FA+
Shop
Surprisingly BAD games: Wild 9 (PS1)
12 years ago
I recently got this game for $7 at a flea market, and I was blind to anything that went on in the game and all I knew was that it was made by the same people that made Earthworm Jim and that it has mixed opinions on it.
And what do I think of it? Well as you see by the journal title it's bad in my opinion. Now anyone can say something is bad, but I will tell you WHY it's bad.
CONTROLS:
It's a basic 2.5D side scrolling game, you run and jump. This game has it's own "unique" thing you can do though. (Unique as the game box seems to hammer in how much it THINKS it's unique.) You have a grapple beam like thing that you can use to grab enemies, and to kill them you slam them into the ground four times. (for most enemies) My problem with this "amazing" way to fight enemies is that it is very gimicky, and the "charm" of it becomes old on the very first stage.
Now slamming enemies against the ground isn't the only way to kill them, you can grab them with your grapple beam and throw them off of pits, into shredder like things, into fire, electric fields, an a few others. However these things are not very abundant through the game, so most of the times you are slamming enemies into the ground to kill them.
You can also find missles, but they aren't very common, but do kill a lot of enemies in one hit.
Another thing with the grabbing enemies and "torturing" them thing is that in some places it is required. Say your path is blocked by a large paper shredder like thing, well you need to destroy it. So you have to carry three enemies into the shredder to destroy it. There is an enemy generator of course, BUT, when you send an enemy through it had to finish the ENTIRE animation of them dying before the generator will create another enemy, so this creates a lot of tedium since these shredders have to be "fed" three enemies...
The jumping is another thing that I have issues with. For starters is a little floaty and feels awkward at times. But that's not the worst thing about jumping. The biggest problem however is when you are trying to jump to a ledge above you, your characters hitbox, as well as the collision detection of the ledge, is kind of wonky. So at times even though it LOOKS like he should grab onto the ledge, he will sometimes hit his head. This isn't TOO bad, but after a fair number of times throughout the game it gets REALLY old.
GRAPHICS:
Well, it's a PS1 game, so you can't expect greatness. BUT, this is a game made by the same people that made Eartworm Jim, those games are a good mix of colorful and dark. This game is polygonal, dark, and rather uninteresting to look at. This COULD have been fixed if they opted to make it into a sprite game, and forgot about the 2.5D crap as it adds so little to the game, especially since most of the times the areas are bland and repetitive. Now graphics mean little to me, but still, this game just felt like it suffers from them trying to hard to give it personality.
MUSIC:
Not half bad, I mean Tommy Talarinco does an okay job with music. But what I do hate is he reused one of the better tracks from Earthworm Jim:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTQvP7YK7uE
In a level that it does NOT fit, AT ALL!!!
http://youtu.be/P6-Ytm2WWE4?t=3m11s
Yeah, take a music made for a stage where you are falling down a dangerous widing path of spikes, and put it in a stage fill with stalacmites while jetbiking around......
I know that's pretty trivial to the rest of the game, but it's something that pissed me off.
THE FINAL BOSS:
Let's see what the back of the game box says:
Forget wimpy bosses. In Wild 9 you face KARN - the largest enemy in a video game - his face is the size of New York!
Really? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmU4sq7GSDE
Unless your character is as big as New York I think they blowing him WAY out of proportion. >_>
Oh and you see how boring and tedious he was? Take that into account, you go through this whole boring and tedious game to fight THAT!
So all in all this was a bad game. There is a hard mode but there is NOTHING that make me even want to touch that. Heck, in level 2, LEVEL 2 I actually looked up cheats and began using them. Just at level 2 of 14 I was already so tired of the game that I resorted to cheating. That doesn't show the mark of a good game. And no, I am no ameture gamer, 20 years of gaming has gotten me use to a LOT that games can throw at me. And lastly, to put it simply, I don't think there was a single thing that I genuinely liked about this game, and I am glad to have beaten it.
And what do I think of it? Well as you see by the journal title it's bad in my opinion. Now anyone can say something is bad, but I will tell you WHY it's bad.
CONTROLS:
It's a basic 2.5D side scrolling game, you run and jump. This game has it's own "unique" thing you can do though. (Unique as the game box seems to hammer in how much it THINKS it's unique.) You have a grapple beam like thing that you can use to grab enemies, and to kill them you slam them into the ground four times. (for most enemies) My problem with this "amazing" way to fight enemies is that it is very gimicky, and the "charm" of it becomes old on the very first stage.
Now slamming enemies against the ground isn't the only way to kill them, you can grab them with your grapple beam and throw them off of pits, into shredder like things, into fire, electric fields, an a few others. However these things are not very abundant through the game, so most of the times you are slamming enemies into the ground to kill them.
You can also find missles, but they aren't very common, but do kill a lot of enemies in one hit.
Another thing with the grabbing enemies and "torturing" them thing is that in some places it is required. Say your path is blocked by a large paper shredder like thing, well you need to destroy it. So you have to carry three enemies into the shredder to destroy it. There is an enemy generator of course, BUT, when you send an enemy through it had to finish the ENTIRE animation of them dying before the generator will create another enemy, so this creates a lot of tedium since these shredders have to be "fed" three enemies...
The jumping is another thing that I have issues with. For starters is a little floaty and feels awkward at times. But that's not the worst thing about jumping. The biggest problem however is when you are trying to jump to a ledge above you, your characters hitbox, as well as the collision detection of the ledge, is kind of wonky. So at times even though it LOOKS like he should grab onto the ledge, he will sometimes hit his head. This isn't TOO bad, but after a fair number of times throughout the game it gets REALLY old.
GRAPHICS:
Well, it's a PS1 game, so you can't expect greatness. BUT, this is a game made by the same people that made Eartworm Jim, those games are a good mix of colorful and dark. This game is polygonal, dark, and rather uninteresting to look at. This COULD have been fixed if they opted to make it into a sprite game, and forgot about the 2.5D crap as it adds so little to the game, especially since most of the times the areas are bland and repetitive. Now graphics mean little to me, but still, this game just felt like it suffers from them trying to hard to give it personality.
MUSIC:
Not half bad, I mean Tommy Talarinco does an okay job with music. But what I do hate is he reused one of the better tracks from Earthworm Jim:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTQvP7YK7uE
In a level that it does NOT fit, AT ALL!!!
http://youtu.be/P6-Ytm2WWE4?t=3m11s
Yeah, take a music made for a stage where you are falling down a dangerous widing path of spikes, and put it in a stage fill with stalacmites while jetbiking around......
I know that's pretty trivial to the rest of the game, but it's something that pissed me off.
THE FINAL BOSS:
Let's see what the back of the game box says:
Forget wimpy bosses. In Wild 9 you face KARN - the largest enemy in a video game - his face is the size of New York!
Really? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmU4sq7GSDE
Unless your character is as big as New York I think they blowing him WAY out of proportion. >_>
Oh and you see how boring and tedious he was? Take that into account, you go through this whole boring and tedious game to fight THAT!
So all in all this was a bad game. There is a hard mode but there is NOTHING that make me even want to touch that. Heck, in level 2, LEVEL 2 I actually looked up cheats and began using them. Just at level 2 of 14 I was already so tired of the game that I resorted to cheating. That doesn't show the mark of a good game. And no, I am no ameture gamer, 20 years of gaming has gotten me use to a LOT that games can throw at me. And lastly, to put it simply, I don't think there was a single thing that I genuinely liked about this game, and I am glad to have beaten it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsTjcIsF96k