Gleylancer review - Sega Megadrive
What the Mean Machines staff thought
Greylancer treads the well-worn scroll, blast 'n' power-up boards with a few new ideas to show off. Its best point is its different firing modes, but what a shame to only allow the player to pick one mode at a time. Cycling through them mid-game would have added a whole new aspect to the otherwise dull proceedings. Another problem is that you spend more time dodging things than blasting, which quickly gets tedious. The games desperately needs more action. But what really killed it all off for me is that the game is very easy to complete. Shoot 'em up fans should breeze through this within a day. The graphics, sound and presentation are all okay, but really Greylancer falls flat in the playability department. If you're after a decent blaster there are loads of better ones than this - Thunderforce III and IV, Hellfire, Gynoug, Bio Hazard are just a few of the alternatives. |
Calling Greylancer a shoot 'em up is a bit misleading, as it's more of an avoid 'em up than anything. The amount of time spent dodging debris and twisting through tunnels far out-weighs that spent shooting things. This is a real pity actually, because it can get thoroughly tedious. The variable weapons system, although cribbed from Hellfire, is quite entertaining. That said, the weapons are the most entertaining thing about Greylancer. The graphics aren't that bad, the presentation is fine, and the sound is okay if nothing great. There are a couple of problems with the playability. Firstly, a credit is a long time to wait to change your targeting program if you make the wrong decision. Perhaps calling up the menu when the game is paused would be a better idea. Secondly, the afterburner trail and sparkly tracks left by your ship often make it very hard to see just what's going on when the screen fills up. Many fatal bullets remain unseen thanks to the haze of the spangly effects, and even some aliens find themselves masked by this screen. However, seen-it-all-before blues are the real down point of Greylancer. Although spotting which games each idea/alien/level has been stolen from is quite fun for a while it doesn't excuse the almost absolute lack of original throught which went into this game. |
Retrospective comments
Oo-er. Gleylancer (or Greylancer, as the Mean Machines team have decided to called it - they were obviously aware of the Japanese habit of turning 'R' into 'L') is something of a cult classic today and tends to fetch a pretty penny thanks to its reputation for being a bit special. This review rather flies in the face of all that. |
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