The Untouchables

"He Sends One of Your Men to the Hospital, You Send One of His to the Morgue"

Introduction

The Untouchables are quite a household term especially if you are familiar with old films with Humphrey Bogart or are big into the organized crime mobs in the Prohibition era. While The Untouchables for the Super Nintendo has little to do with the historical aspects of the game you still get a great shooter that takes in a wide variety of the shoot 'em up genre of gaming. This is no video game version of any movie made about The Untouchables and most definitely not a complementary historical game.


Story

The story is very obvious to anyone familiar with Al Capone and his antics in Chicago during the Prohibition era. The game expects you to know something about what is going on before hand because all it is really concerned about is the action (as are most action games during this age). You do get to pick an assignment to tackle instead of trying to play through in some kind of chronological order. The assignments will allow you to unlock a final shootout with Capone himself. Unfortunately the historical accuracy of this quite irrelevant, so all you really have in this game is the concept. Even the character/s you play as do not have any background, much less a name. However you do get some newspaper articles at the end of the mission you play. Depending on your success or failure will determine the headline and unfortunately as well you won't be able to read much else except for the headline.

Game Play

The Untouchables takes you on a splendid tour of the many different ways shooters have run and it firmly plants itself as a third person shooter in two assignments while giving you two more assignments in the classic 2-D run, jump, and gun platformer as well as the overhead view in a rescue assignment. The third person aspect plays out a lot like Rampart. If you are not familiar with this classic Nintendo game, you hide behind barriers that disintegrate the more the enemies shoot at you. All the while you have to take out enemies and the barriers that they hide behind as well. The game play intends to remain true to the old school ways of shooters and so if you like a particular style of the shoot 'em up genre you will at least find a little something of everything in this game. The game is difficult though. While the "Rampart" parts to this game are not as bad you are under a strict time limit in each assignment which will make you lose your better judgment when confronting an onslaught of gangsters.

Sound/Graphics

The graphics for the game are at par for what the graphics should be for a Super Nintendo game. The backgrounds feature more enemies to pop out at you, but the game does lack color. Maybe it is the dismal time period you are set in, but there is plenty of dark and grey and of course no detail in the newspapers to further expand on a story line or your success. The sound is also very minimal. The music is not memorable and is very subtle while your sound effects do not have much in the way of impressing you.

Replay Value

The Untouchables is relatively short once you figure out how to deal with the time limits and are able to complete assignments in a relative short time. Each level has a certain stage to it so they are long enough. There is no multiplayer aspect to this game which would have been nice. The replay value is fair since you get to decide which assignment to play first and it is just like opening a bag of variety candy.

Final Recommendation 7/10

The Untouchables lacks in story and better detail technically, but it does feature your classic shoot 'em up game play which makes it very much worth the time to enjoy. Unless you are looking for a game to replace your lost Rampart game then this is probably not going to be a buy for you, but it is a good game that is based in a wide variety of game play. Some may argue that the concept is way overdone and I would probably agree, but after watching the Costner/Devito/Connery version of The Untouchables, you may be inclined to want to play this game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/09/08

Game Release: The Untouchables (US, August 1994)