This was a huge surprised. Just a few days ago, this was announced. 2 days after getting announced, it came out. Yeah, I find it a bit weird, since there was literally no marketing for this game, other than the Wii Shop Channel update posts on various news sites. So if it ends up under-selling… well, the complete lack of publicity is to blame.

For me, when it was announced and the trailer video came out, I knew I had to get it right away. It was a huge surprise that it was announced… Heck, I was surprised to learn that Sunsoft still existed… (MAKE A NEW “JOURNEY TO SILIUS” SUNSOFT!!!!)
The original Blaster Master on the NES was a great game, but it was incredibly difficult. Partly because it was genuinely hard and required lots of skill, and partly because it had limited continues and no save points.

I was just a bit weary though, since Blaster Master hasn’t always been very lucky when it comes to sequels. The Genesis game wasn’t too great and the Playstation game was quite bad. I haven’t played/seen the GBC version, so I can’t comment on that one.

Read on and see if it holds up to the original’s standards, or if it’s lame like its previous sequels!
(Note: This is not a remake, it’s a completely new game in the series.)

Developer: Sunsoft
Publisher: Sunsoft
Date of Release: February 8th 2010
Platforms: Wii

Genre: Non-linear Action Platformer
Players: 1
Rated E10+ for Everyone over 10

Looks and sounds
The graphics are really cool. They conserve the original’s overall style, but it looks a LOT better. Each area is nicely detailed, with each of them having a different tone. While each area in the game has a similar look, they all have something unique about them that makes them recognizable. The underground areas are really repetitive-looking though. S.O.P.H.I.A looks a bit like an SUV, but it still has a similar design to S.O.P.H.I.A THE 3RD in the first game. The enemy design is really basic. Scorpions, weird flying bugs, spiders, blobs… nothing overly interesting. The bosses are pretty good though. They’re big and they have lots of detail.

Sound-wise, the game is okay. The music is fun, mostly because it’s all remixes from the first game. The remixes range from average to really good. Definitely not as bad as in the trailer. My only big problem with the sound is in the underground stages, Alex’s 2 “main” guns, when fully upgrade, cover up every other sound and music. They’re really loud for some reason and it can be annoying.

Story
Just a passing mention on this since the story is about as deep as the story in the average NES game. I find the premise here not to be as interesting as in the original. The original had you playing as Jason, a kid, who lost his pet frog in a hole and had to get him back with the help of the big badass tank S.O.P.H.I.A THE 3RD(which he randomly found after going down the hole). It was simple, it had a few cool plot twists, and it had that video game story quirkiness to it making it fun.
This one features a biologist named Alex (the same Alex as in the Worlds of Power book? Maybe). The Earth has been attacked by a virus and it’s mutating animals, making them violently killing humans, and humans are getting infected and dying. Alex, equipped with badass tank S.O.P.H.I.A and his gun(how a BIOLOGIST has a tank at all is a mystery, but whatever), goes to find a cure for his family who has been infected, as well as the world. The story is more serious, but it makes it all feel a lot less interesting than the epic tale of a kid looking for his atomic frog, doesn’t it? It’s not bad, and I’m happy that there’s no much focus on the story. It doesn’t really go much deeper than what the intro says(and the ending, of course), and that’s a good thing.

Gameplay
Controls
The game controls fully with the Wiimote only. There’s no option for Classic or Gamecube controllers.
While driving S.O.P.H.I.A, the 1 button uses the weapon you currently have equipped, the 2 button jumps, the d-pad moves and aims the turret, the A button switches weapons, holding the B button keeps your direction and gun angle, the + button makes Alex exit/enter the tank and the – button shows the map. It’s also the only way to pause the game.
In overhead stages, the controls are similar. The differences are that the D-pad moves you in any of 8 directions. B also keeps your aim in the direction you want, so it enables you to strafe like in the first game. The 2 button makes you use a bomb if you have one. And finally the + and – buttons do NOTHING.

I have just a few complaints. Holding the B button while holding the Wiimote sideways is a bit unwieldy. In the side-scrolling areas it’s not much of a problem since it’s not something that needs to be used often, but in the overhead segments it can be quite annoying since it’s a useful technique. My other BIG complaint is that there’s no way to pause in the overhead sections, other than using the Home button… What the fuck? Oh, and they reversed the confirm and cancel buttons on the Wiimote, with 1 confirming and 2 cancelling in menus. It’s a bit of an annoyance.

Other than those few problems, the controls are nice and simple. There’s a few problems that I think could have been ironed out if they would have released the game later (not that it would have changed anything on our side since they announced it 2 days before release).

Game Flow
The game flow is pretty much the same concept as the first game. You start with the basic tank with only a normal gun and average jumping abilities. As you find caves, you can exit the tank and enter them for levels using Alex in an overhead point of view. Caves can contain 4 things: Max HP upgrades(for Alex, not S.O.P.H.I.A), Gun upgrades, Save Points and bosses. Because of the HP upgrades, going in every cave you find is really important. Fighting bosses will give you an upgrade for S.O.P.H.I.A, enabling you to go to the next area, and find more items. Instead of actual levels, this game is basically “Metroidvania” style, like the original. Some areas are impossible to visit until you find the required upgrades. This is quite fun and let’s you progress at the speed you want and gives a little bit more time to explore the levels.

Side-scrolling areas
The overhead levels are where you’ll spend a bit more than half of the game. Each room has a bunch of enemies, obstacles and jumps to do. Looking for caves is the priority, but there’s more to find as there are upgrades, both for S.O.P.H.I.A’s HP and EN. EN is energy… Everything you do other than move uses up EN. Shooting, using the grappling hook, hovering, using the drill, using the swimming upgrade and walking on walls all use EN. Each of those actions take a different amount of EN. You recover EN by not doing anything. If you move, your EN stops regenerating.Getting upgrades enables you to do better platforming (since the basic jump is a bit low) by grappling to ceilings, climb up walls, drill through certain blocks(the drill also does a dash, which can be used to reach certain platforms), swim through water, and a few other things. Each upgrade kinda changes how you use S.O.P.H.I.A which is cool.

Combat is quite simple: point your gun at the enemy and shoot until he dies. You can aim the tank’s turret forward, diagonally (yay, huge improvement there) and upwards. Certain enemies take more hits, and react differently when you get close to them. Once you get your drill, combat is even more simplified. The drill makes you dash forward, and it kills almost anything in one hit. At first it’s hard attacking enemies when they’re on lower levels and when there’s many of them, but the drill makes everything easier.

Overall, those areas are pretty fun. Lots to explore, though the map reveals where any entrances might be and where all the caves are (and the ones that appear green on the map are Save Points. Despite that, there’s still some exploration required to find upgrades. And the platforming is pretty fun and quite well done, especially when you start getting upgrades.

Overhead areas
The overhead levels are pretty important. All the boss battles are there after all. All of the overhead levels are in various caves you find in all the areas. Just a note: Before entering caves, Alex is very frail so any kind of mildly high drop kills him instantly(you’ll be surprised at how low the drops can be for him to die), so be careful, and be very careful where you exit the tank, since you might take a drop by error.

In the caves, you get HP upgrades and gun upgrades. Alex has 3 guns. When you pick up a gun upgrade, whichever gun you have selected at the moment will level up, up to level 5.
The basic gun shoots straight. Upgrading it changes the firing speed/number of simmultaneous bullets, and at level 5 it shoots like crazy in front of you. The second gun shoots homing energy balls. This gun is pathetic until level 5 (since it’s slow and does less damage than the normal gun) where it starts shooting countless homing energy balls everywhere. It’s still not as strong the normal gun, but at max level it has some use. The final gun is a rocket launcher. There’s a cross-hair that appears some distance in front of you when you have this gun selected. When it becomes orange (takes around 2 seconds),  you can shoot and everything that is in the circle area you shoot in gets damaged (when the rocket lands). The rocket launcher has huge delay between shots, but does major damage. As it levels up, its area of effect increases and the damage gets a boost as well. It’s not useful at all in the actual levels, but against the bosses it was my main weapon.
One thing to note is that when enemies hit you, your currently equipped gun goes down a level, which is an extra incentive to not getting hit(you get damaged too, of course). Obviously the gun won’t go lower than level 1. A nice thing here is that you can farm gun upgrades. Exiting the cave and coming back in recovers the gun upgrades. There’s a particular cave in Area 2 that has 2 upgrades and that barely has any enemies which is great for that, but you need the dive kit to get to it.

Combat is quite straightforward here as well, but it’s a lot tougher than in the overhead levels. More enemies shooting more bullets as you, and Alex isn’t as sturdy as S.O.P.H.I.A. Strafing to avoid bullets while still shooting at the enemies is a pretty useful tactic here, though Alex moves slower when strafing. Also, Alex moves quite slowly from the start. It’s not unbearable, but it takes some getting used to (eventually you start knowing how to move properly).

The bosses are pretty cool here too. Each boss has a weak point, and each boss is different from there last… kinda. You fight the Crab boss twice, though the second time it has different attacks and is a lot harder. And there’s a caterpillar boss that you fight twice as well, which is completely different(and again much harder) the second time around, despite having the same weakpoint. The boss battles are definitely interesting.

Overall I find the overhead parts just a bit annoying, mostly because some of them are just overly difficult, but they’re pretty fun nonetheless.

Difficulty
This game is quite hard. The bosses in particular can be rather brutal, some being nearly equivalent to some of the “easier” bullet hell games I’ve played. Needless to say most bosses require multiple tries to get through. They’ll kill you quite a bit.

The overhead areas, while pretty fun, get insanely hard as you progress through the game. In later levels, even bombs can’t save you, since some enemies just split into more enemies when they die, making it even harder to move around. Getting extra HP upgrades does help, but some areas are still very tough even if you have all the upgrades currently available. And the fact that your gun gets weaker when you get hit make things even harder. Needless to say, you will die… a lot. The overhead areas will be tough for any gamer, and the bosses are no slouches either. (Hint: try not killing the jellyfish enemies)

You probably won’t die much in the side-scrolling areas using the tank, especially once you get the drill upgrade, which makes combat insanely easier. And you can farm healing items by exiting rooms that have lots of enemies and re-entering them. Enemy attacks don’t do much damage either, especially when you get your health high. Early in the game you don’t have lots of HP, so you’ll probably die a bit more, but, as you progress, the tank areas become easier and easier.

One thing that made the first game tough was the low number of continues, and the fact that you couldn’t save. And it was a rather long game that had to be finished in one sitting, and finishing it in one sitting (while not using up all the continues) was no easy task. While this game keeps the same “overall” difficutly as the first game, the fact that it has save points makes it a LOT easier to actually complete. Partly because you don’t have to finish it in one sitting anymore, but you can die as much as you want and keep on playing from your last save point whitout worrying about continues. So while the game IS tough, it’s not a game that will take you YEARS to finish like the original . Just make sure to save when you’re done with a boss, otherwise you’ll have to fight it again. I had to replay large sections of the game multiple times because I hadn’t saved in a long time.

Overall
This is a really fun game. Unless the GBC game was REALLY good, this is definitely the best game in the series since the original NES game. And it’s just as fun as the classic NES title.

The gameplay is nice and simple, and it’s just like the classic which is great. The presentation is quite good and true to the original, the game flow is great, and it’s lenghty enough. It takes about 5 hours to finish it, though that doesn’t count the countless times you die and have to reload your game to refight bosses and such, so I’d say about 10-12 hours total on the first playthrough.

Final word? This is Blaster Master as it’s meant to be. No crappy 3rd-person shooter stuff like the PS1 sequel. It’s tough, it’s fun and it’s overall a good experience. And the addition of save points make it a lot more manageable for any player.

Pros and Cons
Pros
- It’s challenging
- Save points are awesome for this game
- Great gameplay just like the original
- The drill is surprisingly fun to use
- Map makes the game easier to navigate

Cons
- The controls really needed just a bit more polishing, as they’re not perfect
- No support for other controls than Wiimote only
- Why is there no pausing in the overhead levels? That’s a serious oversight
- I’d say the map is slightly smaller than in the original… but I might be mistaken

The Save Factor
The game cost $10. It’s definitely worth it for a new Blaster Master game. So $10 is the Save Factor for this one.

(I seemingly had a lot to say about this game >_< sorry about the super long review…)

jobocan Console, Games, Review, WiiWare, impressions, wii