Right, so, another day, another game. And today, it's a SHUMP, or for the less pretentious: A shoot 'em up. For the truly dumb: a game a bit like Space Invaders. Well, actually, almost exactly like space invaders.
Ask on the Internet about shoot 'em ups you will get a variety of responses. Some will no doubt claim Mario64 was the best shoot 'em up, because some people are stupid enough to believe any old crap with a Nintendo badge is a sublime and genre defining game, and they will tell you that because we don't see Mario64 as a SHUMP, then we should change our perspective and the only games worth playing have waggle and a stupid sodding plumber in them. Nintendo games and fans make me puke. Can you tell yet?
Others will bore you stupid with something called a Sega Saturn, and wax lyrical about games that if in fact had been actually any good, then the Sega Saturn would have sold more units. It didn't. So obviously it wasn't. And so these people are wrong. These games also generally have unpronounceable Japanese titles and/or cost hundreds of pounds.
The next crowd of Internet users will tell you that, to be fair, you need a JAMMA board to really play the best SHUMPS. That to mortals is arcade console-board thing for the home. And to be fair this group isn't far off the mark. SHUMPS are only really ever fun when they are hooking you like Heroin and stealing money from you like an out-of-work Lehmans futures trader.
That said, the type of people who own a Jamma board are generally not allowed out after dark and are not allowed to journey further than 200 yards from their sole or main residence.
So who is right? Well me obviously. Crack out you trusty PS3, PS2 or PS1 and there are, believe or believe it not, a bunch of SHUMPS for the Playstation. And guess what? X2 by Team 17 is one of them. This game is in English. It plays on PAL consoles. And was made by the British. And to top it off cost me the princely sum of £2.99
For £2.99 you can't complain. Well you can. And I'm going to.
I guess now would be a good time to say that I don't like SHUMPS in the home. I liked Raiden at the arcade and that's about it. So X2 was off on a tricky start.
Nice things I can say?
Well it's pretty colourful. According to the box: 32,000 colours. You do have to worry about a game if the only nice thing that the marketing people could say about it was the use of colour. If you like blue so it seems. One would imagine that Team 17 marketing people had been used to the Amiga, which was capable of only 256 colours on screen, and positively got into a lather about 32,000 colours – I'm only guessing of cause.
And then the game features plenty of parallax scrolling. I like parallax scrolling. I feel it is essential for any two-dimensional game. But then I'm a geek.
The enemy bosses are big and colourful and the range of weapons available to collect seems nice and varied.
The sound track is very Techno but then lots of games in the 1990s used a Techno sound track so I'm not awarding a cigar for that.
Bad things I can say? Well, the one thing that stands out is it is bloody hard. It's not hard for a good reason. It's not hard in challenging way. It's hard in a: why-did-they-decide-to-do-that-way?
It's one of those SHUMPS where you can't see the enemy bullets. Which annoys me. After all the game uses 32,000 colours. That's 32,000. So you might think that the enemy bullets could have stood out a little more with 32,000 colours to choose from – but they don't. And they are small too. And so while you play your health whittles away, unbeknown to you, and then you die eventually, for apparently no good reason. Now, people who rattle on about 'rumble' feature in a controller being essential make me vomit – it isn't -- but it might have been in this case. Some sort of indicator you are dying would have been good. And yes, there is a health bar but then there are several health bars, and goodness knows which one refers to the actual health of your spaceship. Probably in the manual right?
The enemies take up a lot of the screen sometimes, and they are very quick. Your ship isn't so quick and the game becomes a little frustrating.
Which sums up the game nicely: Frustrating.
Now, SHUMPS are basically memory test games. The baddies come to you in the same old pattern, they shoot at you in the same old pattern, and you kill them in the same old pattern. The joy, for those that like SHUMPS, is in the memorising. In that respect I'm quite sure that this game is awesome. If however like me, you struggle to remember what day it is and indeed, why you got up, then X2 might not be for you.
It's not rare, and like I said, not expensive, and if you want a British, none-pretentious, balls-to-the-wall arcade shooter, that doesn't have the words “R” and “Type” in the title, this maybe for you.
...but not me.
3DOKid.
