Sabre Wulf

"A 'Wulf in cheap clothing"

When you think of gaming heroes, who do you envisage? Mario with his Plunger of Justice? Lara Croft with her twin guns and twin jubblies? Some token RPG guy with big hair and a big sword? It's a fair bet that you probably don't think of some wrinkled old geezer, with a stiff-upper-lip British accent, a veritable forest of whispy white facial fuzz and a love of khaki. But way back in the days of Sinclair's Spectrum, such a hero existed. He was Sabreman, he was an intrepid explorer, and he was awesome. Back when uber-developers Rare still went by the name Ultimate, they pitted our wannabe Livingstone against the sinister Sabrewulf, in the Speccy game of the same name. And now Rare have decided to bring Sabreman out of retirement, in order to once again do battle with his lupine nemesis. This time the battleground is Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, and the stakes are higher than ever. But in today's world of flashy graphics, epic storylines and complex game engines, is there still a place for an old boy with a daft hat, or are Sabreman and his adventures now as antiquated as the artefacts he dearly loves to hunt down....?

When Sabreman last defeated the Sabrewulf (who is, as you'd probably expect, a sabre-toothed wolf), he used an ancient amulet to seal the furry fiend within a statue. All seemed well, and as the years rolled by, Sabreman fell into retirement, choosing - in true 'crazy old man' style - to live in a tent outside Blackwyche Village, the home of the 'Wulf's stony tomb. But as in all tales of this type, the new peace doesn't last long. The sinister-yet-specatularly-named Dr. Doolittle-Goode arrives in Blackwyche and shatters the amulet, freeing the 'Wulf from it's imprisonment. Now this terrible twosome are beginning a new reign of terror across the land, and it's up to our aged adventurer to once again save the world from the clutches (or claws) of evil. But is our boy now too old for such a task....?

What is surprising for a game that is essentially as much a top down adventure game as it is a side-scrolling platformer is that the plot isn't really very deep at all. When you see touches of top-down thrown into the mix, along with all the talking to locals, side-quests, shopping and such that this tends to bring, you expect something a little more than just travelling the land to vanquish the bad guys. Sadly, though, that's all that Sabre Wulf really amounts to. Despite the fact that initially much is made of the fact that Sabreman - who let us not forget is now essentially living like a scuzzy tramp in the woods - is now really too old for this sort of thing (he doesn't even carry his eponymous sabre any more), nothing ever really comes of this in the game (despite the fact that Blackwyche and it's surrounding locales seem packed with muscle-packed, chisel-jawed young men who would surely be more capable of saving the day), which smacks of a missed opportunity for some comedy in the plot. In addition, the minor characters are all intensely soulless and dull - there's nothing engaging on offer at all, which is a shame as, initially at least, the gameplay is relatively engaging.

The main thrust of the game lies in the side-scrolling sections. As you explore the eight interlocking locales of the Blackwyche region (which tend to stick to the tried and tested videogame staples of snowy mountains, dank mines and dense jungles) in all their top-down isometric glory, various portals open up, all of which lead to side-on platformery showdowns with the 'Wulf. In each, the 'Wulf has stolen some random ancient artefact, and it's up to you to reach this treasure at the far end of the level, negotiating the various hazards on the way. The twist comes in the way you do so. Rather than defeating the obstacles and enemies in a traditional platform way by, say, squishing them, Sabre Wulf asks you to call on the various different monsters that you can collect on your journey. Initially this adds a very fresh twist to proceedings - it's fun at first to launch marauding behemoths at your foes to smack them off your screen, or to use sleeping dragons as platforms to reach higher areas, and experimenting with your expanding monstrous menagerie is great fun for a while - but it soon becomes apparent that many of the monsters you gather are fairly useless - there are several different types that take out your enemies, and two different types that can act as platforms, for example, so before too long you'll just be relying on the same few creatures over and over again, which becomes very stale after the first couple of worlds. To make matters worse, as the game progresses, Rare choose to make the game more difficult not by making the level design more complex and intricate, but by simply throwing more bad guys into the mix, which smacks of lazy design.

That's not to say that these sections are bad - indeed, the more puzzle-oriented flavour that the different monsters bring to the table (you only have a limited number, so you need to pick your moments wisely) can be quite enjoyable, but after seeing the same old tricks used over and over again (the number of puzzles revolving around using a Lemmings-style Blocker to get in the way of a strong wind, for example, is larger than is statistically-probable), it becomes hard not to get at least a little bored. Fair play to Rare for trying something a little different, but it just doesn't work well enough to sustain Sabre Wulf for the duration of it's six-or-seven-hour playtime.

The platform sections become far more entertaining once you reach the 'Wulf, though, and recover the artefact (which will either be gold, silver or bronze depending on how quickly you managed to reach it - one of the few features that offers the game some replayability). At this point, all the enemies and obstacles in the stage vanish, and you are faced with a mad dash back to the start of the level with the 'Wulf in hot pursuit. These moments offer far more of an adrenaline rush, and the sense of panic as the 'Wulf is constantly on your tail (no pun intended) is palpable. It's a welcome change to see the game asking you to rely on your pixel-perfect platform-navigating skills, and on your quick reflexes, rather than on you ability to throw various monsters around. It's only a pity that these sections are, by definition, very quick-paced, and over very swiftly, as Sabre Wulf would no doubt be far more exciting should more of the game follow this formula. And when the quick nature of these sections is coupled by the fact that later levels - though taking longer due to the increase in the number of enemies and obstacles - are still very short, it can almost seem slightly anti-climatic - spending several minutes navigating a stage simply to run back to the start in about twenty seconds seems a little underwhelming, whereas had the levels become significantly longer, then a chase lasting several minutes could have been called for, which would have ramped the tension right up.

The only other time the platform sections deviate from the somewhat stale formula is in the final stage in each environment, at which point you must recover a section of the amulet from Doolittle-Goode's lab. Again, these sections do away with all the monster-utilising nonsense, instead calling once more on your sheer skill, and again it's telling just how much more fun this makes the game. In these levels, you must head constantly upwards through the lab, hurried on by a rising water level of some type of poisonous goo (as all mad scientists should have in their sinister lairs, don'tcha know?). So far, so simple, but for some inexplicable reason you also need to hit several red buttons along the way - initially these are in some fairly obvious places, but as the game progresses, they become trickier to reach. Throw in some electric fences and other such obstacles, and suddenly you have quite a tough challenge, where every second counts, and a single wrong move could prove fatal. As with the 'Wulf chases it's the tension and difficulty that makes these sections stand out above the rest of the game, and its hard not to wonder how much better Sabre Wulf could have been had this frantic philosophy been applied all the way through instead of giving such a large portion of the gameplay over to the slower-paced puzzle-platform monster mumbo-jumbo.

Holding all these platform sections together are the top-down moments. It is here that you really get to explore the Blackwyche region, and interact with the friendlier locals. However, don't expect too much depth here, as aside from the occasional puzzle that needs completing to allow you to move on (usually regarding unlocking locked doors, or something equally uninspiring), it only really serves to give you handful of side-quests or mini-games to keep you occupied and give the illusion that Sabre Wulf is more of an epic experience than it really is. Some are genuinely amusing, such as entering a surprisingly tricky drinking contest with the local champion (and in an all-too-brief glimpse of the humour that Rare is famed for, you are called on to drink tea, not alcohol), while others are pretty much pointless, such as a quest set to you by a local photographer to take pictures of the best vistas in the land - here, unforgivable, you don't choose where to take the photographs, you don't even get to aim the camera - you are just informed when you pass a picturesque area that a photo has been taken. It's hard to see where anyone can find any sort of interest in such a meaningless quest.

This game also furthers Rare's bizarre love affair with Donkey Kong Country-style pre-rendered graphics, with the wannabe-3D sprites that this entails. On a TV screen this works reasonably well, but on the GBA's tiny screen it frankly makes things look like a bit of a mess, with characters often appearing very blurred and ill-defined. The environments and backgrounds actually come across very well in the side-on moments, from the colourful and incredibly detailed dense foliage of the jungles, to the constantly moving machinery in the rather oppressive-looking coal refineries, to some lavish cobbled streets and Victorian-era buildings in the towns - it's a wonderfully evocative game world to play in, even if the top-down sections look a little spars and uninspiring (aside from a few small humorous touches, such as seeing Sabreman's underpants on the line outside is tent). The problem really comes in the look of the characters. Although Sabreman is okay, and the 'Wulf is adequate enough, some of the enemies look a right mess - it's hard to tell what some of the wee bastards are supposed to be, so messy are the pre-rendered sprites. Rare's continued insistence on going for the pre-rendered look is baffling, as - lovely as Sabre Wulf's backgrounds are at times, it's clear that the sprites would look so much better in proper 2D, with the cleaner look that no doubt accompanies it.

The sound, too, is a little underwhelming. While the music is adequate, and suits the various locales well enough, it never really rises above being functional, with nothing particularly exciting that will stick in your mind when your GBA has been turned off. That said, when the chase with the 'Wulf begins in each stage, the switch to a somewhat tribal beat as you are chased does a good job of ramping the tension right up. The sound-effects, too, are similarly mixed. While the strange and almost disturbingly guttural sound that the non-playable characters make when they are speaking is reminiscent of the teacher from Charlie Brown, Sabreman's voice is actually very well done - in his best 'Crazed Old British Major' voice, Sabreman spews forth as many cliches as you can think of during the course of the game (there's 'top notch', 'spiffing', 'leg it!', and even 'splendiferous', though I have my doubts as to whether that's a real word...). Stereotypical it may be, but it raises a smile. Rare's greatest aural accomplishment is without a doubt the 'Wulf, though - from a chilling and echoing howl, to a genuinely fierce sounding snarl, it's the sounds that the 'Wulf makes that actually makes him seem like a credible menace, and that's to the credit of Rare's sound goons.

Ultimately, it's hard to see who Sabre Wulf is designed to appeal to. Bringing back such a long-gone franchise suggests that Rare are reaching out to the crowd who played the original game back in the day - and the use of some punishing 'one-hit-and-your-dead' mechanics that were the norm back then would tend to support this - but the general style of play has changed so much that aside from the two main characters there's nothing really to link this to the Speccy classic. The top down sections are too shallow for the adventure crowd. The platform moments are too hampered by the puzzle moments to appeal to the Mario fans, while the puzzles are too lightweight and repetitive to garner the interest of the more cerebral gamers. Sabre Wulf is not a bad game - often uninspiring, frequently a little dull, but never really awful in any way - in fact when it casts aside all attempts to do something different with the collectable monsters and just focuses on the hardcore platform moments, it occasionally becomes very good - it just doesn't stand out in any way whatsoever. The original Sabre Wulf game on the Spectrum is still held in reverence by many who played it, even today, but the GBA follow-up is destined for bargain bins everywhere. It's hard to believe that this comes from the same people who delivered GoldenEye, Conker and the like not so many years ago. It's worth a pop if you can find it at a low price, and can cast aside all memories of the original, but sadly, this 'Wulf has really lost it's bite.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/05/06