Customer Reviews

Guerrilla War

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this game you are an unnamed communist revolutionary fighting on an unnamed tropical island. At the beginning of the game, we are told that we are fighting against an oppressive King. Well, who knows if he really is oppressive? It's just a drop-in story; it neither adds nor takes away from the game.

With its mindless run and gun gameplay and unlimited continues, this game is a great break from those others that take actual, you know, "skill". The challenge comes from trying to best your last top score. If you want to do that, you're going to have to avoid dying--no small feat when you have dozens of bullets careening towards you from every direction!

Avoiding death is a bit easier to do with two players, and the two-player mode is where this game really shines; having a buddy to play with, you can coordinate your attacks. For instance, one player can rescue hostages, with the other covering his back. And there's no way to get a good score in the mineshaft level without a second player; there are hostages tied up on both sides of the wall. Reeling them in takes perfect timing even if one chooses to focus on only one side, but trying to rescue every one solo is an exercise in futility.

There is a large selection of weapons, all of which are useful and genuinely fun to use. Especially fun is the tank, which fires an enhanced version of whatever weapon you happen to have at the time. Unfortunately, the ride never seems to last long enough; once the tank starts beeping, you have to get out or get blown up along with it.

The controls are simple and natural, like most NES games of this kind. You move neither too fast nor too slow, and so it is easy to nudge your character into just the right position to get the perfect shot.

The graphics don't represent the best of the NES, and of course come nowhere near the visual quality of the arcade version; the large sprites of the original would be better represented by the SNES. But this port is visually competent, and there are little touches here and there that make it nice to look at. The sprites are usually clear, and, it isn't often that enemies are hard to see or difficult to distinguish. The weapons as represented by nice large letters, and you can always tell what you're picking up.

The audio is outstanding. The explosions are satisfying, and the lack of vocal sampling is actually an improvement over the arcade version; the grunts and screams were a source of frequent annoyance in the original. The music is so good, I almost wish the composer had saved it for a more serious title than this. Regardless, the chiptunes are catchy, and match the action very well.

I take away a few points for the odd feeling I get from playing a revolutionary, and for the (very) occasional difficulty caused by sprite flicker. But all in all, this is a great game. I highly recommend it!

This was one of my favorite games as a kid. I never owned it, but rented it from Blockbuster dozens of times. You can't permanently die in this game, so beating it isn't a challenge. However when you lose your allotted number of lives you lose a few thousand points, so reaching a new high score is the only real challenge. That aside, this game has an amazingly efficient control scheme, a vast array of weaponry on par with or superior to Contra, and great music which helps create an amazing NES era atmosphere that many similar games are sorely missing. If you're a fan of NES games that stand up to the test of time, pick this one up.

For the NES 8 bit system this is a really fun game to play. Two players side by side, unlimited continues, play on.