Genre: Action
Developer: Sunsoft
Publisher: Sunsoft
Players: 1
Retail Price: 1000 Wii Points
Availability: WiiWare
For those who grew up in the era of acid washed jeans and monster ballads, the name ‘Sophia’ is likely connected to one of two things: a snarky Sicilian immigrant on a sitcom about women in their golden years, or a cannon-equipped tank that can jump. It just depends on whether or not you played Sunsoft’s Blaster Master on the NES. The original is fondly remembered by those who played it due to its tight design and open world. It was one of the first examples of the ‘Metroid-vania’ formula, popularized and named years later following the release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It was also a fairly challenging game with a premise that remains relatively unique to this day. Sunsoft has resurrected the brand through Nintendo’s WiiWare service with Blaster Master Overdrive, and they’ve kept the basic gameplay structure in tact. Sadly, control issues and a generally boring aesthetic will keep this from reaching the same legendary status as its inspiration.
In the future, giant crabs are an epidemic
Like every Blaster Master game before it, Overdrive makes use of two different styles of play. The first is best described as a side-scrolling platformer with heavy emphasis on exploration. Players navigate the aforementioned Sophia through the game’s environments in search of dungeons to explore. These platforming levels have powerups sprinkled about them, many placed on ledges barely out of reach or behind odd looking walls. These will only be accessible when upgrades are found after defeating bosses in the dungeons, which make use of the secondary gameplay: multi-directional top-down shooter.
The shooter levels are where most of Overdrive’s problems lie. Navigating the environments is a simple affair — you enter, shoot enemies and collect any powerups you find. The dungeons lack any sort of creative design, so don’t expect any hidden paths or tricky puzzles. There are groups of quick moving enemies that you’ll need to deal with, however. They become more dangerous as the game goes on, and more numerous as well. And this is where the game fails the hardest.
Navigation is handled in an acceptable manner, making use of eight-way directional movement. The gun shoots in the direction you’re walking, so if you turn tail to run from an enemy, you won’t be able to shoot them unless you engage the game’s strafing function. Since Overdrive is controlled with the Wii Remote only in the popular NES style configuration, they’ve tied strafing to the button on the back of the controller. It’s uncomfortable and impractical. Couple that with a character who does his best to stay away from locking into any of the 45 degree positions when strafing is engaged and you have an anger-inducing formula.
Leaving the tank is mostly useless
Taking hits in the dungeons is particularly devastating since each hit removes your hard earned weapon upgrades. These upgrades are found hidden throughout the shooter levels. Each of the three weapon types can be upgraded five times. Getting deep into the game and living to tell the tale requires two things: upgraded weapons and nearly perfect play to keep them that way. The default weapon settings simply aren’t powerful enough to handle the game’s higher-powered baddies.
This is the game’s major failing. You shouldn’t have to fight the game’s enemies and the controls at the same time. If the game supported the Classic Controller, these complaints would be nullified. You could tie strafing to a shoulder button and allow movement with the analog stick. Boom — problem solved. A patch is rumored to be in the works that would add support for the controller in, but the game suffers as it is.
This sadly notable in what could be considered the best part of the game: the boss fights. The developers have channelled the spirit the NES for the bosses with great success. They have memorable and creative patterns, are large and imposing, and are a general pain in the ass. They require high-level planning and play to defeat — even then you’ll find yourself limping and de-powered after some of the fights. The best part is that once you learn the boss’ pattern you can always improve how you react; you can always do better. Again, the controls are players the biggest enemy, causing you to walk into bullets as you try to position your character’s gun toward whatever weak-points need targeting. Even still, these battles are the most enjoyable part of the game.
Say, this looks familiar
Defeating a boss will upgrade Sophia, allowing you to access areas and items that were previously out of reach. The game’s grappling hook is a nice compliment to the hover function, though the vanilla level design rarely takes advantage of this combination. The drill is also a nifty tool, used both as a brick-breaker or a weapon. The game’s later additions aren’t quite as versatile — climbing walls isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds — but they are necessary additions nonetheless. It is notable that the game requires players to leave Sophia to access dungeons, but you can do this anywhere on the map as well. You could choose to wander around the tank levels a bit, but the game never takes advantage of this. Even if you wanted to screw around outside of the tank, you couldn’t do so for long since your life bar depletes automatically. This is supposedly because of the “poison air” — a gameplay element seemingly added to cover up a design aspect the development team included but ignored.
While a patch would improve the actual playability, it wouldn’t correct some of the game’s other missteps. Overdrive is guilty of uninspired design in almost every aspect outside of the boss fights. The dungeons all use the same graphics with different colors. Most of the overworld has the same issue as well. Sure, there’s a fire and an ice level, but those are really the only two non-stone looking levels. Oh, the enemies are also guilty of this. There are only a few enemy types throughout the entire game as well. There are more powerful versions that sometimes vary in size or color and take more hits to defeat, but it still doesn’t change the fact that there should be more variety. It’s almost as though they designed the assets for half a game, realized they needed more, then came up with this as a solution. Pallet swapping is acceptable occasionally — who doesn’t love Scorpion and Sub-Zero or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — but it shouldn’t comprise more than 50 percent of a game. The one bright spot in terms of presentation come from the music, which mostly consists of remixed versions of the original game’s themes.
Blaster Master Overdrive isn’t a terrible game, it’s just uninspired. It’s lack of creativity keeps it from living up to the vaunted status of its older siblings, and its control issues keep it from succeeding as a modern piece of programming. Its difficulty makes it difficult to recommend as an introduction to the series, and fans will find themselves irritated with the controls and vapid design. Blaster Master deserves a better revival than this.
