BlaZeon: The Bio-Cyborg Challenge

"If you beat this game on console, you cheated and have eternal patience"

Yep, it's BlaZeon. It's more than your typical side-scrolling space shooter. I have little doubt that it started its life as an arcade game, and was what I like to call a “Black Hole Console.” I term it that way because it would suck your quarters in with no escape, provided you had the patience to keep playing after dying 200 times. Then again, that's not much different from other plane/space shooters. Fortunately for this one, it offers a little something more that makes it better than the rest.

Story

As per usual for most games of its time and type, the story doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere in the game, not even in an opening-screen cinematic. Of course, the Internet is quite useful for deciphering the reason why you're blowing everything to kingdom come. According to rottontomatoes.com, Earth's turned into a galactic dictatorship, and uses things called Bio-Cyborgs to keep others in check. Obviously, the best way to stop this is to send a single renegade and watch him get repeatedly annihilated by the opponents, only to return again and again until he's crushed everyone in sight. So much for the resistance movement.

Gameplay

This is where it gets slightly different. You, of course, are in a tiny space scooter with a pitiful cannon, which still has enough firepower to take out your standard enemy drone, but will fall apart when touched by so much as space dust (probably resistance budget cutbacks). However, you also have a little freeze blaster, which also has unlimited shots. For most enemies, this blaster will simply do slightly more damage than the regular shot (not recommended for this because it's also much slower), but there are certain enemies (Probably the so-called Bio-Cyborgs mentioned in the story) that will turn blue when you hit them a couple times with this. If you fly into them when they're in this state, you can take on the form of the enemy you froze! Naturally, you'll want to do this whenever you're in scooter mode, because the bigger ships can take a couple hits, and some also have a special weapon that can be used to destroy ships and block enemy fire at the same time. This is what makes the game different from others of the genre, and that's a big plus.

Music, Sound, and Graphics

The music is passable. It's nothing that's really going to draw your attention, but it does reflect the mood well, and it's not annoying, either. The sound is much the same as the music. It doesn't get in the way, but it's not particularly advanced for its time, nor does it lag behind the rest. Graphics-wise, it's actually quite good for a 1992 release. There's quite a bit of variation, and it has the appearance of having a lot of time spent on the visuals.

Difficulty

BlaZeon has many features which are designed to make the game easier than your average space shooter. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop the game from being ridiculously difficult. Even on Easy difficulty, don't plan on getting through the first level on your first 80 tries. Even if you somehow made it through the swarms of drones, the mid-level bosses are infuriatingly hard to beat, and the end-of-level bosses are almost impossible. If this was an arcade console, you could probably enter quarters to continue (thereby assuring the success of the arcade in question), but the console game pooh-poohed this concept and gave you a limit of three continues. Whoopee. These games are the reason Game Genie and Game Shark were made.

Replay Value

What replay? It's hard enough beating the game once. I suppose those with a real passion for this kind of game would be apt to play it over, but most others would be satisfied with beating it once.

Conclusion

I'm not a huge fan of the space shooter genre. However, BlaZeon did well to win my attention. Even though it's still quite hard, the extra features put in do make it easier than others of its kind, and that makes the game more fun to play. If you're the kind who doesn't have any patience, I don't recommend you try this game, but if that's not an issue, it wouldn't hurt to give it a shot.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/05/05