Last Action Hero

"I don't even know where to begin..."

A thought occurred to me upon skimming though the NES game list. Not enough crappy games have reviews! This realization surprised and intrigued me, as well as filled me with questions. How could these bottom of the barrel stinkers have slipped through the cracks? Did people feel like it wasn’t worth the time to jot down a few words about them? Did people not want to warn others of the pure evils lying within these horrors? Or were these games simply never played by anyone?

All questions aside, I come here today to tell you a little bit about a game called Last Action Hero. Does this name sound familiar? Of course… If you’re a movie buff you surely remember this flick. It was an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie released sometime during the mid 90’s. The big deal with it was that it was supposed to be an “Arnold Lite” movie. It was marketed as a film where parents could bring their little kiddies and not worry about seeing people’s heads get impaled by various objects and not hear anyone shout any naughty swear words in the heat of battle.

Needless to say, the movie tanked. It went up against Jurassic Park and was trounced upon like a sumo wrestler at a buffet dinner. I must admit though, I’ve never seen the movie in its entirety. I’ve caught bits and pieces of it on TBS here and there, and on the whole I found myself less than impressed. Regardless, I can honestly say that I’d rather put myself through a 24-hour marathon of watching this movie than even attempt for an hour to complete this putrid NES game.

So there you have it. I didn’t beat this game! Not only that, I couldn’t make it past stage friggin’ two! So why review it? Well, one abysmal stage of uber-crappiness alone is enough for me to blabber on for a decent length rant. But where, oh where, to start? How about…

The Title Screen!

My mammy and pappy always done tolded me never to judge books by their covers. To get around this, I’ve learned to always judge them by their first page instead. In the case of video games, this “first page” is the title screen or equal equivalent (wasn’t really a title screen in Final Fantasy, was there?). In Last Action Hero, the title screen is the game’s logo at the very top quarter of the screen with credits below it. My words can never do it justice, but all I can say is that it’s the ****tiest video game title screen known to man. I would swear in this review since that’s how strongly I feel about this game’s horrendousness, however, I swore in another one of my reviews so I don’t want to push it here. It’s hard not to though. Oh so hard.

…and the graphics don’t get any better!

But you already knew that. Seriously though. Total Recall for the NES does Arnold better, and that’s saying about as little as I could ever possibly say. Total Recall might be yet another hairball in the bottle of crapiness, but as much as it pains me to say it, it’s better looking than this. The game “rewards” (or if you want to look at it realistically, “punishes”, “mocks”, or “attempts to destroy”) you with cutscenes at the games EVER-SO-EXCITING prelude and in-between stages. Well, between stages one and two anyway. Go ahead. Try to make me play long enough to get to three. I dare you.

Anyway, these cutscenes look like a one-armed monkey playing Mario Paint on an acid trip did them. The kid (I don’t even know who in the hell played the little brat in the movie. The movie killed any chance he ever would have had at a career. Hell, if the actor ever saw how he was portrayed in this game he’d have hung himself on the spot. I know I would have) looks like a big blob of peach and red and stuff. It’s not like the movie had much of a message to convey or that the game’s designers had to translate a Picasso to video game format. It was ****ing Last Action Hero for cripes sakes! So, uh… yeah. The cutscenes will make you feel as if you need to gouge out your own eyes. Or at least track down the developers and gouge out theirs.

And as far as the in-game graphics go, it’s no better of course. The sprites are small, dingy, and lack any smidgen of detail or inspiration whatsoever. Arnold looks about as un-Arnold as he ever has in a video game. The Atari 2600 had more heart and soul than this vapid piece of nothingness. Not like it ever had an Arnold game or anything, but if it did chances are that it would be better.

This game also manages to display one of my all time favorite video game pet peeves. This peeve is simply such:

I HATE it when a game leaves so much of the screen filled with non-activeness that you could cover half of your television screen with a piece of paper and play the game just fine. The one game that always comes to mind when I think of this is Powerboat Racing for the PSone. Seriously though, you could cover up the top ¾ of the screen and beat the game with a severed arm. ALL THAT FILLED UP THE TOP ****ING PART OF THE SCREEN WAS BLUE. A ****ING BLUE SKY!!! Anyway… such is the case in Last Action Hero. Okay. I’ll give the game some credit… This wasn’t the case in stage two. But still, it’s sacrilege enough.

But enough about graphics!

What about sound?

Yeah, well, what about it? To tell you the truth, I played the game two weeks ago. I was going to force myself to play it a few minutes ago in order to have it fresh in my mind while writing this review, but no dice. Call me a poor reviewer. Send the Fair-Treatment-For-All-Games-Crap-or-Gold activists to my door. I don’t care. If the fact that I couldn’t force myself to revisit this hell isn’t enough to convince you that you should avoid this game at all costs, then by all means, go plunk your $5 on it and have a blast and a half.

What does this have to do with sound, you ask? Well… I can’t remember a lick of it. That’s what. And I can’t even be bothered to put the game back in to tell you. All you need to know is that I can’t remember a shred of it. Even the most average of NES video game music usually impresses me enough to the point where I can hum a few bars of a random tune completely from memory. Such is not the case here. I know I didn’t have the TV muted when I played this two weeks ago since I always listen to the music when I game, but it just didn’t stick. Next?

Oh yeah… that gameplay dealie! So what the hell type of game is this anyway?

Last Action Hero for the NES is a side scrolling action game. It is NOT in the same vain as your Double Dragons or Mighty Final Fight. It is a strictly 2D romp from left to right, punching and kicking baddies as they come. Here lies some of the problem. The punching and kicking. Allow me to make these simple serving suggestions for you!

If you are in the mood for punching people: Play Shatterhand

If you are in the mood for kicking people: Play Kickmaster

If you are in the mood to vomit: Play Last Action Hero

The range of your attacks is non-existent. The hit detection is laughable. And there isn’t any obvious remedy to it as far as I can tell. The only way I beat the main boss of stage one was to run right up to him and play a slapping match with him. Hit him a few times, get hit. Hit him a few more times, get hit again. There was no strategy to it. No rhyme or reason. Nothing. Just a cheap battle engine for a cheap game.

And don’t even get me started on the scrolling… In order to get the goddam screen to move forward you have to get nearly within kissing distance to the right side of the screen. Not cool. Sure, make the game cheap as hell as it is, but then go ahead and make it nearly impossible to see what lies ahead! Way to go, Sony Imagesoft. You certainly were looking to create a name for yourself in the NES era, weren’t you?

So is it really that bad?

Yes. It really is that bad. I picked on Sony Imagesoft a few lines ago, and with good reason. There were quite a few crap companies during the NES era, but SI really knew how to put the cream on the doody pie. Not only were the vast majority of their disasters movie-to-game ports (this, Cliffhanger, Hudson Hawk), they were the absolute crappiest of movie-to-game ports! I mean, you really didn’t have to try hard in those days to make a movie-to-game stink like holy hell, but by some stroke of divinity SI was able to take toilet-gaming to lows it would never quite reach again.

Comparing all of their great NES train wrecks to each other is akin to comparing, well, different pieces of crap to each other (I tried to come up with a different analogy. Really, I did). They’re all different in form, hell, different in many other ways I’m certain. But when you break it down, they’re all crap. No arguments. No discussion. They’re all CRAP.

Same with Last Action Hero and all the other Sony Imagesoft NES games. I haven’t reviewed any of the other ones yet, but they’ve all got 1s waiting for them. Which is the worst of the 1s though? Damned if I could tell you.

All I can say is this.

Stay away.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 01/24/03, Updated 01/24/03