Goemon's Great Adventure
- November 24, 2000 14:47 PM PST
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From the mystic lands of the Far East comes Goemon's Great Adventure, an adventure unlike any you've ever played. Unfortunately, this could be a good thing or a bad thing.
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The Mystical Ninja Returns
Goemon's first N64 adventure, Mystical Ninja, won over many fans and turned off many critics with its quirky Japanese flavor. Cute giant robots (if there is such a thing), obese ninjas and little animated clay men with swords collide as the Mystical Ninja of old endeavors to save feudal Japan. Goemon's last adventure was in full Zelda-esque 3D, but his Great Adventure is old-school 2D with some new-school twists.
Goemon runs, jumps and bashes along a 2D line, while his environment turns, climbs and pans behind him. This makes Goemon much more exciting than any old 2D scroller, where you're mostly just running to the right. You'll fight some of the strangest and least imaginative enemies you've seen in a long time, and you'll meet some of the quirkiest characters in video game history.
The Word For Today is "Quirky"
The word "quirky" describes Goemon in many ways. For one, the graphics neither impress nor disappoint, and the sound doesn't really stand out from the pack. They do a decent job of setting up the odd world in which Goemon lives, but the on-screen action happens at a distance, making Goemon and the other characters seem tiny and minimally animated. Some of the creatures you'll fight are large, and some, like the mini-boss for the Digadig Gold Mine, will impress you-- especially since seeing a new bad guy is a real treat for the few seconds before you kill them. Most of the enemies' AI consists of kamikaze charges and weak patterns that are easily defeated.
Control in Goemon is rigid and precise, making platform jumps an exercise in frustration. Goemon jumps just far enough to clear most gaps, so if you're a bit off in either direction you'll fall. Periodic portals allow you to go to the "Tea Room of Another Dimension," where you can choose to play characters you've met in the game. Each character learns different abilities over the course of the game, and there are certain obstacles that only certain characters can surpass. The different characters control differently enough, but they all suffer from the same frustrating tightness that Goemon exhibits. A little more slack in the controls would have helped.
The game is set up in a pseudo-non-linear fashion. After you clear an area once, you can go to Lost'n Town and receive a quest to return to on old area and find certain items or defeat certain enemies under a certain time limit. This goes a long way toward replay value, but you're still playing the same levels over and over, and that gets old quick.
Goemon's Great Disappointment
After the quirky (there's that word again) fun of his last N64 adventure, Goemon's Great Adventure is a bit of a let down. It's nice to see a good attempt at an old-school 2D platformer, but Goemon falls short in many ways. If you're a Goemon fan, you'll enjoy the game's sense of humor. If you're looking for a good platformer, hold out for something better.
