![]() ![]() It's back up the other side of the ice mountain for you, then, an entertaining but too-short jaunt. A few gave healing or powerups, and they made me laugh, but I'd guess the designers may have used these amiable oddballs to cover up a lack of puzzles. From a fellow in scuba gear to a paper ghost to a mushroom-umbrella-Cyclops, most maze branches lead to one giving long-winded advice in Japanese. Unraveling this is the best part of the game, and you get to find new weird friends to talk to. Many screens have two split paths through them, which offers some maze puzzles, and a broken bridge coupled with a secluded grove in the corner of one screen suggests you may need a boat. Shooting rocks away from the water, or even across it, is the new rage, but there's not much variety. The jungle below has no such limits, offering a change of scenery and strategy, with freaky wailing and drumbeats too. Puzzles are also squeezed in since the scenery needs to look mountainous, necessitating a lot of cliff faces and safety rails such. Then hopefully hacking the dead wood in your shot's path for that next move. Worse, they pop up more frequently from holes that now block that trick shot you need to make, and often it's a matter of firing away and waiting for the right power-up. Slowly, of course, but you'll still get impatient and make dumb mistakes, or enemies may bunch under ladders. Often you'll need to tuck yourself in a dead end, guide a rock in front of you, and push it where you need to. The tune picks up in the next area (ice mountains) and so do the puzzles. You'll find advice in rooms off to the side, and while getting lost is tough, Select provides an auto-map that tracks rooms you haven't solved. The opening castle is friendly, with just one tricky room where you must solve from the right to grab an item on the left. ![]() Enemies start off as nuisances, but just shoot them and they'll cough up an hourglass to freeze them, a bomb to kill them all, or a heart to regain health. ![]() If you mess up, you can just exit and re-enter your screen. ![]() The first that can't are handy tutorials: shoot a rock on an island, or out of a dead end. Many early rooms can be solved by classic Soukoban techniques, with some copied directly from classic early Soukoban levels. You can run to save time with a speed button. Red tears give you more powerful shots against the final boss. You can gain six or eight of these per level, which would make bosses a real challenge if you couldn't just trade hits. Special weapons that harm bosses vary between sub-worlds. With all holes full, you get a treasure denoted by a sign in the upper left. But you can also fire at the enemies who pop up from said holes and, if you hold down the A button, shoot a big fireball you can steer. You're a bouncy little red girl with blue hair, pushing spiked rocks into holes. Power Soukoban tries a different angle, with enemies to shoot and a world to explore, but it falls in the same traps. Ports that rehash levels with jazzier graphics or let you undo moves can't fully hide this. Unfortunately, its faults are as simple: for nontrivial levels, the a-ha moment pales by the drudge work ahead. For full game, repeat two hundred levels, expanding floor and number of boxes. It's simple: push boxes in warehouse onto target squares, no diagonal moves please. Soukoban, though ported to many platforms, is really a better AI problem or programming exercise than a game. "Soukoban, though ported to many platforms, is really a better AI problem or programming exercise than a game. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |