Virtual-On Marz

"Cyber Troopers meets ambiguously awkward PS2 port"

I have always been a fan of Cyber Troopers Virtual On, from Operation Moongate to Oratorio Tangram. MARZ, however, caught my eye a year before it was released. Having seen screenshots on Game Spot, I immediately became interested, hearing that the game was actually going to play like the arcade but with multiple mecha combat. The following is my personal view on how the game met my expectations with flying colors and failed them miserably... but mainly on how the game fails them miserably.

I know that Game FAQs does not allow cursing, so I shall substitute certain words with the word bobe (kudos to Kevin for that one).

Story:
What the bobe is going on here? This game, at points, gave me an aneurysm. How did this happen? While pondering exactly what was going on, somehow a blood vessel decided that it would be funny to just erupt on me. Well, apparently one-thousand-four-hundred-seventy-six brain cells all decided at once that it would be humorous to watch blood expel from my nostrils like a geyser. What exactly sparked this oddity? A good question, but one that will most probably send blood firing from your nose as well. Have you ever played a children's game- just to laugh at the plot? This is much like what MARZ has in store for the player. What? Laughs and headaches! I never thought it possible to laugh while my temples ached. The game tries to throw so much plot at you in as few words as possible. If a bobing character cannot convey his or her feelings or thoughts in fifty-six letters or digits, the character will not mind to convey it. This becomes extremely awkward when one must figure out why he or she is being attacked. Why not ask your superiors? Again, another brilliant question, but it is not that simple. Your operator has the mentality of a seven-year-old with a fifty-two-year-old's voice. He makes your mission objectives as blunt as possible. He will spew out a few incoherent lines of bobe and then expect you to come back safely. Does he bid me well? No! That God damn bobing bastard kicks me out of a ship and into the mission zones. Wait... Where did that ship come from? Your guess is as good as mine! Nothing is explained. Those incoherent lines of babble that are supposed to resemble mission objectives are meaningless. All one must do is destroy the enemy units anyway. What difference does it make that a V Crystal is involved? Well, does it not add to the plot? What plot? It is better that you know not what the V Crystal does. For your sake as a player, do not feign interest in what it does. Why? You will never know! Your mission will be to collect the crystal, but why? Why must I collect this crystal and why are these men trying to stop me from taking back that which was stolen? Not a bobing person in the game knows! And if they do, their fifty-six digit limit will not allow them to tell you why. The following monologue is my interpretation of everything that happens within one of your pointless and futile mission briefings.
''You must collect the J Crystal.''
''What is the J Crystal?''
''The J Crystal.''
''Yes... I gathered that, but why must I collect it.''
''So that the 'Sisters of the Rose' cannot have it.''
''Who are the 'Sisters of the Rose'?''
''The ones that Anber IV wants you to interrogate.''
''Who is Anber IV!?''
''The one that wants you to ask why the J Crystals were stolen.''
''The J Crystal was stolen!?''
Did you hear that popping sound? If you were wondering what that was, it was the sound of your brain slowly deleting its own brain cells, dumbing you down to the game's level so that you can understand what the bobe is going on. You can learn more from the people that you are trying to kill than by talking to that seven-year-old trapped in a fifty-two-year-old's body of an operator you have. Why is it that you, the pilot, have the only level of intelligence higher than that of mayonnaise? Every battle strategy you will ever formulate will be foiled by your bumbling operator or by some random character that shows up on a spur the moment whim. Yes, characters show up at random. One such character is a slacked-jawed-moronic-stupefied-cowboy who claims to be a sergeant. Yes, I speak of the one and only Hatter. Why Hatter of all names? His mecha dons a hat! Yeah, a forty foot combat vehicle with a bobing hat! Not just any hat, but a cowboy hat! Not only does his mecha's visage disgust me but the sound of his voice sends shivers down my spine. One would be better off listening to Fran Drescher's intoxicatingly-gut-wrenching laugh. Not only does his voice spur feelings of animosity within your soul, he has to refer to you as friend. Each time I saw him, I was poised to knock that ridiculous hat off of his head and pummel him lifeless until he stopped calling me his friend. I would rather be his enemy than have him view me as his slack jawed, I'm bobing my sister, idiot wrapped in a moron, companion. Aside from this drooling dumbass, we have Vyslain, the White Knight. He kills Shadow VRs. What are Shadow VRs? You expect an explanation? You silly fool- you shall not have it! Oh, you, the player, playing the game, want to know why the game, whom you are playing, has an enemy, which you are fighting, which you do not understand? Pshaw! Asking questions are easy; obtaining the answer is difficult. Apparently you spend a lot of the game hunting the Shadow units. Well, along with fighting off DNA and RNA (great names, no?). But they are not worth your time. Why? Because they are not what you are after- oh no! You must fight off Daimon, an alien entity who used the Moongate to travel to our world to corrupt the easily amenable minds of the populace to buy Daimon's products! Yes, Daimon is a participant in the Limited Wars- the war of the companies. This alien menace is a bobing inter-galactic telemarketer using the Moongate as its means of traveling out of the meta-cyber world! Wait, I am fighting an alien telemarketer? Yes- quite frankly, you are. Please expound... Much like I would have loved for the narrator to? Narator? I would like to call the loud billowing voice of God who narrates this ambiguous story a narrator, but that would be crediting the oaf far too much. At the end of each mission, he spurts out some babble which is supposed to help the player better understand the story. These lines range from ''Welcome to the Martian front'' to ''Space, what a place it is.'' Space, what a place it is!? This is supposed to aid the reader in better understanding the story? If anything, the narrator hinders your playing performance. How so? If anything, pondering the insoluble is a detriment to your playing capabilities. All those years of wishing that Virtual On had a plot, I have found that those years were wasted. Apparently Virtual On was never meant to have a plot, and when Hitmaker decided that this mecha-mashing series needed one, this horrible phrase, ''Space, what a place it is.'', was created to ''help better the knowledge of the player''. If that betters my knowledge, I will take a baseball bat to my head to beat that knowledge out of me!
This is what happens when game producers sell their souls for the all powerful dollar- a craptacular, aneurysm inspiring, utterly forgettable sub-par plot that does not deserve mentioning. 4/10

Graphics:
I have always been a fan of Virtual On's graphics. For its time back in '95, Virtual On was top notch, and to this day, is still far more impressive that the other horrible pawn-offs that wish to be Virtual On. And how did this game's graphics compare? While not spectacular for the PS2, by no means so, I was content. Many remonstrate that the graphics are shotty at best and do not deserve any kudos, but this alone, I suppose, makes up for that despicable sub-par plot. At least it takes emphasis off of the crap that Hitmaker fed us and places more of an emphasis on the crap that Hitmaker showed us. I never actually thought that I would place a game's graphics higher than it's plot. But, seeing as this game's plot is nil, it was only inevitable that I would need some sort of scapegoat to give this game any sort of rating outside of a two. What can one really say about these graphics? They fit the series. It is extremely hard to up the graphics on a game that uses box and pillars as the only sort of terrain. There are no textures, just blocks and pillars. Trees, lakes, and deserts do not exist in the future, according to Virtual On's graphics. All that does exist are futuristic boxes and giant mecha. Yep, take a look at those futuristic boxes. Those sure are beaut's aint't they? The mecha design fit, and really, that is all one can say aside from a few controller flaws that make the on-screen actions seem awkward, but that is really negatable. The movements were fluid, well, as fluid as a hulking robotic husk can get. The only complaint that I have is the fact that they deleted the armor aspect of Virtual On. One of my favorite pieces of destruction was watching my opponent's armor come off of its shell in layers, exposing the circuitry that created the iron beast- but no longer is this there. In its place there is nothing. I want my destruction, dammit! Bobe you, Hitmaker! And why can I not destroy those boxes? As beautiful as those blocks and boxes are that Hitmaker calls terrain, they are troublesome and obscure my opponent from my line of fire. How hard is it to destroy that box? Is it so futuristic that my peonic fusion powered laser cannons cannot blast through it? Damn you technology, and damn your insidious box!
When I heard that a new Virtual On game was to be made, this is basically what I expected... minus the destruction... 8/10

Sound:
Have you ever watched a Three Stooges episode? I got the same skin crawling nyuk-nyuks from this game right here. Each explosion sounded the same, and with each muffled and hazed out boom, another stigmatic mark was etched into my mind. All I could hear or think about was that muffled out boom. The lasers sounded like old Star Wars sound-effect rejects. And seeing as there are no sound-effect rejects in movies, that definitely tells you something. Never before has a PS2 game reminded me of an old Sega Genesis game. Unlike the far better SNES, the Sega Genesis had horrid sound-effects that, once again, reminded me of Fran Drescher's laugh. Apparently Sega and Hitmaker kept their long tradition of shotty sound effects that could gag a bobing deaf man. Sega does not quite understand that technology has advanced since '93. If Sega and Hitmaker can make an indestructible box, I cannot see why they can have some variety in their sound-effects. Then again, there was no variety what-so-ever in their graphics, so I suppose this is a moot point.
Unlike Zone of the Enders, this mecha title has music that seems rather dull. Not dull in an Armored Core sense, but dull in an upbeat children's show, eardrum shattering, mental splitting sense. Nothing grasped me or fit the combat. I would have taken anything- Gundam, Gungriffon- even Ring of Red, a mecha strategy game involving droll military tunes would have sufficed better than this! Each new toon was worse than the last. While reminiscent of the first game, this made me rage with anger. The first game was suited well with its older graphics by being given an older musical attempt to emulate anime-inspired toons. This, however, once again, demonstrates Hitmaker and Sega's reluctance to change their old Sega Genesis trend of mundane sound. The producers claim that the music fits the game genre. How much cocaine must I sniff to understand why this music fits this game? And for the love of God, please replace that damned beeping! When approaching death, a beep repeats! It is the same monotoned beep looped over and over and over and over again! When at low health, a few beeps would be helpful, but, seeing as it sounds like a big-rig backing up, I would rather it had backed up through my wall and ran me over. It worked for the first game, but this, my malevolent reader, is not the first game!
Shoot me again, I ain't dead yet! You said it Metallica! 5/10

Game Play:
Thank God, the only redeeming aspect of this game has arrived. The game's controls were taken directly from Virtual On: Force, the latest installment in the arcade series. The controls are done very well and match the arcade classic that is Virtual On. This Twin A and Twin B controller work well. However, it is not the original control scheme that the game provides. You actually have to go to an option to choose these control settings. Yes, you must actually go to an option in the game to make the game play right. Without it, the game plays wrong. Wrong? How can the game be wrong? Easily, my foolhardy reader. Without selecting these controls, the player is in for a bizarre treat, and when I say treat, I do not refer to a delicious, mouth-watering, cake. Oh no, I refer to the enema that occurs afterwards when you realize that you have ingested a cake that had severe food poisoning. If the initial control setting is left on, one will play the game much like one would Armored Core. Now, if the game plays somewhat like Armored Core, why the bobe did Hitmaker and Sega not make the terrain, music, or sound effects like Armored Core? Why pawn-off a rejected Armored Core control scheme without giving us, at least, the rejected Armored Core sound-effects? That would have been better than the shotty control scheme that Hitmaker has supplied us. If one looks past this horrid control scheme, chooses the other, and forgets that the latter even existed, the game play is as close to Virtual On as one can get. The new addition to combat includes multiple mecha in combat. Now, up to five mecha can smash one another to bits on screen. The verses mode allows four entries to be made, allowing team play or one-on-one. The story mode, which they titled Dramatic Mode (there is nothing ''dramatic'' about that spasm inducing hellhole), includes a few partners which fight at your side, and many upon many enemies to battle, including small squads and waves. The mecha, Virturaroids, or Cyber Troopers, can be unlocked in this mode. However, the downside to the new mecha are that they are utterly pointless. The game gives you the basic ground unit for each class of mecha, but there is nothing really to gain from unlocking others, for they are all essentially the same unit. No unit caught me as powerful. It seemed as if I was playing a wasted game. Literally, a wasted game. It was as if the pilots were so drunk that they could do no damage to their opponent. Long range is made pointless, which basically muffle out half of the mecha as being useful. I could have sworn that I was slapping my opponent with a fish rather than a beam sword. These extra units are worthless, and unlocking these pathetic and trite excuses for trash is just as taxing as piloting them. It is ridiculously difficult to unlock these demon-spawn. It is more simple to beat out Tony Hawk in a half-pipe challenge than to unlock each mecha in this game- let alone finish the game! The game gives you items from time to time (discs) that act as repair items. But if you waste these gifts from heaven, you are bobed! Fighting the boss units are as painful as having barium injected anally. You will spend hours cursing at your television, and unlike S.O.C.O.M., which allows you to shout out commands, even obscenities, at your squad mates, yelling at your television will get you nowhere- Well, perhaps a few odd stares, if that.
Virtual On? It is, yes. Virtual On? It is not, no. Fans may be put off by its package, those new to the series may not see it as all that bad. Let me pull a random digit from my digitizer! Washaw! 8/10

Entertainment Value:
Truthfully, however, this game is not half bad. Then why the horrible review? Have you ever been on a roller-coaster? We all have. Why do it? Why is it fun to get into a rickety heap and be thrusted about on a narrow track that travels sideways and upside-down? Why does one torture them self by traveling at inhuman speeds only to become sick and probably vomit? Well, for the exact same reason one plays this game- it is fun. Despite the flaws, one must take the game as it is. The entertainment value of the game (especially multiplayer, if anything) is actually worth the buy. And besides, after having played Dramatic Mode, half of my brain had imbibed itself to give me the mentality of those drugged, cocaine-addict, producers who created this game. With only half a working brain, this game was truly fun. Well, then again, so was laughing at ham sandwiches... If one looks past the flaws, which are as obvious as being kicked in the scrotum by a German military officer, the game is actually quite a solid mecha title.
Das boot der nutzen! 8/10

Let us see those digits one last time, shall we?
Story: 4
Graphics: 8
Sound: 5
Game Play: 8
Entertainment Value: 8

All in all, Cyber Troopers Virtual On MARZ deserves a 7 out of 10.
Buy or Rent?
Buy: If you are an avid Virtual On fan, why not? The multiplayer was entertaining, yet, I shall say, it is rather depressing that this is truly part of the series. Those that have hardly played the series may ostracize the game due to it's uninventive graphics and controls. It is truly hard to say. If you think you can laugh at the same ham sandwich that I did, or have been kicked in the testicles by a German officer, you may just want to pick up this game.
Rent: However flawful and screwy this game is, it is actually worth the money to rent. I will admit, it is one of a kind.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/16/03