Mega Drive Review

Blaster Master 2

Reviewed by: The Great Escape

On my once-every-3-weeks visit to game-traders (local game store), i had to choose between this, Alisia Dragoon, Decap Attack and Primal Rage. The original Blaster Master is one of few games exclusive to a nintendo console that i enjoy, well maybe not enjoy, but the premise of driving a jumping tank was pretty cool (metal slug did it well too) .The fact that i am writing a Blaster Master 2 review and not a Primal Rage review means that i obviously chose Blaster Master 2.

The story is pretty basic sequel stuff. The aliens have returned and destroyed the blaster master 1 (the one used in the first game), and now jason must recover the parts by using his new blaster master, so he can save the world. again. The game is split into 4 different views. Theres the usual side-view tank sections, when Jason gets out the the tank the view stays the same, but your out of the tank and very vulnerable. After a bit of jason only action you have to fight a boss in the little boss room. In the boss room Jason is very large indeed and its sort of like metroid (except you only fight a boss). At the end of each level you have to navigate a top-down maze-like section. Sounds fun? read on..

Graphics

Was it the right to choose this over Alisia? hopefully I'll know by the time i get to the end of the review, but for now ill describe the graphics. The best word to describe the graphics would be "varied", they start out reasonably colourful, but then the rest of the levels follow a theme (either all brown, all red, etc). The tank itself looks nice, and has some nice little animations. When you get out of the tank though Jason looks similar to the guy from pitfall (harry?), but not the mega drive pitfall, noooo. Jason looks rather similar to the atari pitfall, except smaller. He looks better and bigger (much bigger) on the boss levels, but he still runs funny. The top down levels are ugly, usually all brown affairs that you will probably get sick of very quickly. All up it looks rather average. It wont blow you away, but you probably will have seen worse (i guess thats the definition of average).

Sonics

Once again Average is the word to describe somehing in this game.The sounds are absolutely average, the music is sometimes good, sometimes annoying, and usually pretty clear. Nothing special at all.

Playability

The problem with Blaster Master 2 is that it tries to do too much. I would have enjoyed it lots more if it didnt have the top down sections, which are poorly done, hard to control and generally boring. The tank and jason are easy to control (except for the top down bit, as mentioned), but aiming can be a bit more challenging. The levels are also pretty samey, almost allways involving you having to find a sub-boss, beat him so you can get the special item, then using that item to get to the level-boss. The bosses are pretty cool though, especially the bee. Unfortunaley they arent that hard and can usually be beaten with minimal loss of lives. It also must be mentioned that there is a lot of jumpy-jumpy action in this game, so if your not a fan of jumpy-jumpy then you should probably stay away. One other thing I must mention, whatever you do DONT GET OUT OF THE TANK WHEN YOUR ON TOP OF A LADDER! you wont be able to get back into the tank and will have to kill yourself. Im not sure how this one slipped through their QA team.

Overall

An original enough idea, though as you might have assumed by now, this game came out really average. You probably wont come back to it unless you really enjoy 2-d tank action or just have a thing for blaster master games. If you are of the latter then you will probably enjoy the original more; its simpler. If you have a choice between Blaster Master 2, Alisia Dragoon, Decap Attack and Primal Rage, get Alisia Dragoon..

If you liked this then check out: Blaster Master (NES), Prince of persia, Granada X, Metal Slug (Psx, Neo Geo)