Warlock (Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, 1994, LJN/Trimark/Realtime/Acclaim)

The fact of the matter is, yes, I should have known better. This is LJN/Acclaim we're talking about after all. Their track record recquires no great analysis. The game's reviews are also not that great. And yet, I had some hopes for this title. Mainly because it seemed to be a basic platformer where you jump around and shoot energy bolts at werewolves.

It's a lot less impressive if you have to spend six levels in it.

But the problem is that while this game starts out okay, it never stretches to become anything more, and it repeats the parts that are "okay" about it so much, until eventualy you stop tolerating even those. But lets start at the begining.

The controls is where people usualy start complaining about sub-par videogames, and this game is no exception. The basic attack is alright, aside from the default ducking whenever you fire off a shot (and the fact that "early on" you're shots don't travel the whole length of the screen, meaning you have to engage in a fair fight with the energy beam shooting enemies), but the roll move is impractical and you will execute it more often then not when you weren't thinking of doing anything of the sort, and roll right into harms way. Worst of all though, are the spells. You pick these up individualy in every level, and there's lots to go around (each slot can supposedly hold 255 spells, but it only shows you have 9, which is sort of impractical), and you will need it since health magic literaly regains one point of dammage each (indicated by your face turning into a skull in the typical 90's way) and there are spots where getting hit is pretty much guaranteed.

Contrary to how it looks this thing is virtualy harmless.

This is usualy due to the bats and other flying enemies, who'se paths are so erratic that shooting them in time before they bump into you is a matter of either luck or split second timing. And there are ALOT of bats in this game.






Then, towards the end, there are enemy spawners and infinite spawn locations where not getting hit seems absolutely impossible, which is always the mark of great game design.

The last set of levels and now they roll out the generic
"punk guy with long hair" enemy type. Not a good sign.

Finaly, your worst, most feared enemy in the game, are pits. Because if you die once, you lose all, let me repeat, ALL the magic spells you got throughout the whole game up to that point, which can total several hundred if you bother to look for all the secret areas in a given stage. This means you've now gone to loaded with regeneration and offensive spells to being absolutely destitute and incapable of throwing a single thunder spell.

But there are many areas in the game where there's another level of platforms below the edge of the screen. However there's very little indication,so you can end up killing yourself trying to find new places to go. And in addition to all this, falling from too great a height kills you too.

Now this could all be forgiven....maybe, possibly.....if the game was varied and surprising but that is not the case.

The level themes repeat over and over again, usualy just switching between two slighly different ones for awhile before changing to a different theme that will get altered with some other theme for about six levels etc. The game is exceedingly long, with 15 stages, and the begining can be very deceptive. You have to collect six runestones to stop the Evil One (I'd make a joke about this being the Devil disguised by throwing a children's blanket over the head with the hoofs still very visible, but the game is technicaly movie based and I'm not familiar with the source material, so I can't do that), but you get the first two in the first two levels. And then you go on....and on....and on and nothing.

Yeah. Reel threatening,

 


To top it all off there aren't realy any moments where the game breaks the monotony of switch puzzles and swinging axes you have to jump over and fire spewing gremlin statues you have to get past, besides one a good 8 level in where you turn into one of the enemies and have a laser duel with a different laser throwing enemy, and the final boss fight....which is incredibly easy if you held on to your stock of magic. Otherwise you fight the same almost generic enemies and get hit by bats over and over again until you win, get a one paragraph text ending and immediately get mesmerised by the end credits.

Sadly I don't think you'll want to play that far.