I decided to play Strider tonight because I saw multiple people leaving reviews on it lately and the How Long to Beat time was about an hour, so why not check out what everyone's talking about? And I gotta say that by the time I rolled credits at about twice of said time, the main thing I had to say was "Wow, that kinda sucked".
Look, I can see plenty of reasons to like this game. The art, especially for a quite early Genesis title, is very well done. This is probably most epitomized in the Siberian Wilderness stage in the segment with power outages (where the darkened, silhouette look broken by crackling electricity is pretty badass), the ending sequence and city shots, and the detailed sprites on enemies along with Strider himself. It has the clear intent of a neo-futuristic, 80s anime style setting (given Moto Kikaku's involvement on the manga this seems particularly fitting), and there's some pretty rad boss visual designs. The music's pretty solid and the sound can be good too, although I do feel the need to note two things. First, Stage 4's Amazon enemies seem to have some oddities going on with their sound, because a lot of times I'd have them play their attack sounds on loop a LOT when they were on the fringes of the screen in a way that was outright annoying. I thought maybe this was just a glitch of some kind, but when I checked a random Longplay on Youtube and it seemed to have the same issue so IDK. Hiryu's sword swing also makes a LOT of sound when you spam it but that was probably more frustrating than when it'd be designed due to listening with headphones rather than a crowded arcade or CRT or w/e so I don't hold that much against it.
I just couldn't jive with a lot of the gameplay though. The game feels like a bad, peanut butter mashup of Ninja Gaiden's speedy action with Castlevania's jumping physics, with the end result being a game that demands precision and speed that feels stiff and, in my opinion, unresponsive. You can definitely get used to it, sure, and it is consistent (even if Strider tumbling with the horizontal jump is at first maybe a bit throwing off), but it isn't particularly fun to play. It's like a bad version of a Metroid-style two-different-jumps mechanic. I also felt like some consistent hitbox and physics dissonance was on display here, largely with any kind of moving platform, which was absolutely PAINFUL in the final level. I died at least 10 times to the run up to the final boss because you have to stay on a moving platform that will cause you to flip off if you don't grab and/or jump with the right timing, and there were plenty of times I just grabbed on and then instantly fell off or fell off for seemingly no reason and so on. There's also a bizarre inconsistency to the game: I streamed a good chunk of this with a friend on Discord and we both noted how I'd run through the same area, often times doing the same thing, and yet have enemy spawns vary for reasons that were esoteric to us.
This is particularly notable because Strider is HEAVY on trial and error gameplay, it loves to put enemies just off screen or in spots where if you don't react immediately after entering a new area you'll get hit. There's also plenty of "gotcha" moments in the game. If you don't know a trap is coming up right when you beat the first boss, for example, you WILL get hit. Boss quality varies heavily but most are unimpressive in execution, one of them felt particularly odd as it seems like it has unavoidable damage to hit it and you basically have to mash and have full health to win before you die. When I looked up other runs, I never saw them avoid the damage either. It's likely possible but I couldn't figure it out. I'd probably enjoy this more if the game's physics felt more free, because then I'd be able to memorize myself into a nice rhythm of jumping, attacking, and so on.
It's not as though gameplay is without any merit. The idea of Gradius style Options as power-ups is underexplored but interesting. The game's got some classic ninja wall jumps and ceiling clings and platform grabs and tends to mix these in quite well: If the jumping didn't feel so bad for me the actual level design seems solid if very difficult (you can definitely tell this was an arcade game!) to me albeit with way too many gotcha moments. Some of the Options do seem to sometimes work oddly, mostly just kinda going wherever they please off screen, but it's pretty cool conceptually and fun to use. Plus I love how it fits hard into the cyber-ninja theming, he has a robot dog!
Overall, Strider might be pretty fun if the way it controls and the physics hit for you, but those things just never hit for me and it just dragged down the experience and kinda devolved into a frustrating effort by the end of things. I respect the influence it had over gaming and Strider Hiryu himself is cool, but it was just a miss for me.
Look, I can see plenty of reasons to like this game. The art, especially for a quite early Genesis title, is very well done. This is probably most epitomized in the Siberian Wilderness stage in the segment with power outages (where the darkened, silhouette look broken by crackling electricity is pretty badass), the ending sequence and city shots, and the detailed sprites on enemies along with Strider himself. It has the clear intent of a neo-futuristic, 80s anime style setting (given Moto Kikaku's involvement on the manga this seems particularly fitting), and there's some pretty rad boss visual designs. The music's pretty solid and the sound can be good too, although I do feel the need to note two things. First, Stage 4's Amazon enemies seem to have some oddities going on with their sound, because a lot of times I'd have them play their attack sounds on loop a LOT when they were on the fringes of the screen in a way that was outright annoying. I thought maybe this was just a glitch of some kind, but when I checked a random Longplay on Youtube and it seemed to have the same issue so IDK. Hiryu's sword swing also makes a LOT of sound when you spam it but that was probably more frustrating than when it'd be designed due to listening with headphones rather than a crowded arcade or CRT or w/e so I don't hold that much against it.
I just couldn't jive with a lot of the gameplay though. The game feels like a bad, peanut butter mashup of Ninja Gaiden's speedy action with Castlevania's jumping physics, with the end result being a game that demands precision and speed that feels stiff and, in my opinion, unresponsive. You can definitely get used to it, sure, and it is consistent (even if Strider tumbling with the horizontal jump is at first maybe a bit throwing off), but it isn't particularly fun to play. It's like a bad version of a Metroid-style two-different-jumps mechanic. I also felt like some consistent hitbox and physics dissonance was on display here, largely with any kind of moving platform, which was absolutely PAINFUL in the final level. I died at least 10 times to the run up to the final boss because you have to stay on a moving platform that will cause you to flip off if you don't grab and/or jump with the right timing, and there were plenty of times I just grabbed on and then instantly fell off or fell off for seemingly no reason and so on. There's also a bizarre inconsistency to the game: I streamed a good chunk of this with a friend on Discord and we both noted how I'd run through the same area, often times doing the same thing, and yet have enemy spawns vary for reasons that were esoteric to us.
This is particularly notable because Strider is HEAVY on trial and error gameplay, it loves to put enemies just off screen or in spots where if you don't react immediately after entering a new area you'll get hit. There's also plenty of "gotcha" moments in the game. If you don't know a trap is coming up right when you beat the first boss, for example, you WILL get hit. Boss quality varies heavily but most are unimpressive in execution, one of them felt particularly odd as it seems like it has unavoidable damage to hit it and you basically have to mash and have full health to win before you die. When I looked up other runs, I never saw them avoid the damage either. It's likely possible but I couldn't figure it out. I'd probably enjoy this more if the game's physics felt more free, because then I'd be able to memorize myself into a nice rhythm of jumping, attacking, and so on.
It's not as though gameplay is without any merit. The idea of Gradius style Options as power-ups is underexplored but interesting. The game's got some classic ninja wall jumps and ceiling clings and platform grabs and tends to mix these in quite well: If the jumping didn't feel so bad for me the actual level design seems solid if very difficult (you can definitely tell this was an arcade game!) to me albeit with way too many gotcha moments. Some of the Options do seem to sometimes work oddly, mostly just kinda going wherever they please off screen, but it's pretty cool conceptually and fun to use. Plus I love how it fits hard into the cyber-ninja theming, he has a robot dog!
Overall, Strider might be pretty fun if the way it controls and the physics hit for you, but those things just never hit for me and it just dragged down the experience and kinda devolved into a frustrating effort by the end of things. I respect the influence it had over gaming and Strider Hiryu himself is cool, but it was just a miss for me.
2 Comments
ape together strong
Weatherby
1 year ago