Wild 9

"Not wild enough to live up to its hype..."

Ah, Wild 9…sigh. This is a perfect example of a game that could have been an all-time great, but in the end, when all was said and done, it wound up being decidedly average. This game was delayed for seemingly EONS. It was coming out at the end of the year. Then the beginning of the next. Then the middle. Then the end. Then the beginning of the next. Then…Heck, by the time it came out, just about everybody ho had been looking forward to it had completely lost interest, so when it did hit the store shelves, it was all but ignored. Showing up “fashionably late” is fine if the game has the stuff to back up the reasons for its delay. But, well, Wild 9 was just another game swimming in an endless sea of Playstation games by its release, and it didn’t have much of a chance unless it was as stellar as it was supposed to be. It wasn’t.

In the beginning of its odd little lifespan, Shiny promised us this in an early Wild 9 advertisement (taken verbatim from page 19 of GameFan Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 11):

“60,000 frames of animation later our artists were getting a little ticked off. After all, EWJ* only had 3,000 frames and back then, we thought that was a lot. Can we pull off the most animated game ever? Time will tell… -- The Shiny Team”

*{EarthWorm Jim, just in case you’re not familiar with Shiny’s past, but I doubt you are, since you’re a hardcore gamer, aren’t you? ^_^}

60,000 frames, huh? Really. Well, if those artists were “ticked off” about having to produce 60,00 frames of hand-drawn character animation, I’d like to have been there to see the looks on the artist’s faces when they were informed that their 60,000 frames were being scrapped in favor of polygons…ugh. Well, I won’t go into a “2D vs. 3D Exploding Ring Barbed-Wire Deathmatch” rant this time around, and I can already hear the sighs of relief. But I myself would have lived to see those 60,000 frames.

Wild 9 is a 2.5D action platformer along the lines of Shiny’s defining titles, EarthWorm Jim 1 and its sequel, EWJ2. Only this time, the series of worlds you stomp across, and their whacked-out inhabitants, are comprised of polygons galore instead of being hand-drawn like past Shiny Team titles like Jim’s games, Disney’s Aladdin (released by Sega on the Genesis), as well as Cool Spot (on both Genesis and Super NES). You are Wex Major, weilder of The Rig…an awesomely powerful weapon/gadget he wears on his wrist. This adventure will be taking place in the Andromeda Galaxy, the home turf of a bad, ugly, freaky, stank pig named Karn. He’s not a nice fella. Wex is the leader of a pack of misfit goody-goodies called, what else, the Wild 9. Actually there are ten team members, but I guess they don’t count B’Angus (with a silent ‘B’), a little dog-guy-thingy who lives inside Wex’s handy-dandy weapon, The Rig. The Rig is indestructible, which is why B’Angus is hiding in it; he’s a weenie chicken-wuss. Anyhow, The Wild 9/10 (along with Wex and B’Angus are comprised of Mac Sheen, Volstagg, Boomer McTwist, Pokkit, Crystal, Henry the Aquatic Biped, Pilfer, and Nitro the Living Bomb) were attacked by Karn’s forces and kidnapped, leaving only Wex and B’Angus stranded on a peaceful little planet by the name of Bombopolis. Let’s just say the entire planet is a bad neighborhood…

Wex must use The Rig’s energy beam to defeat the enemies in his path, swing across gaps, move heavy objects, rescue and sometimes carry his teammates with, and, well, he can use it to torture his enemies, too. The Rig’s a pretty handy little wrist accessory. When you shoot the beam at an enemy, they’ll start screaming and become trapped in its grasp. You now have a few options: you can slam them back and forth four times to destroy them (which will usually release energy units you’ve got to collect to keep The Rig’s power up). You can also choose to carry an enemy with you, and you’ll need to do this often to get by traps such as grinders, spike pits, poison water, and other fun little death-inducing playground equipment Wex doesn’t really want to come onto close contact with. Carrying your allies will also come into play when you find them in certain levels, and you must get them safely to an emergency teleporter to rescue them. Carrying can be trouble sometimes…Often I found myself slamming an enemy to death when I just wanted to turn around, and sometimes Wex just plain wouldn’t walk forward when I had one in my grip. Agh! Nothing sucks worse than having to backtrack a long way just to get another enemy so you can advance, but luckily, every place where you *must* proceed by using an enemy has a generator that continually pumps them out for you. Another problem is how The Rig sometimes arcs a carried enemy/friend through a hole in the floor and releases them when they touch the underside of the platform you’re on, like when you must carry Nitro through a series of jumps over a tower…Instead of just putting Nitro on the next platform ledge, it’ll screw up and make you backtrack to get him again on the previous set of ledges.

The Rig can catch special discs that hang in mid-air, and you can play Tarzan while swinging. Problem is, the physics of the swings are not exactly great…You perform a big, fast swing with The Rig fully extended, and because you cannot jump off he swing, you can wind up totally missing the swing attempt since it’s such a short distance you’re propelled. Not at all as accurate as Simon’s whip-swing in Super Castlevania IV, nor as handy as EarthWorm Jim’s worm-hook swinging, or his Snott-swing from Jim 2. It’ll take a little while to get used to the swing’s busted physics, but it really shouldn’t have to be gotten used to in the first place! Ngh…I still have nightmares about a few swings in particular…

Wex can also push certain items, like keys and power supply boxes, but you don’t need to push most of the time since he can just lift those items with The Rig and carry them much more easily. Jumping, as well as gripping ledges then pulling yourself up, are easy as pie. On top of The Rig, Wex can also use missiles and grenades if he runs across them. Unfortunately, he can carry either missiles or grenades, not both at once, but you can trade them off when you find one or the other (i.e., if you need missiles to kill a little-green-guy generator on the ceiling which the grenades can’t reach easily, just grab the missile icon, and it’ll be replaced by the grenade icon. When you’re through using missiles, simply grab your grenades again and go). Missiles and grenades do little to nothing against the game’s bosses, though, so you’ll have to find different ways to dispose of them.

The game’s stages are also similar to the Jim games, in that they are not all platforming levels. You also have freefall stages, where you and an enemy streak down a long length of pipeline…You must grab your enemy and smash them into the walls to kill three of them before they kill you! You must also be on the lookout for heath powerups and pipes that are on the walls, not to mention the really deadly crossbeams that stretch from one side of the pipe to the other. You can adjust yourself so you’re falling over your enemy, then you can tuck into a ball, fall faster, then ride on their backs to use them as shields! Let THEM take the damage from smacking into a pipe instead of you! ^_^ The other style of levels are the jetbike/beast riding stages. You chase down an enemy through a field of obstacles (asteroids, trees, cactus, crystals), while shooting missiles at them (or in the beast ride stage, you chase down the enemy so the beast can chomp them). If you remember the speeder-bike sequence in Return of the Jedi, you’ll have a good idea how the bike scenes are; fast, dangerous, and full of white-knuckle near-misses as you bob and weave, trying to get missiles to blow the enemy up with. The beast ride stage is laughably easy compared to the bike stages.

So…It all sounds pretty good, right? Action-platforming in gorgeous worlds, fighting sometimes huge bosses, rescuing your Wild 9 teammates, biking, beast riding, freefall deathmatches, all by Shiny! Well, um unfortunately in the end, it’s just not that satisfying a game…This is a pretty short game; the action levels are mostly long, but I really hate the fact that the ultra-short bike rides, beast ride, and freefall stages are all counted as “actual levels” like the action-platforming stages; you ride the bike three times, the beast once, and freefall twice, so out of the total number of stages (plus the fact that the final stage is just a one-on-one fight against Karn with no level beforehand), this fact cuts down on the real amount of stages you’re playing through. I would have preferred these mini-game levels to be added on between stages, instead of counting as full stages themselves. This fact really makes me think that, after all the delays and hype, Wild 9 was in the end a rushed game. They figured they’d delayed it enough, had enough real levels to call an entire game, then threw in the repeated bonus stages as filler to make it seem longer than it is. D’oh. It’s really a shame, because the real stages all have a meaty feel to them, and are not cakewalks to complete.

I paid, ironically enough, nine dollars for a new copy of this game. If you can look past the length and its other shortcomings, that’s a heck of a deal. I’d never pay any more for it, though, and you’ll definitely finish it within the timespan of a rental. But if you like it enough after renting, you can safely purchase it at a bargain-bin price and be satisfied, since it’s a fun game to pick up and play when you feel like dangling an enemy over some poison or a meat grinder before dropping them in. ^_~ Also, fans of Tommy Tallarico take note; all the great music tracks are on the CD, not streamed, so you could also get yourself a $9 Tommy T. soundtrack as a bonus, too!

Graphics: At least the polygons they ditched the hand-drawn animation for are absolutely gorgeous. The action stages are all very well constructed, and the textures have the trademark Shiny look to them. Each stage is brimming with personality, too, as is this entire game. The characters, Wex and his enemies alike, all move beautifully, although Wex’s run cycle seems a little bit off to me. The explosive special effects are spectacular (though some of the effects, mostly The Rig’s energy stream coupled with fire effects when you’ve got an enemy, slow the game down occasionally). You have got to see this puppy in motion. The bosses are big and ugly too, if a little simplistic on occasion.

Sound: Tommy Tallarico never fails to impress me, and this is one hell of a soundtrack. The music is energetic, fast-paced, techno-riffic, and it kicks booty. It actually gets more play from me than the actual game does! Great stuff. The man is a genius, I tell you! Wex and the other members of the Wild 9, plus the enemies too, have a nice assortment of voices. Wex of course has the most quotes in this game, some of which are interesting and hilarious to say the least! “Wexcellent!” “I’m all…power-up!!” “That has GOT to hurt!” In the Anon freefall level, for example, while you and an enemy are skydiving through an enormous set of pipes, when Wex finishes off the first enemy, he triumphantly yells “Yo momma!” Finish the second, and it’s “Yo MOMMA’S momma!!” Kill the third, and he’ll bust out “Yo GRANDMOMMA’S MOMMA!!!”

Control: Well, outside of The Rig enemy/friend carrying and swinging troubles I detailed earlier, there’s not much here that’ll cause you trouble. However, one thing I can’t understand is the lever you must use here and there (Crystal’s level, for example)-sometimes Wex just will NOT grab them! ARGH! I stayed on Crystal’s level for over ten minutes once just to operate two levers due to this problem! Everything else is fine, though. People used to EWJ’s feel will slip right in with no troubles.

Funfactor: Yes and no…It can get frustrating, because sometimes things are just plain unclear or flat-out cheap. All I can offer is: when in doubt, Rig an enemy, then bash their brains into it, or in the case of the levers, keep on trying and trying until Wex finally wakes up and grabs the bloody thing. It is pretty fun torturing the enemies, prolonging their deaths until that magic moment their green guts splatter, and it’s a nice change of pace from most generic action games.

Replayability? Well, in the instruction booklet, it says there are secret areas a fully-powered Rig will open. So far, after once through the game, and a second time started (I’m at Drench right now) I’ve never found one area! If they’re Jim-style “paltry bonus item room” secrets, then who cares. Not me. Man, this game could’ve been incredible if they had just developed it much further and expanded it. I’d like more action levels to make up for the quickie bonus-style freefalls, rides, and final boss. Being able to play as the Wild 9 team members after you’ve saved them would’ve helped out, too, but I guess we can’t have everything. This would make a good comic book, actually, but unfortunately it only makes an average video game. GlucoseJoe

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/08/00, Updated 11/08/00