Friday 9 September 2011

Wild Streets (Amiga)

This will only be a short review, as this game is so awful, I couldn't bear to play it for very long. I don't even know why I'm bothering to write about it at all, even.
It's a beat em up in which your character is accompanied by a panther. It must take a special kind of talent to turn this into such a terrible game.
I'll start with the controls. It uses a control scheme that a fair few other action games also use on the Amiga: you hold the fire button, and different things happen when you press a direction. Pressing down shoots, left or right punches and up does a flying kick.
The gun kills enemies instantly, but you only get six shots. Sometimes enemies drop ammo, but this is a random occurance, so you can't plan and ration your bullets or anything. The flying kick is almost useful, as it knocks down any enemies it hits, and does a decent amount of damage. Unfortunately, it ends up being useless because it takes away a fairly large portion of your health. So, you're mostly left with the punch to defend yourself. This too is fairly useless, as thanks to the game's control scheme, you have to be stood still to punch. and the enemies have longer arms than you, so a lot of the time, you walk towards them, stop to punch, then get knocked back by their punch and start again.
Going back to the issue of health, you don't seem to lose any from being hit by enemies, though as i said, you do lose health for using your flying kick. And also sometimes you just lose healh for no obvious reason. When you run out of health, the action just stops dead, no matter what's happening, shows the text "GAME OVER" for a couple of seconds, then goes to the high score table.
One last thing, i might be nitpicking here, but the game is entitled "Wild Streets", but the first stage is in some absurdly affluent looking area full of mansions with huge gardens. Admittedly, i didn't get past the first boss, but still.
The only good thing about this game is the loading screen, which is at the top of this review because there's no title screen.

1 comment:

  1. This could of been good if it had been play-tested properly. A number of faults hinder the gameplay.
    1) Sadly the action is flick screen rather than scrolling which was a poor decision. Enemies can just pop right in front or behind you with little you can do about it.
    2) A lack of moves. Can get very repetitive.
    3) Whoever decided to call the panther 'Black Virgin' and run with it should hang their heads in shame because that is super lame.

    Other minor gripes include the controls which do take a bit of time to get used to, presumably that's why the reviewer quit so early. Also the sound should be better - it loops and becomes monotonous which adds to the dull gameplay.

    Positives... well it has a certain charm I guess. The actual graphics are surprisingly good and you do get to use a magnum and unleash a panther to maul the enemies which is the main gimmick. It's not completely unplayable, more dull I suppose but if your used to the beat-em-ups of the 80's or 90's then you know what to expect.
    Even for what it is it's still a poor game at the end of the day and that reflects in my score: 4/10

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