Best of the Worst – Virtual Hydlide

A Guest Review by Jambo

This Review is part of our ‘Best of the Worst’ (‘BotW’) series, in which TGN writers/guests attempt to find the very worst games in existence, and offer proof of it’s terribleness, in the form of a review.

• Game: Virtual Hydlide
• Format: SEGA Saturn
• Developer: T&E Soft
• Publisher: SEGA
• Genre: RPG
  

There are a hell of a lot of awful games that decide to ‘grace’ the videogames world with their presence, but now I believe we have a new benchmark to compare others against: Virtual Hydlide. This isn’t your average RPG. Hell, it’s not even sub-standard. This BotW is here purely to compel you to not ever consider buying this game. If it appears on eBay for next to nothing don’t even click on the link. Seriously, don’t bother. Now, onto the actual game…

Is it any coincidence that the two games I have elected into the BotW vault so far are both made by T&E Soft? Maybe, but it is not without good reason. Virtual Hydlide is an action-RPG which was released on the SEGA Saturn in 1995. The Hydlide series has been around for a while but has never achieved any large success due to it being seen as a poor man’s Zelda. The first game appeared on the NES, but fans(!?) of the series claim this Saturn version to be the worst. If that is what the fans are saying then you know it must be a true turd of a game.

Hydlide is the ‘magical’ world which you, the plucky, pixelated hero, must explore. Perhaps the magical part is that it manages miraculously to make every environment look exactly the same as every other, along with all the enemies popping up out of thin air. The story is quite typical of the genre, and indeed the other Hydlide games. A dark demon called Varalys attempts to take over the land and he kidnaps a princess who then splits into three fairies. The gamer has to track down these three fairies, find three magic stones, defeat one or two bosses and finally face Varalys in a climactic showdown. That is if you can slug your way through the terrible graphics and painstaking gameplay…

Gameplay that is far too simple, and this is where the game really stumbles. You have three different strengths of attack (though you won‘t notice the difference) and as you progress through the game you can pick up a small selection of analogous swords and daggers to aid you in this button mashing quest. For most of the game you are placed in a wide-open environment and are forced to follow a marker to your next destination where you may find an enemy to fight or you may just be flung to another dull and remorselessly samey environment (including a graveyard, a dungeon, a large field, another graveyard and some more dungeons). This ruins the sense of progression and makes the game seem forcibly dragged-out.

It really doesn’t look that bad, but considering the frame-rate, this is probably a GIF animation of gameplay.

This quote is taken from the blurb that can be found on the reverse of the box: “Killer trees, deadly dragons and bloody-thirsty zombies are rife in this magical slash and hack adventure”. Now, call me cynical, but any game that lists trees as enemies must be approached with caution. The most damaging enemy, though, is the graphics engine. Unlike the previous Hydlide games, Virtual Hydlide escapes from the user friendly top-down view and takes the first steps into motion captured video. The result is an awkward mix of ‘photo-realistic graphics’ and a choppy frame rate. Although at first glance the graphics may seem alright, it isn’t till you actually play the game for any length of time that you realise just how slothful and distorted they are. When you get up close to a foe you can never be sure if your attack will actually hit them or if you’ll be made to just watch helplessly as the game slows down (and when it returns to normal you find that you are dead). Enemies flicker through walls, objects get grainier the closer you get and the scenery tends to move of its own accord. If you can remember the ’80s TV RPG sensation ‘Knightmare’ then you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect… only worse.

Music is vitally important to videogames and a good soundtrack can heighten the senses and add emotion and emphasis to particular scenes. Virtual Hydlide prefers to torture its player with noise similar to that of a cat passing a 10 inch kidney stone whilst being stroked vigorously by an overly enthusiastic child with a terrible case of halitosis… with a megaphone strapped to its mouth. I suppose that is a tad undue, there are a few samples of music that rise to ranks of ‘run of the mill’, though it’s the sound effects that provide the true anguish. Constant grunts of “Ungh”, “Aiee”, and “Squish!” quickly vex.

Knightmare was awesome. I’m gonna go YouTube me some Knightmare.

There are a couple of neat touches. The game uses a pretty good ‘weight-limit’ idea where the hero can only carry items up to a certain weight. This does theoretically add some strategic value but is badly executed and so in practice becomes a chore. The final dungeon is something that has to be seen to be believed. Without giving too much away, expect Tron-esque rooms coupled with the terrible, nausea inducing motion-capture; who needs an acid trip when you have got this?

The game tried something new. Motion-capture was uncharted territory and to try and use it in the RPG genre was a courageous move… but one that here proved disastrous. The idea of a photo-realistic virtual world was great, but the hardware limitations seriously destroyed any fun the game may have contained. Perhaps the worst parts are that VH contains no text and no non-playable characters to interact with, thus making the story a novel inclusion rather than a major driving point: there are no towns to visit, no side-quests to enjoy and nowhere to rest meaning that the duration of the playing time is a constant fight against ennui. That, and the lead character looks like a stocky transvestite… oh, and by the time you finished reading this you probably could have completed the game.

Twice.

Score:
9 turds out of 10

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Best of the Worst – Blaze & Blade: Eternal Quest

A Guest Review by Jambo

This review hails the first installment of our ‘Best of the Worst’ (‘BotW’) series, in which TGN writers/guests attempt to find the very worst games in existence, and offer proof of its terribleness, in the form of a review.

• Game: Blaze & Blade: Eternal Quest
• Version Reviewed: PSone
• Other Formats: PC
• Developer: T&E Soft
• Publisher: Funsoft
• Genre: RPG
  

When any product sells well, it’s inevitable that countless copycats will emerge to cash in on its achievements. The success of Final Fantasy VII in popularising animé-styled RPGs with a wider western audience instigated a flood in the genre. Some of the influxes tried to develop the genre further, such as Septerra Core, while others simply tried to ride the tide of RPG-hype and hope for the best. This is where Blaze & Blade: Eternal Quest comes in, complete with its own borrowed, broken surfboard.

Blaze & Blade is an RPG with a ‘twist’. Not only is there, as standard, a fairly lengthy single-player quest to venture through, but you can also play the whole game with up to three other people. Finding friends who are actually willing to endure it, however, is a completely different quest in its own right (and they may not be your friends by the end of the experience).

The game tries to combine the tabletop antics of a Dungeons & Dragons gathering with a straightforward video-game RPG, but the end-result fails to include any of the good bits of either ingredient (loosely put, the gameplay falls somewhere between Alundra & Gauntlet) – offering little more than over-simplified puzzles and monotonous hacking. The puzzles won’t keep anyone over the age of ten occupied for more than 3-4 minutes a time, while the agonisingly dull action could take a lifetime of therapy to forget.

Every RPG needs a strong story to keep the gamer engaged; the Final Fantasy games, for example, have always featured detailed, twisting storylines that capture and maintain the player’s interest. Unfortunately, Funsoft appear to have overlooked this, and in place of any semblance of story, the game’s sole focus is to force you (and your unfortunate allies) through dungeon after dungeon in pursuit of ‘magic stones’. Such dull, linear action prevents you from forming any kind of connection with your character, and the game’s non-player characters are just as unlovable, acting only to give you herbs and warnings about the next dungeons. The dungeons themselves look horribly samey, with only trivial differences between them, which means there’s little sense of progression.

Tsk. Delivering the mail is dangerous, anyway. A few demons aren’t going to make it even more so. Poof.

The controls are clunky, awkward and generally frustrating. The basic controls are functional enough (one button for striking, another for jumping and another for your special ability) but the complimentary controls are awful: pressing ‘Start’ brings up the in-game menu, but in order to navigate through the options you must use the D-Pad and shoulder buttons, making finding items (and the map!) a chore and a bore. Even more exasperating is trying to use some of the items: this mundane procedure cannot be performed using the menu and must thus be executed whilst fighting in real-time. Since some of the icons for items look remarkably similar, you’ll often find yourself wasting valuable potions or casting the wrong spell.

There are a range of camera-angles from which to view the action, but none of them are particularly good. The bird’s-eye view can be toggled on or off – but once activated, only lasts for about five seconds before it needs to be reactivated! The other camera angles render the game near unplayable, regularly resulting in characters falling off cliffs, or being assaulted by off-screen foes.

Some of the other game-features are just as counter-spontaneous. Say, for example, you’ve just picked up an item and want to give it to a friend to use (a logical choice of action in a multiplayer RPG). You cannot simply give the item away; you must leave the game, go to the auction screen and sell it to the player for a base price. This upsets the flow of the game – but the real head-scratcher here is the fact that, these auctions aside, money has no use in the game world as you cannot actually ‘buy’ anything. Surely it wouldn’t have killed the makers to install a simple shop for buying/selling equipment…

It’s really hard trying to find screenshots for this game that aren’t either completely boring or set in this pub-type place. It seems no one bothered to get past this bit.

Another major fault involves the ‘random dungeon generator’ (which does exactly what it says on the tin). Work your way through half a dungeon then pop outside to save, you’ll find that – upon reloading – the entire dungeon has completely changed and must thus be reworked from scratch. One would have thought a problem of this magnitude would have been fixed prior to release…

So, are there any good points? Well, the character customisation is decent enough, with the player being able to choose from eight different character classes, and allocate attributes as they see fit (e.g. Luck, Power, Strength, Intelligence, etc.). You can also choose your sex (though there is very little difference in appearance) and the way you want your character to speak in the game. Though with the lack of any real in-game character interaction, this last feature is rendered useless.

It’s all a shame, as in some ways, you might try to love this game. It at least attempted, for its time, something slightly different in the RPG field. Unfortunately, it fell flat on its face at the first hurdle, and the end result is messy, unfinished, riddled with faults and glitches and, overall, a pointless purchase for even the most ardent RPG-er.

Score:
8 turds out of 10

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