YO! JOE! - July 1993
| No veteran game lover will need telling that Hudson Soft are one of the
most consistently excellent development houses in the business, but they're not a name
that leaps immediately to mind in conjunction with the Amiga scene. Things are starting to
change, though, with the release first of Amiga versions of Bomber Man (as Dyna Blaster)
and Bonk's Adventure (as BC Kid) last year, and now this original platform game. ThereÕs
nothing especially new or clever about Yo! Joe! - it's half-a-dozen levels of pretty
standard jump-around-and-hack-up- baddies fare, but the quality of execution is just
breathtaking. From the dazzlingly bright graphics to the fiendishly-designed maps (there
are lots of different routes to the end to be found all the way through the game) to the
clever use of power-ups (you actually have to think about things and use different items
at different times, instead of the usual pick-everything-up-regardless-and-let-the-
game-do-all-the-hard-work-for-you routine), it's all done absolutely superbly, in a way
that makes you want to play the game again and again just to see what you can discover
this time round. Maybe that's just as well, though - while Yo! Joe! isn't a real Sonic 2, it's still not the hardest game you'll ever play, and with that in mind the infinite continues it allows you start to look like slightly less of a good idea. It's a common enough problem with games these days, but that doesn't excuse it - there really ought to be some difficulty levels or something to compensate, but the best idea would have been to simply limit the number of continues available in the first place. Personally, when I fork out hard-earned cash on a game, I don't WANT to finish it the same day, and I don't think many people do. Don't let any of this put you off, though - Yo! Joe! is still one of the Amiga's top three platform games, and on a system with as many platformers in existence for it as the Amiga does, that's no small boast. Infinite continues aside, one of the games of the year. |
|
