Cleared on May 9th, 2024 (SEGA Genesis Challenge: 65/160)
Mechanically, this might be my favorite shoot em up out of what I've played so far, but holy shit is it hard. And not always in a good way even with the tools that this game gives me.
What Eliminate Down proposes for its gameplay style is that you already have all of your weapons by default that you can switch to at anytime instead of having to collect a power-up and then stick to it until you can find another. You have a forward shot, missiles that cover both up and down direction at the same time, and a backward shot. This is actually really cool, and I didn't need to stress over figuring out what this weapon does or picking the wrong weapon at the wrong time. The only minor problem is that they have two buttons for weapon swap and you mean to tell me I have to cycle through the missiles before I can cycle to the backshot? Well, at least you can tap the weapon swap button twice, and you can get it. Another cool thing they did is the same idea that Whip Rush brought with being able to control speed, but you do that via pause menu. This gives you more time to plan your next move. If there's a series of tight corridors coming up, just switch to slower speeds. When you got a bunch of enemies to barrage, just switch to faster speeds. The caveat is that there are no bombs or ultimate attacks, but you do acquire shields to withstand a few hits and power-ups that empower your weapons, and it doesn't take long to get to Level 3 and good news is that you only lose one level when you lose a life and it keeps all the power points you've collected, so if you collected 4 P at Level 3, then lose a life, then just collect one P and you're back at Level 3.
All that aside, this game can still seriously bullshit you in the worst ways and that gets especially apparent during the game's second half. There are points in the game where I got ambushed by traps or unexpected shots that gave me almost no time to react not to mention just straight up difficult shots to avoid in general as well as unfair enemy placement like at the start of Stage 7. The bosses are also difficult, but you can figure them out.
The presentation for the game is really good. I think the soundtrack is great, and the grotesque alien aesthetic is well done. The fourth mini-boss was fucking weird with its penis attack... so that's why it never got localized in the first place. Also, this game actually has a dedicated final boss theme, and that always excites me since there are usually no guarantees that a Sega Genesis game will even have one.
Eliminate Down in a way represents some of the best and worst of the schmup genre. It's weapon swapping and speed shifting helps to give this game some variety as well as overcome situations in front of you, but those situations in question have reached points of being really unfair. Thankfully, the fun factor kept me from being bored or driving me mad. Is it a game that I'll come back to for another round? Maybe. If nothing else, there's a fun little minigame in the options.
Mechanically, this might be my favorite shoot em up out of what I've played so far, but holy shit is it hard. And not always in a good way even with the tools that this game gives me.
What Eliminate Down proposes for its gameplay style is that you already have all of your weapons by default that you can switch to at anytime instead of having to collect a power-up and then stick to it until you can find another. You have a forward shot, missiles that cover both up and down direction at the same time, and a backward shot. This is actually really cool, and I didn't need to stress over figuring out what this weapon does or picking the wrong weapon at the wrong time. The only minor problem is that they have two buttons for weapon swap and you mean to tell me I have to cycle through the missiles before I can cycle to the backshot? Well, at least you can tap the weapon swap button twice, and you can get it. Another cool thing they did is the same idea that Whip Rush brought with being able to control speed, but you do that via pause menu. This gives you more time to plan your next move. If there's a series of tight corridors coming up, just switch to slower speeds. When you got a bunch of enemies to barrage, just switch to faster speeds. The caveat is that there are no bombs or ultimate attacks, but you do acquire shields to withstand a few hits and power-ups that empower your weapons, and it doesn't take long to get to Level 3 and good news is that you only lose one level when you lose a life and it keeps all the power points you've collected, so if you collected 4 P at Level 3, then lose a life, then just collect one P and you're back at Level 3.
All that aside, this game can still seriously bullshit you in the worst ways and that gets especially apparent during the game's second half. There are points in the game where I got ambushed by traps or unexpected shots that gave me almost no time to react not to mention just straight up difficult shots to avoid in general as well as unfair enemy placement like at the start of Stage 7. The bosses are also difficult, but you can figure them out.
The presentation for the game is really good. I think the soundtrack is great, and the grotesque alien aesthetic is well done. The fourth mini-boss was fucking weird with its penis attack... so that's why it never got localized in the first place. Also, this game actually has a dedicated final boss theme, and that always excites me since there are usually no guarantees that a Sega Genesis game will even have one.
Eliminate Down in a way represents some of the best and worst of the schmup genre. It's weapon swapping and speed shifting helps to give this game some variety as well as overcome situations in front of you, but those situations in question have reached points of being really unfair. Thankfully, the fun factor kept me from being bored or driving me mad. Is it a game that I'll come back to for another round? Maybe. If nothing else, there's a fun little minigame in the options.
Very creative, challenging, exclusive shooter! You have three weapons that you power-up gradually, straight forward shot, backward shot, bottom & top shot. You also have an option to change the speed of your ship, a few moments they are necessary navigating tight corners and Stage 7 final boss. Interactive stages, strange mini-bosses is an overall experience. Difficult shooter but not impossible.
Not too into this one. It's basically R-Type on crack, usually (if not always) to its detriment. Most notably, it somehow amplifies the difficulty and memorization elements even further, leaving behind a borderline barbaric end result. Stage 7 is probably the stupidest, most unfair level I've played in a shmup thus far. Not helping much is the length, being several stages too many while each one progressively gets longer to begin with. Also similar to R-Type is the visuals and presentation, though it's nothing that the former doesn't do better anyway.
I really don't like the weapon switching either. It reminds me of Hellfire, which was very bad about this in essentially the same way (talked about in more detail here https://www.backloggd.com/u/Jenny/review/456097/).
Overall I'm left kinda disappointed. It's not necessarily bad by any means but it made me wish I was playing various other shmups more to my liking, and I just wanted it to be over even when I was only a little past the halfway point.
I really don't like the weapon switching either. It reminds me of Hellfire, which was very bad about this in essentially the same way (talked about in more detail here https://www.backloggd.com/u/Jenny/review/456097/).
Overall I'm left kinda disappointed. It's not necessarily bad by any means but it made me wish I was playing various other shmups more to my liking, and I just wanted it to be over even when I was only a little past the halfway point.
Excellent horizontal shoot em up. Varied impressive level design with interesting bosses and good music. Three different fire modes to switch between that all become powered up by collecting pickups.
A fine, forgettable shooter that's been elevated to cult status by being extremely rare (and by the fact that the company that made it never did anything else).
It's got some cool visuals, and some chunky, uniquely-Genesis tunes, but nothing I'd trip over myself recommending. Gameplay ranges from moderately appealing to downright unpleasant (looking at you, slow, trap-laden R-Typey levels); and my least favorite thing, so seemingly-small but so ridiculously impactful on the experience, is how the weapon switching feels laggy instead of instantaneous like it should (like it does in, say, Alien Soldier).
It's got some cool visuals, and some chunky, uniquely-Genesis tunes, but nothing I'd trip over myself recommending. Gameplay ranges from moderately appealing to downright unpleasant (looking at you, slow, trap-laden R-Typey levels); and my least favorite thing, so seemingly-small but so ridiculously impactful on the experience, is how the weapon switching feels laggy instead of instantaneous like it should (like it does in, say, Alien Soldier).
looks really nice but was too difficult for me
HORIZONTAL GENESIS SHOOTERS - they have a certain ebb and flow that makes them distinguishable from a glance: Distinctly-electrifying art direction, overdriven metal music, high physical speeds juxtaposed by simple enemy patterns, and loads of weapons with varying feels and uses. But they're not everyone's brand: They often feel sorely under-playtested and lack a hook that justifies 1CC-chasing them. Often too easy (Daiginjou, TFIII), too memorization-heavy (TFIV), inconsistent in difficulty curves (Gynoug, Crying) or flat-out barren (Gleylancer).
Eliminate Down is weird because even though it's very loudly 'Genesis', it feels very dissimilar to Genesis shmups in execution - more like a kusoge you'd find in the deep canals of MAME. It's as arcadey as it gets - R-Type-style Geiger art, tightly-packed levels with equal bounds of setpieces and intense enemy encounters, and rhythmless music that exists not to be listenable but to give the action a volatile backbeat. It's very fully-realized in a way that feels almost too good for a Genesis game - not to say others suck, but there's an air of professional completeness here that even the MD greats often lack. Every level has so much crammed into it and nothing ever strikes anticlimax.
It's also hard - WAY too hard, borderline unbeatably sinister. Cramped corridors and complex enemy anatomy makes the solution to each encounter deceptively difficult, having to make time to attack narrow weakpoints while avoiding near-screenclearing sweeps. A single hit drops your weapon level, with power-ups dropping in scarce clusters only a few times instead of being evenly dispersed across the map. Bosses assault you with multi-layered barrages that nary give you a safezone to chicken out towards. And sometimes, the game just likes to be evil and trap you in an unwinnable situation; stage 5 comes to mind, throwing a section with ground-crawling robots that will leave you crushed by an impassible barricade if you don't know in advance to position yourself on the other side of the object a full 20 seconds before you're expected to. It's not a very Gradius-like game, but some of the ways it becomes bullshit are very Gradius-core, and that's why I don't like it as much as some other Genesis shooters. It's so functionally-focused, often to the detriment of player feel and a comfortable flow.
Eliminate Down is weird because even though it's very loudly 'Genesis', it feels very dissimilar to Genesis shmups in execution - more like a kusoge you'd find in the deep canals of MAME. It's as arcadey as it gets - R-Type-style Geiger art, tightly-packed levels with equal bounds of setpieces and intense enemy encounters, and rhythmless music that exists not to be listenable but to give the action a volatile backbeat. It's very fully-realized in a way that feels almost too good for a Genesis game - not to say others suck, but there's an air of professional completeness here that even the MD greats often lack. Every level has so much crammed into it and nothing ever strikes anticlimax.
It's also hard - WAY too hard, borderline unbeatably sinister. Cramped corridors and complex enemy anatomy makes the solution to each encounter deceptively difficult, having to make time to attack narrow weakpoints while avoiding near-screenclearing sweeps. A single hit drops your weapon level, with power-ups dropping in scarce clusters only a few times instead of being evenly dispersed across the map. Bosses assault you with multi-layered barrages that nary give you a safezone to chicken out towards. And sometimes, the game just likes to be evil and trap you in an unwinnable situation; stage 5 comes to mind, throwing a section with ground-crawling robots that will leave you crushed by an impassible barricade if you don't know in advance to position yourself on the other side of the object a full 20 seconds before you're expected to. It's not a very Gradius-like game, but some of the ways it becomes bullshit are very Gradius-core, and that's why I don't like it as much as some other Genesis shooters. It's so functionally-focused, often to the detriment of player feel and a comfortable flow.
Seeing the only review on here for Eliminate Down currently saying they couldn't get past stage 5 even on easy when I'm not a good or seasoned Shoot 'em up player didn't bode well and funnily enough that was my wall too.
Sad thing is the game has a lot of really cool ideas. Your ship has three different firing styles you can manually rotate through including forward firing lasers, four way diagonal shots and beams firing backwards allowing you to change your attack on the fly and it's needed as enemies will come at you in multiple directions. When you pick up a power up in effects all your guns, when you get 5 it levels it up until you hit level 3. Die and you drop down a level still giving you a chance to claw back to full power which isn't the challenge it sounds as power ups often come in batches. The problem is this game's balance is not great, the weapons just aren't very strong even fully powered up. No power ups upon dying and it's even worse. The game does come with barrier shields as power up finds that will take a few hits but these seem extremely rare, I feel they should come automatically on every death would help a bit.
Technically this game is pretty good looking to be honest. It starts strong with space battles, descents though atmosphere, planet runs, cool looking Bio organic looking machines and ships. The game has some neat boss designs and each level seems to have a mid level boss to boot, some of which are quite hard. I especially like the run up a wall of Mechanical statue guardians was a cool sequence.
All in all it's a great looking and playing title, it's got cool power up ideas, solid music, easy adjustable ship speed options, a mini game in the menu etc. The weapons just aren't strong enough or maybe it's just a case I need to 'get gud?' Either way after multiple attempts I couldn't get past level 5 and I hear it gets much harder from there....
+ 3 way weapon system.
+ Interesting power up system.
+ Nice visuals and art design.
+ That front cover.
- Weapons aren't strong enough.
- Gets extremely hard.
Sad thing is the game has a lot of really cool ideas. Your ship has three different firing styles you can manually rotate through including forward firing lasers, four way diagonal shots and beams firing backwards allowing you to change your attack on the fly and it's needed as enemies will come at you in multiple directions. When you pick up a power up in effects all your guns, when you get 5 it levels it up until you hit level 3. Die and you drop down a level still giving you a chance to claw back to full power which isn't the challenge it sounds as power ups often come in batches. The problem is this game's balance is not great, the weapons just aren't very strong even fully powered up. No power ups upon dying and it's even worse. The game does come with barrier shields as power up finds that will take a few hits but these seem extremely rare, I feel they should come automatically on every death would help a bit.
Technically this game is pretty good looking to be honest. It starts strong with space battles, descents though atmosphere, planet runs, cool looking Bio organic looking machines and ships. The game has some neat boss designs and each level seems to have a mid level boss to boot, some of which are quite hard. I especially like the run up a wall of Mechanical statue guardians was a cool sequence.
All in all it's a great looking and playing title, it's got cool power up ideas, solid music, easy adjustable ship speed options, a mini game in the menu etc. The weapons just aren't strong enough or maybe it's just a case I need to 'get gud?' Either way after multiple attempts I couldn't get past level 5 and I hear it gets much harder from there....
+ 3 way weapon system.
+ Interesting power up system.
+ Nice visuals and art design.
+ That front cover.
- Weapons aren't strong enough.
- Gets extremely hard.