Crap Games #8

Shadow of the Beast (1989)
By: Reflections / Psygnosis Genre: Fighting Players: 1 Difficulty: Hard
Featured Version: Commodore Amiga
Also Available For: MegaDrive, Master System, PC Engine CD, FM Towns, Lynx, Atari ST, C64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum

If you could go back in time to the end of the 80's and took a stroll to your local computer retailer (and yes, those little independent shops did used to exist), there's a very good chance the window displays would include, amongst other things, an Amiga running Shadow of the Beast. Its release was very quickly followed by all and sundry heralding its wondrous audio/visual delights and, naturally enough, many shop keepers swiftly seized upon these qualities in an attempt to sell more Amigas. Who could blame them? It certainly made an impressive sight. Before too long, however, the game developed a reputation of being all style over substance. Some even called it a glorified tech-demo. Not that anything is wrong with tech-demos of course, they've been used to sell hardware since there has been hardware, but most of those aren't then put on sale as full games at about three times the price of a normal release...

Scary red dragon dropping... bombs, apparently!

Yes, very oof! Games at this kind of price (£30+) were beyond even the price of most console games at that time, never mind the home micros - that was supposed to be one of the advantages of owning one! A game at that price would need to be astonishingly good in all ways, and SOTB apparently was not, eventually earning as much scorn as praise from disgruntled gamers. It did at least have a nice, detailed back-story though. The instruction booklet actually warbles on for some pages but the abridged version is thus: Many years ago, on a moonless night, a small child was stolen away from its unsuspecting parents and given to the priests of the 'Beast Lord', Maletoth. Here, he was slowly transformed into a strange creature of incredible power, agility and strength, and his past memories were wiped. For many years he served as warrior messenger for the heinous Maletoth until one day he discovered the truth of his past and vowed bloody revenge.

This is about as complicated as the stages get...

This aspect of the game is superb. The graphics, music, presentation, even a detailed story, but upon starting the game you'll soon find that Aarbron's quest is a rather tough and incredibly simple one. It begins against a nice picturesque backdrop from where you can move either left or right. As soon as you start moving, terrifying enemy creatures begin appearing which should either be avoided or taken out. Aarbron doesn't have a particularly varied technique for doing this though - he can perform a punch while standing/running or a kick while jumping, and that's about it. He starts the game with just one life but twelve hit-points. Most enemies fall to a single strike but contact with any of them, or indeed any of the less-organic hazards, obviously knock these off one at a time, and once they're gone, so is Aarbron's chance for revenge.

One of the lovely pieces of artwork in the game...

His quest is spread over five main areas in total. The first one is the 'home' area you start on with its grassy plains and mountainous horizon and it's from here that the other areas are accessed. Left of your starting position is the forest and its maze-like stage inside an apparently huge tree, and right of your starting position is a daunting grey castle which leads directly on to an underground shmup section through which Aarbron flies with a cannon tucked under his arm much like the sunglasses dudes from Forgotten Worlds (although there's no twirling here). Make it through this section and the last awaits - a spooky graveyard containing all manner of ghastly horrors. All of these except the 'home' area feature a giant boss guarding their exit too, and these abominations can be a real challenge. Luckily, there are a few items dotted around that should help with at least some of them!

I must be lost, I've no idea where to go next...

Collectibles are not exactly falling from the sky here but it is possible to top up Aarbron's life-meter now and then, and there are also a couple of projectile weapons that last for a set number of shots as well. Despite this, it's still a really tough game, and that was one of several major criticisms of SOTB once players had gotten over the dazzling aesthetics. The constant walk, punch, walk, punch, walk, punch (ad infinitum) gameplay was extremely repetitive anyway but Aarbron walks quite quickly and the many enemies appear on screen, usually moving toward him equally quickly, so you usually get very little time to react. Plus, many of them have attacks (such as swords) which far exceed the reach of your own meagre punch, and many traps, such as fireballs, bouncy things, or spiky things thrusting out of the ground or ceiling, appear before you can avoid them. This, combined with slightly 'sticky' controls, makes SOTB a rather frustrating experience.

Two sword-wielding bipedal rhinos stand in my way...

It was famous for those remarkable audio/visuals though, and they at least live up to their hype for the most part. Reflections even make a point of mentioning some of the key figures in the instruction book. There are apparently 13 layers of parallax scrolling, 128 colours on screen at once, and everything's running at 50 frames per second. There are even some 132 different enemy monsters in the game which consist of walking, crawling, and flying creatures of all shapes and sizes which, along with the gorgeous backdrops, create a superb atmosphere. It's not just the graphics either. There is a fantastic soundtrack by David Whittaker, too, consisting of twelve moody tracks which add a lot to the experience. It really is a lovely looking/sounding game, but that's probably part of the problem - expectations of the game itself were now unrealistically high as well, and it disappointed.

A green snake/trumpet patrols the castle grounds...

A bit of effort has been made, by way of nice story/artwork screens, to fool players into thinking this is an arcade adventure but it's not nearly as deep or involving as you might initially think. There is still a fairly strong urge to keep playing, mainly to see more of the lovely graphics and hear more fab music, but I think all but the very most determined players will soon tire of the constant unfair deaths. There is no doubting that all of Shadow of the Beast's innovations were of an audio/visual nature - the gameplay really is as basic as it comes for this type of game, playing like a fantasy-themed take on something like Kung Fu Master. That alone doesn't really make it crap if you ask me, but the unfairly harsh difficulty lends more weight to that assessment and makes the game the same thing today as it was back in 1989 - a nice (if expensive) demonstration of what the Amiga can do and a landmark title, but an annoying and rather average game.

RKS Score: 5/10