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Rating: Good If I had to describe Rising Zan: Samurai Gunman in one word, it would definitely be "hilarious." The introduction, theme song, and story line sequences are all hilarious, and they make the game worth playing regardless of what you think about the gameplay itself. Most of the game is a non-stop succession of laughs. In the game's first story line sequence, the main character says that his name isn't Johnny anymore, it's "THE SUPER ULTRA SEXY HERO, ZAN!" The first level's boss talks to you a lot throughout the level, but his entire spoken dialogue is "goa," "bgoa," and occasionally, "gaaaa!" The enemies you spend most of your time fighting on the first level are T-shaped creatures that look like they're made of straw and basically stand around waiting for you to kill them. At the end of a first level, a girl named Valerie tells you about the bandits invading Tsuka Town (an Old Western town with an Oriental name), and she concludes her statements by asking "Can't you just kill them all?" If you fail to destroy the robot before it blows up the clock tower in the second level, Zan falls over and says, "mwa... mwaaa!" Besides the hilarious voice-over, it's also funny that Zan falls over and dies when the explosion takes place even if he's on the opposite side of the town and there's no fire anywhere near him. Perhaps the stress of the explosion is just too much for him... The voice-over of the hostages saying "Help me!" is quite possibly the funniest video game voice-over of all time. That may sound like a cruel thing to say, but you'll know what I mean if you hear the voice-over for yourself. At one point I was inside a building with a tied-up hostage, and just to see what would happen, I shot the hostage. A bullet to the foot somehow freed his tied-up arms, and he happily said "Thank you!" in another funny voice-over. He then briefly ran towards the building's exit before magically disappearing into the wall. It's these kinds of bizarre scenes that give Rising Zan its charm and personality. Rising Zan's system of rating your performance is a lot like the rest of the game: unique, funny, and just plain weird. Taking into consideration things like how many special attacks you use and how many hostages you rescue, the game rates you based on how "sexy" you are as you're playing. The ratings are Chicken, Hero, Super Hero, Super Ultra Hero, and the best rating of all, Super Ultra Sexy Hero. As funny as the theme song and story line sequences are, I initially thought that the gameplay itself was horrible. If you mix slow-to-respond control with a camera that seems to derive pleasure from not letting you see what you need to see, you get a game that can be very frustrating at times. Most of the standard battles you face throughout the levels require you to do nothing more than press square or X repeatedly, with very little strategy involved. It also doesn't make sense that sometimes when you shoot an enemy who doesn't have a shield, they somehow "block" your bullets. The second level of the game is particularly pathetic thanks to annoying force-fields that pop up throughout the level and refuse to go away until you kill all the enemies around you. They would have been aggravating if they worked properly, but sometimes you can run straight through the force- fields, and other times you're held back by invisible force-fields. As much as I disliked Rising Zan's gameplay at first, it grew on me as I played it more. While the story line sequences are still, without a doubt, the best parts of the game, the gameplay itself gets more and more enthralling as you progress through the adventure. The game design is very simple and straightforward, but still clever and challenging. A lot of the boss battles are really cool, and they require you to use strategy when deciding how you're going to go about killing the boss. As solid as the gameplay is, it still isn't quite good enough to make the game worth buying, especially when you consider that you could probably beat it in one weekend. If you're looking for a few good laughs (actually, dozens of good laughs) and gameplay that's pretty good in its own right, make Rising Zan: Samurai Gunman your next weekend rental. Send your thoughts on this review to ivan@mastergamer.com
© 2001 ivan@mastergamer.com