COMPLETE: Vice: Project Doom
Oct. 20th, 2019 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjorteoI have a Switch Online subscription and this was in their NES library. I remember Nintendo Power made it look really cool back when I was a child, but I never actually got to play it, and I've kind of always been curious.
So, how does actually playing an Aicom game from 1991 hold up to a lifetime of Nintendo Power hype, nostalgia, and curiosity?
Well....
This game certainly tries. I'll give it that.
Okay. So. Vice: Project Doom is an action game that very breathlessly whisks you from action scene to action scene. You're a... cop, I think? named Hart, who's on the trail of some bad guys? There's a meeting of the Omniscient Council of Vagueness, then a jump cut to an in medias res car chase level. Then you clear the first stage and find out, much to your horror, that it wasn't in medias res at all; the entire game is just like that.
Cue level after level of action nonsense interspersed with gorgeous-looking yet nonsensical dialogue sequences. "Christy?" our hero asks as a female figure sneaks up behind him. "Sorry, it's me - Sophia," she replies. I have no idea who either Christy or Sophia are. And so on.
Not that an 8-bit game needs much of a story, I know. "You're like a cop or soldier or something, Dr. Mad Scientist is evil, go get him" was more than sufficient for several games of that era. But I can only assume that Vice: Project Doom wants to be remembered for its story, given how much obvious care and love was put into the cutscene graphics and just how dang many of them there are. If this game was the one to broach the subject of "Hey, check out my plot," I think it's fair to ask that said plot be, like, comprehensible, you know? I know most NES games aren't but most NES games don't try to be. Vice did try, only to end up feeling like you just tuned in to the last twenty minutes or so of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Sure, you can probably gather from context that Arnold's character is fighting bad guys. Sure, how much you really need the rest of the story and setup and exposition anyway is arguable, because come on, it's an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. But... I don't know. Maybe that at least might have helped the "Oh no, not random NPC I don't recognize but who was apparently my partner or something, nooooo" death scenes have a little more impact?
As for the actual gameplay, most levels are the kind of side-scrolling action-platformer stuff you would expect from that era. You have three weapons you can switch between. Your trusty melee-range sword has infinite use and is your standby for all non-special occasions, grenades can take out things at range, and your gun has the power to disappoint. It's all well and good for the first few levels, but toward the end, they very much crank the Ninja Gaiden bullshit, where scrolling a single step forward causes at least three lightning-quick enemies to spawn and wreck your day from every direction. Heaven help you if you're over a pit. Fortunately, the Switch has built-in savestate support. I tried not to use it at first, but man. Man.
Also, there are a couple Spy Hunter levels which are fine, and a couple Operation Wolf levels which very very much are not.
All in all, this game is... not quite as cool as young me always imagined it to be, but it honestly might have been had the story been a little more clear. The gameplay was far from the worst thing I've ever played in that era--honestly, it was quite competent and I'd even say well-made, except that the out of nowhere enemy spam toward the end did get rather ridiculous. It... was okay. I was very close to abandoning this game around stage 9 or so (out of 11) but I persevered and I... don't regret it, I guess.
I will say that it was nice to finally appease all those decades of "Oh man I've never played Vice: Project Doom but it always looked so cool, I really should someday" pining, though. Like, I'm really glad to have that settled. So, this was a success, I think?
So, how does actually playing an Aicom game from 1991 hold up to a lifetime of Nintendo Power hype, nostalgia, and curiosity?
Well....
This game certainly tries. I'll give it that.
Okay. So. Vice: Project Doom is an action game that very breathlessly whisks you from action scene to action scene. You're a... cop, I think? named Hart, who's on the trail of some bad guys? There's a meeting of the Omniscient Council of Vagueness, then a jump cut to an in medias res car chase level. Then you clear the first stage and find out, much to your horror, that it wasn't in medias res at all; the entire game is just like that.
Cue level after level of action nonsense interspersed with gorgeous-looking yet nonsensical dialogue sequences. "Christy?" our hero asks as a female figure sneaks up behind him. "Sorry, it's me - Sophia," she replies. I have no idea who either Christy or Sophia are. And so on.
Not that an 8-bit game needs much of a story, I know. "You're like a cop or soldier or something, Dr. Mad Scientist is evil, go get him" was more than sufficient for several games of that era. But I can only assume that Vice: Project Doom wants to be remembered for its story, given how much obvious care and love was put into the cutscene graphics and just how dang many of them there are. If this game was the one to broach the subject of "Hey, check out my plot," I think it's fair to ask that said plot be, like, comprehensible, you know? I know most NES games aren't but most NES games don't try to be. Vice did try, only to end up feeling like you just tuned in to the last twenty minutes or so of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Sure, you can probably gather from context that Arnold's character is fighting bad guys. Sure, how much you really need the rest of the story and setup and exposition anyway is arguable, because come on, it's an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. But... I don't know. Maybe that at least might have helped the "Oh no, not random NPC I don't recognize but who was apparently my partner or something, nooooo" death scenes have a little more impact?
As for the actual gameplay, most levels are the kind of side-scrolling action-platformer stuff you would expect from that era. You have three weapons you can switch between. Your trusty melee-range sword has infinite use and is your standby for all non-special occasions, grenades can take out things at range, and your gun has the power to disappoint. It's all well and good for the first few levels, but toward the end, they very much crank the Ninja Gaiden bullshit, where scrolling a single step forward causes at least three lightning-quick enemies to spawn and wreck your day from every direction. Heaven help you if you're over a pit. Fortunately, the Switch has built-in savestate support. I tried not to use it at first, but man. Man.
Also, there are a couple Spy Hunter levels which are fine, and a couple Operation Wolf levels which very very much are not.
All in all, this game is... not quite as cool as young me always imagined it to be, but it honestly might have been had the story been a little more clear. The gameplay was far from the worst thing I've ever played in that era--honestly, it was quite competent and I'd even say well-made, except that the out of nowhere enemy spam toward the end did get rather ridiculous. It... was okay. I was very close to abandoning this game around stage 9 or so (out of 11) but I persevered and I... don't regret it, I guess.
I will say that it was nice to finally appease all those decades of "Oh man I've never played Vice: Project Doom but it always looked so cool, I really should someday" pining, though. Like, I'm really glad to have that settled. So, this was a success, I think?