Club Retro 2018: Data East December
Dec 7, 2018 16:26:46 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Dec 7, 2018 16:26:46 GMT -5
It took me almost the entire day to beat this game on Hard, but it was worth it.
Silent Debuggers was developed by Data East and released for the PC-Engine in 1991. The game is notable for being a very early form of 1st person shooter. While the game looks like your average dungeon crawler, you only play as one character as opposed to a full party and combat occurs in real-time. There's a crosshair you can move around the screen and several guns you can choose from. Also, while you do have a basic inventory, the game doesn't feature any RPG element. That said, you can't just go around shooting anything in sight. There's actually quite a bit of strategy involved and you'll need to read the manual if you want to make it far into the game.
After a terrible war left Earth in ruins, many of the former soldiers left the planet and took to the sky, looking for new opportunities to put their skills to good use and preferably make a living out of it. As the new Joint Government on Earth decided to expand beyond known space, they encountered a hostile alien-bug race. Calling once again upon those former soldiers, the government now sends these so-called debuggers to deal with the extraterrestrial menace. You and your red-haired companion Leon belong to such group and your mission is to explore a large space station mysteriously went silent. Soon you'll find out that the place is crawling with bugs... And worse.
The space station is divided into six floors - that means there are only six levels in the game, but they are pretty lenghty and challenging. There's also a 100 minutes time limit, after that it's game over - you have to play the game in one sitting, too. Your suit has 2 batteries representing your health bar. If one of your batteries is about to run out, you'll have to manually switch to the other one or you'll die. Each time you die you lose 5 minutes. Your basic weapon is the hand gun, but it's wack. However, there are three primary and three secondary weapons you can choose from at any time - you can only carry a primary and a secondary weapon at a time. Some of the weapons consume your battery life, others require live ammunition. Your suit also has a sensor which starts beeping whenever enemies are close. This immediately reminded me of Enemy Zero and I naively thought to myself Thank God the aliens aren't invisible in this game. Soon after that I made it to the final floor and, lo and behold, invisible aliens. I immediately died and I had to restart the game from scratch.
At the center of each floor there's your base with different blocks where you can recharge your batteries or restock on ammo. Usually monsters stick to the outer areas but there's a particular kind of aliens - the green bugs - which are lured by the core energy and will try to invade your base. If you're not quick enough to repel them, the block will get quarantined and you'll never be able to go there again. Some blocks are useless or losing them only causes minor hindrances like having to fight in the dark - but you absolutely don't want to lose the blocks where the armory or the battery recharger are. You can go back to Leon at any time to pick different weapons and items, in fact, you should do so frequently as he often has new items to give you. More importantly, if you lose the battery recharger, he'll immediately gift you an auto charger which slowly recharges the battery you are not currently using. This is actually a viable way to play as long as you don't lose too much health at once - I'd recommend you stick to a battery-based weapon like the Mega Beamer as long as the battery recharger is available. If you lose it, switch to ammo-dependent primary weapons. This should only happen around floor 4, because ammo is not unlimited. If you lose both the battery recharger and the armory, well then, good riddance. By the way, the rocket launcher is the only good secondary weapon and you should use it against the green bugs.
The gameplay is fairly basic, but crawling in those dimly lit corridors knowing that at any moment a bug could jump at my face or I could find myself surrounded kept things very tense - especially considering the 5 minutes penalty. However, the management elements of the game added a layer of complexity to Silent Debuggers which I wasn't expecting and left me pleasantly surprised - although the constant invasions were sometimes frustrating. Even with the manual by my side, I still had to figure most things out by myself. I actually wanted to phone TurboTeam, but my parents said no.
I give this game 7 overpriced phone calls out of 10.
Silent Debuggers was developed by Data East and released for the PC-Engine in 1991. The game is notable for being a very early form of 1st person shooter. While the game looks like your average dungeon crawler, you only play as one character as opposed to a full party and combat occurs in real-time. There's a crosshair you can move around the screen and several guns you can choose from. Also, while you do have a basic inventory, the game doesn't feature any RPG element. That said, you can't just go around shooting anything in sight. There's actually quite a bit of strategy involved and you'll need to read the manual if you want to make it far into the game.
After a terrible war left Earth in ruins, many of the former soldiers left the planet and took to the sky, looking for new opportunities to put their skills to good use and preferably make a living out of it. As the new Joint Government on Earth decided to expand beyond known space, they encountered a hostile alien-bug race. Calling once again upon those former soldiers, the government now sends these so-called debuggers to deal with the extraterrestrial menace. You and your red-haired companion Leon belong to such group and your mission is to explore a large space station mysteriously went silent. Soon you'll find out that the place is crawling with bugs... And worse.
The space station is divided into six floors - that means there are only six levels in the game, but they are pretty lenghty and challenging. There's also a 100 minutes time limit, after that it's game over - you have to play the game in one sitting, too. Your suit has 2 batteries representing your health bar. If one of your batteries is about to run out, you'll have to manually switch to the other one or you'll die. Each time you die you lose 5 minutes. Your basic weapon is the hand gun, but it's wack. However, there are three primary and three secondary weapons you can choose from at any time - you can only carry a primary and a secondary weapon at a time. Some of the weapons consume your battery life, others require live ammunition. Your suit also has a sensor which starts beeping whenever enemies are close. This immediately reminded me of Enemy Zero and I naively thought to myself Thank God the aliens aren't invisible in this game. Soon after that I made it to the final floor and, lo and behold, invisible aliens. I immediately died and I had to restart the game from scratch.
At the center of each floor there's your base with different blocks where you can recharge your batteries or restock on ammo. Usually monsters stick to the outer areas but there's a particular kind of aliens - the green bugs - which are lured by the core energy and will try to invade your base. If you're not quick enough to repel them, the block will get quarantined and you'll never be able to go there again. Some blocks are useless or losing them only causes minor hindrances like having to fight in the dark - but you absolutely don't want to lose the blocks where the armory or the battery recharger are. You can go back to Leon at any time to pick different weapons and items, in fact, you should do so frequently as he often has new items to give you. More importantly, if you lose the battery recharger, he'll immediately gift you an auto charger which slowly recharges the battery you are not currently using. This is actually a viable way to play as long as you don't lose too much health at once - I'd recommend you stick to a battery-based weapon like the Mega Beamer as long as the battery recharger is available. If you lose it, switch to ammo-dependent primary weapons. This should only happen around floor 4, because ammo is not unlimited. If you lose both the battery recharger and the armory, well then, good riddance. By the way, the rocket launcher is the only good secondary weapon and you should use it against the green bugs.
The gameplay is fairly basic, but crawling in those dimly lit corridors knowing that at any moment a bug could jump at my face or I could find myself surrounded kept things very tense - especially considering the 5 minutes penalty. However, the management elements of the game added a layer of complexity to Silent Debuggers which I wasn't expecting and left me pleasantly surprised - although the constant invasions were sometimes frustrating. Even with the manual by my side, I still had to figure most things out by myself. I actually wanted to phone TurboTeam, but my parents said no.
I give this game 7 overpriced phone calls out of 10.