Hagane

"A moderately good platformer - with some other elements"

Hagane - a platformer concerning a ninja whacking up everything in his path to fulfill a ''mission''. This game seems to be unknown - but it's pretty good, actually. Even if you don't understand Japanese, that language barrier doesn't get in the way at all.

You start off with several weapons that you can select and use at certain points of time, when you can't whack an enemy, or you're in close range, etc. Your various weapons will certainly help.

This game is full of Japanese elements (it should be, that's good to see) - names for weapons, intro, the funny character formed when you do your ninja art, etc. But it's pretty much like the ordinary platformer - advance through a fixed route, bashing up enemies with a sword here and a dart there.

On to the review.

Graphics (9/10) - Excellent work here. The ninja you play as looks detailed and dark and brimming with power. Enemies are good too, and everything is pretty much animated well. The bright explosions, the slashes, the pure action of cutting down enemies with several swings of your ninjatsu (ninja sword). Also mentionable - the wide variety of enemies. Brilliant!

Sound and Music (9/10) - The sounds of explosions, the slash of the ninjatsu are all great to hear. Also the sound when the ninja art is released. Hudson did a great job on these. The music fits the stages, but gets a bit tiresome to hear. Not that it's super repetitive (it is, in a way) but the songs are hardly significant in the game.

Gameplay (7/10) - Just the common platformer - okay, you have changeable weapons, SO WHAT??? You keep them all through the game! And I think the game was too hard - they give you three cells of life, and they expect you to make it through a grueling process of enemies thown at you by the bucketload. You can increase the number of cells of life to a maximum of five, but that doesn't help much.

What I did like about the gameplay was your ability to mete out different moves which are more damaging (I won't tell you how to use them, though, MUHAHAHA). The moves were pretty much awesome, but given the process, far too hard to pull off efficiently to destroy the wanted number of enemies. But this element still did provide a learning curve for Hagane.

Story (7/10) - Average really. A ninja cyborg is activated and goes to destroy the threat that appeared out of the sky from nowhere and destroyed an entire village, and who knows, MAY BE PLANNING TO DESTROY THE WORLD! Again, this stroy is pretty much average, but at least, the ending of the game is good.

Replayability - NIL. After you beat the game, you shelve it. If you're so hardcore, you might learn the moves, but that's it.

Buy or Rent? - Rent. It won't last you a lifetime of gameplay, unelss you're fond of seeing shelved games so much.

Overall, this game is appealing...wondrous...colourful...for the first time you play it anyway. This won't last, and you'll probably end up throwing the cartridge at the wall while trying to finish a stage - but this is a good game if you want a short-term challenge.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/03/01, Updated 09/03/01