Technocop (Sega Genesis)
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| Technocop (Sega Genesis) | ||||||||||||
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 Razorsoft is back again with their terrible ports.
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Technocop is a sidescrolling shoot-'em-up developed for various computers and later ported to the Sega Genesis by Punk Development and published by the infamous Razorsoft in 1990. A version for the NES was going to be developed by Prove Software and published by Tengen in 1992, but it was cancelled due to the problems the latter had with Nintendo. A sequel was planned called Technocop: the Final Mission, but it was cancelled.
This article is only about the more infamous Sega Genesis version.
Why It Sucks
- The controls are wretched, it is fairly possible that they didnt bother to adapt the game to the Genesis controls, and used a configuration more appopriate for computes like the Amiga:
- Jumping and shooting (because there's an animation of the character pulling out his gun before shooting) are very delayed, which is perfect for getting you ass annihilated by enemies.
- Using nets is even more delayed than normal shooting, it doesnt help that you can shoot this much less often than normal shots.
- Shooting in the car sections is really unresponsive only acknowledging some of your button presses. Worse the shoots arent centered, so aiming your shoots is a pain.
- Pressing up to enter to elevators, works when it feels like.
- You cannot jump in place, only foward, and a very specific distance, in other words, jumps are completely uncontrollable, worst yet jumping is tied to an stamina meter.
- Also the animation of jumping takes way too long, which lets you open for an attack.
- When you crouch its hard to get up again, which sets you up for unavoidable damage.
- The character walks very slow and lacks mobility in general.
- In the car sections you must press up to accelerate, which makes the moving left or right in the car really hard.
- Graphically looks hideous because of the ugly color pallete,awful animations, and lame blood effects
- It gets worse since the game reuses the same 3 backgrounds in both types of stages (1 for the driving sections and 2 for the side scroller sections), during the entire game.
- The Hud takes a third of the screen.
- The screen becomes even smaller in the driving sections, almost resembling Doom on the 3DO.
- The proyectiles you shoot in the driving stages look like tomatos.
- The levels are garbage:
- As previously mentioned the game reuses backgrounds in every part of the level, almost to the point that it feels like you are going trough the same levels over and over.
- The screen doesnt scroll until the character is almost at the edge, which causes you to be surprised and damaged by enemies almost all the time before you can do anything about it.
- The enemy variety is lazy, is just rats, children, guys that throw shurikens or axes, guys with clubs and guys with a whip.
- The levels are tedious, they are huge, and are like mazes, fortunately you have a compass that helps you but still, some of the routes you have to take are really annoying.
- There are parts where you must jump trough gaps in the floor, which is a pain in the ass because the game has abysmal jumping controls, so this can lead to falling damage, the loss of a life and of valuable time.
- The game adores leaps of faith, this only makes the fact that the HUD takes 1/3 of the screen even more annoying.
- You can be killed as soon as you get out of an elevator, if you have bad a luck and an enemy comes just in time from a door that is next to the elevator.
- When you kill/arrest the suspect, you have to return to the beginning of the level to get to the next stage, and enemies are still spawning.
- The driving stages are just annoying:
- The road is away too narrow
- Every time you touch the enemy cars you bounce around and thrown off road.
- The upgrades you get are useless.
- Just like the side scroller levels, this levels feel like the same level over and over.
- There is no music in the entire game, only in the title screen
- The difficulty is abominable:
- The game only gives you 5 lives and no continues.
- You can be shoot from off screen by some bosses.
- Bosses can kill you in 1 hit, and normally that attack is a surprise or really hard to dodge.
- If a boss takes one of your lives, the boss escapes, and you cannot catch him again.
- Sometimes the game demands you to catch the bosses alive, which is a pain because the web barely functions.
- The game only scrolls when the character is really close to the edge of the screen, this can lead to you getting hit by enemies before you can even see them.
- There is a time limit in levels, worst yet, is the fact that while it seems that the game gives you a decent amount of time, in reality the game counts seconds at 3 times the normal speed, so in reality you only get a third of what the timer says.
- In the later parts of the game, there is some slight platforming, which due to the painfully bad controls, will be a nightmare, worst yet, the game has falling damage.
- The game later introuduces bombs which you cannot shoot at, so your only option is trying to jump over them which is easier said than done.
- There is a glitch that causes some of the bombs to be invisible.
- Enemies take way to many shots to evade damage, and you cannot shoot while walking.
- The game doesnt tell you how to get health pick ups.
- The giant rats are way too short to be shoot, and if they touch you, they will cause your character to basically be stunned, which means you will take a lot of damage from enemies that are close, without any ability to retaliate until the stun animation is over.
- Weirdly enought the driving stages despite how much they suck are really easy or at least compared to the abominable sidescrolling sections.
- There arent any invincibility frames, you can get your health reduced to 0 really quick.
- Sometimes the hit detection of your shots goes to shit, and doesnt hit enemies that are in range.
- Strangely some bosses are pathetically easy, for example the final boss can be killed before he has any chance to attack.
- The sound design is dreadful:
- Every character screams the same way when they get killed.
- Pincking things and using the web shot sound like something getting squished like in a cartoon.
- The sound of opening doors sound ridiculous.
- There is no sound when you get hit by rats.
- You can shoot children in the game which is tasteless and unnecessary.
- Zero variety of weapons, you only have the gun and the net, and the later you will never use it unless you have to because the game damands you take a suspect alive.
- There is Zero history in the entire game, you dont have any context for your mission, neither for the suspect you are trying to kill or catch and when the game ends it is just like beating any other level.
- Crappy ending, is just a picture of the protagonist locking up a criminal in jail.
- Again just like Slaughter Sport and Stormlord, this is a shitty and lazy port of an already awful game that existed for micro computers.
Redeeming Qualites
- The music in the title screen is fairly good
- The compass in the stages is fairly useful.
Reception
Technocop is a pretty infamous game for fans of the Sega Genesis normally named one of the worst games of the console, normally citing the awful controls and how insanely repetitive and unfair the game is. The game was featured in Kim Justice's Top 20 Worst Sega Genesis Games of all time in Number 8 calling the gameplay wretched and the game terrible.
References
http://segabits.com/blog/2014/03/24/retro-review-technocop/
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