Retro Review

[Guest RyanT]

Here is my stab at what you could call a "Retro Review". Sadly I haven't gotten my hands on Metroid Prime 3 yet, and I'm sure none of you want to hear my harping on about the first two orgasm encased breasts of wobbly joy. Instead, I'm going to review Superman 64, for - you guessed it - the N64, as a placeholder and replace the current text with text of the Metroid Prime 3 review, so I can say I did the first review of Metroid Prime 3 and point to posting date.

To start this review in typical fashion, I'll walk you through the story. Lex Luthor wakes up one morning and finds he's gone bald, and thanks also to the stress of a mid life crisis, decides he wants revenge on Superman for being so darn young looking and having all his hair by creating a virtual Metropolis and traps Clark Kents' friends in it (apparently a citation is needed in these modern Wikipedia times, so here it is). Thanks to Clark Kent and Superman being such good chums, Clark Kent blackmails superman to go in and save them, and stop Lex Luthor.

Now, this is where I should mention I haven't played the game in many many years, nor have I even owned it for many, many, years. Nor did I even complete it. In fact, I barely got past the first few stages, but I still feel fully justified in making this review (thanks Gamespot).

Initial impressions might come across quite well with this game. A full, essentially virtual virtual version of Metropolis to explore at your free will in some levels (as far as I can guess), flying is OK, but then that stops. You find out you can't use all of Supermans powers, you have to collect certain tokens to be able to use them, and you can only use them until the bar runs out. Then the lame excuse of Kryptonite fog to excuse what is actual fog because the developers couldn't be arsed to draw further than a few tens of metres. You're not even invincible (although I'm guessing that could also be excused away by the dreaded kyrptonite fog, even though it only exists in 3 virtual dimensions).

The combat is OK, but you have a limited fisting (hitting people with your enclosed hand for those not Tekken minded) combo. Also all the enemies look like that black one from Spy vs Spy. I would say Resident Evil 5, but most of them are black in that one and I don't want to be called a racist either, even if I am secretly harbouring feelings of hatred.

As far as I played through the game, you didn't get much more than that really, but that's a good thing. It shows the developers cared enough to think "You know, maybe Ryan doesn't want to be learning endless combos, bashing random buttons and stuff like that, maybe he's fed up of God of War that I happen to have many years knowledge prior to it's development 'cos I used to know Mystic Meg before she started telling who would pick the right balls to play with". Thanks Titus.

And that's when the game begins to make sense. They didn't want you to have to deal with seeing more than 20 feet ahead, maybe it's too much for you to handle, maybe you're short sighted and are fed up with all these games that favour people with 20/20 vision. What's the point of detailed textures if you can't see that detail anyway. What if your memory happens to favour repetitive mashing of the same button, what if you don't want all these powers to deal with at once, maybe you're a man and can't multi-task like women can. Maybe your IQ is a bit too low to deal with a complex and intellectually challenging plot. Maybe, you might even be mentally handicapped.

It's when you take these things into account that everything clicks. And on top of that is a multiplayer that makes no sense in the universe of Superman and isn't that engaging. But maybe you just want to forget the smaller details, and you don't want to be engaged, just to relax and play a game, without a care in the world.

And it's this that makes this game worthy of my whole hearted glowing endorsement.

10/10 Perfect for the retarded and those that just don't care about games.