually) that are amongst the worst I have ever seen. Poor Sly never looked uglier...

   

SOUND:
I don't know about the game, but the Marduk CD I was listening to was amazing :))...OK, seriously, the music is very boring and repetitive and the SFX bad...

GAMEPLAY:
If it had good gameplay, I could consider it a nice game and accept the flawed technical part. But the gameplay is the weakest point...The setting is similar to Double Dragon...I don't say Final Fight because by doing so I would insult that great game...anyway, you control Sly in a pseudo-3d environment and you have to kick the hell out of everyone you meet. It sounds good, but the control is unresponsive. The collision detection is also poor. There are six levels divided in several stages. The level of difficulty is very high, and there are no passwords, power ups or anything that could help. The game is simply brutal and merciless! :)) Very frustrating...Sometimes I am a masochist, though, since as you can see from the pics I reached the final boss (the one with the inverted copter)...using the save state of course!

    OVERALL:
Looks decent, the sound doesn't matter (after all, how many of you play games listening to their music?) but the gameplay is brutally dificult. And this is where this game fails. It is technically the best of the Sony Imagesoft film-licenced games, but the difficulty puts a nail on its coffin. Try it if you are a fan of the film...the rest of you better play Final Fight again...

GRAPHICS:80
SOUND :49
CONTROL :45
FUN :25
OVERALL :50