Hercules

"Who needs super strength when you can have a blade the size of a toothpick?"

What would you do if you had super strength? Let me answer that for you. You'd probably go around the world, beating up every criminal to walk the earth; protect every grandma who's too helpless to reach for the can of pepper spray in her purse; save the cats who don't want to come out of the local trees; heck, you may say that you'll even do those little school workshops to teach kids good morals.

You know, you're a bad liar.

You know full well you'd probably go out and conquer the world. Most likely take over the local town and force the mayor to kiss your dirty feet. If anyone were to disobey your rule, you'd crush them with your hulking muscles. Thankfully, you don't have super strength, and to tell you the truth, I think the world is a much better place because of it. You may not agree, but you know, that's coming from you.

Needless to say, according to Greek mythology, there once was a man named Hercules. He was the son of Zeus, the pagan Greek god who was said to be the head of the gods. Due to some bad strokes of luck, however, Hercules himself isn't a god. He's a demi-god. Don't think he's some weak human, however. No, Hercules has something that sets him apart from the local donkey farmer. He has super strength. Said to possess the power of ten men, Hercules stands for all that's right in the world, what some would call a true hero. After much deliberation and a ton of bickering, THQ finally decided on an elaborate name for the game. Hercules. I'm still marveling at the amazingly complicated name they chose. You should be too.

On its surface, Hercules is just what about 500 other games in the plat-forming genre are – simple hack and slash titles that have your hero jumping across a myriad of traps while beating up the occasion enemy. On the inside, you don't find much more than that. Throughout the game, you'll be guiding Hercules as he beats up a load of generically movie inspired foes. Forget about super strength, and friendly hero just clobbers things with something that looks like a black stick protruding from his hands. Got to love the technology of the Game Boy, right?

Unfortunately for our muscle bound hero, I don't. Were it not for the fact that there are so many other plat-formers on this portable system that outclass Hercules in everything that it does, this game might have been something worth picking up. The hard truth remains, though, you won't get anything out of this game that you haven't played somewhere else many times before. The levels in which you plod through are all bland, look like something out of a blender, and fail to give you any sort of mythological feel whatsoever. Repetition absolutely murders this thing as well, because more often than not you're going to feel like you're going through the same stage with a different background of horrific quality.

Combat is no better. Remember that little stick that I talked about sticking out of Hercules' hands? It has the range of a toothpick. Enemies seem to always be far out of your range, and when you do hit them, it turns out to be nothing more then a “hack and hope they don't hit back” experience that gets boring after the first five minutes of play time. The enemy variety doesn't help it either, turning out to be nothing more then a generic variety of clods of dirty looking pixels.

Although the game is clunky and almost unplayable, it does have its redeeming points. For one, it's incredibly difficult. Some of the jumps in this game are utterly unfair, and to make matters worse, there are often times enemies waiting on the other side ready to take off your minute health bar when you land. One small mistake and it's off to the junk yard for you.

Combine this with a horrendously done track of music (I'll put it bluntly to save a paragraph, it's a hideous excuse for game music, much less that of what they did. It tries to pull off an ancient feeling, but it's just too blurred to make much sense out of), and this game really was a waste of your time. Level repetition is repulsive, and combat is a sore excuse for anything passable. It does have a few small light points, such as semi-difficulty, but to tell you the truth, I'd save yourself the agony of having to go through this game and just buy something else. With so many other titles on the market that trump this thing, that may not be that hard.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 08/08/07, Updated 12/22/09

Game Release: Hercules (US, July 1997)