True Lies

"I love it."

Harry Tasker is an operative for The United States' last line of defense, Omega Sector. They are tasked with secretly protecting the country from all threats great and small. One of the newer threats that has recently surfaced is the Crimson Jihad, a radical terrorist group bent on the destruction of the United States. As Harry Tasker you must foil the Crimson Jihad's plans and bring it's members to justice, or the country will face total devestation.

True Lies is a top down action game based on the James Cameron film of the same name. Like the film, it consists of a lot of gunplay, explosions, blood/gore and all other things masculine. It features 9 levels each with multiple substages that are brimming with bad guys waiting to be reduced to bloody stumps.

Visuals 10/10

I really cannot think of a single negative in this department, True Lies simply refuses to dissatify the player with regards to it's visual style. It features some of the best 2D graphics to ever grace a 16 bit console. The levels are enormous, some of the largest I've ever seen, and are all beautifully detailed. Every sort of environment you've ever dreamed of blasting through is available here, a mansion, a mall, a park, a refinery, a subway, and many more. It's a truly stunning experience with regards to variety.

Harry himself, as well as his future victims are also rendered with great detail. Everything moves across the screen very smoothly never choking up one bit. Riddling said victims with an innumerable amount of bullets also looks terrific. With such a variety of weapons at your disposal, you'll never get bored of destroying all who stand in your way. The blood and gore, though piddling by today's standards, is pretty shocking for something on a Nintendo system considering they were very conservative about violence back in the day ("Sweat" in Mortal Kombat anyone?). Each terrorist you gun down drops to the floor in a heap of splattered blood and ruined flesh. Not only do the bad guys involuntarily expire in such a satisfying manner, the innocents do in an equally entertaining fashion. Actually let me rephrase, they die in a more entertaining fashion, although killing 3 of them during a level will end your mission sadly.

It is truly difficult to not take so much enjoyment in the amount of punishment you can dish out when it looks this great. The explosions knocking people 10 feet through the air, singeing people into a charred black mess with the flamethrower, I can go on and on about the multiple ways to dismember your prey, but I'm sure my fanaticism on the subject is disturbing you at this point so allow me to move on.

In between the action are scans from the movie which help to advance the plot. They look particularly nice, albeit pixelated. I normally make a habit of skipping through them since they're really not why I play the game, so I'm not bumping anything off for this. Besides if you're really upset over the average quality of the screens, while the rest of the game is such a visual treat, something is definetly wrong with you.

It brings tears to my eyes, me being a serious audiophile, when a game company comes along and mixes some incredible sound effects, and weaves them into a game so flawlessly. A killer soundtrack is a great thing to have, but in an action game such as True Lies, sound effects are what really tap into the mind of the player. The gun shots, the explosions, the screams of the dying, god what a treat for the ears. Blasting someone away with a shotgun doesn't just look great, but it sounds great too. The feeling you get is just incomprehensible, you really have to give this game a go to understand the joy.

Sound 9/10

The soundtrack is pretty addicting to the ears. To this day I occasionally find myself humming the songs, the park and chateau levels usually. I really don't understand what makes them so great, seeing as they appear to be 30 seconds of music being looped endlessly per level, but I frankly don't care. Try convincing my ears of that.

Even the system messages work with the game well, as sparingly as they are used. The only thing I really could knock a point off for in this department was as I stated earlier, the looping music, which is great in it's own right, but slightly repetitive.

Gameplay 9/10

Good God I really don't even know where to begin. I've already inadvertently revealed most of the gameplay elements in the previous sections, so all I can do is restate the obvious. This is one damn fine game. The action is so barbaric and typical of something involving Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's impossible not to whoop in sheer joy out of the excitement you get from dispensing Harry's form of justice.

The game is split up into 9 stages, each with subareas. They make for very long missions. Sometimes a little too long, which is why it didn't score a perfect 10. Most of the missions are paced very well, but a handful, like the subway, are excruciatingly long and puzzling affairs, sometimes having you wander around aimlessly trying to find a doorway you missed. It can quickly kill the mood of the game, when you're craving some serious action.

There's quite an array of weapons, a pistol, a submachine gun, a shotgun, a flamethrower, grenades, and mines, and while it's possible and unfortunate that you run out of ammo, you will default to the pistol, which Harry carries an inexhaustible amount of ammo for. Strangely, in a western movie fashion, aside from the pistol, Harry never needs to stop to reload, he can load 999 bullets into his SMG and fire them continuously until he's completely out of bullets. An odd quirk, but it works for the better in my opinion.

Controlling Harry is another joy this game provides. Pointing and shooting can be a bit difficult at first, I imagine the first attempt will end with you gunning down hapless civilians, but after some practice you'll be kicking terrorist ass left and right. The maneuvers you can perform are pretty basic. You can somersault forward, which is a great tactic for dodging bullets, and also for getting right into the face of an enemy and blasting away. That's pretty much it for maneuvers unfortunetly. Can't really ask for much from an SNES game.

This game is quite a sizeable experience, with 9 missions, including a token Harrier mission. It follows the plot of the movie very loosely, so no Bill Paxton or Jamie Lee Curtiss, not a very big loss anyway. It'll definetly take someone several hours to get through the whole game. It has no native save support, just the infamous password feature to pick up your game at a later time. This is one game where the action takes a fairly long time to get old, I don't know what about it makes it this way, but it's magical. This is truly a masterpiece, and one of the rare few movie licensed games that are worth a damn. You must play this, now.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/03/05