Game:

Doom (1993)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 15:17

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66

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"The Invasion of the Mutant Space Bats" is a game released in 1994 for the DOS by Pop Software. It's a typical space shooter: you control a spaceship and shoot down different bats through 63 different levels - that's a lot of levels :)) ! There's also a two-player mode where the second player controls a red ship, though the players take turns between levels rather than being like a co-op mode where they both play the same level at once. Unlike Super Mario Bros. for instance, you don't have to wait for the other player to die in order to get your turn: as soon as one player completes a level, the other player gets to play that same level too. Some enemies drop colored gems when you shoot them. These act like powerups, as shown in the lower left of the screen. The red gems allow your ship to fire more projectiles at a time, green gems increase your firing rate, white gems make your shots more powerful, blue gems slow the enemies down and pink gems add up to an extra life (collect 6 and you get a 1-up, indicated by the ship icons below the score. You start off with 4). With the exception of the pink gems, all powerups are only temporary and lose their effect after a few seconds. The controls are pretty good: it's really easy to move the ship freely around the screen and you can shoot continuously by holding down the fire button rather than having to tap it for each shot. There's nothing special worth mentioning as far as graphics go. After all, it's a space shooter, so there's not much you can do other than a black background with some white dots on it. The animation on the bats and the details on the ship look very good for the time. Now what about the difficulty ? Well, it's insanely difficult as far as I'm concerned and it took me multiple hours to finally beat it ! The main reason why it's so hard is because everything kills you with only one hit, even enemies which are smaller than you - it doesn't get any cheaper than that. Even though YOU die in one hit, even the smallest of enemies take multiple shots to kill and sometimes there's so much sh!t on the screen you basically have no place to stand and have no choice but to get hit. It may not seem so bad at first, but as you progress you'll be experiencing a lot of cheap deaths and frustration. Your only hope is to spend hours memorizing each level so you know exactly where to stand each time and where to move in relation to the enemies. Every time you play you'll get one step further, but each level is going to throw more unfair challenges your way, so the key here is patience. Once you lose all your 4 lives (which you'll do very often) you get to continue from the level you died on, but you only get 3 continues, so try to collect as many lives as possible and use them sparingly. The soundtrack is very good for the time, but it gets pretty repetitive, especially if you've been playing the game for like 2 hours straight - it's not like in "Flying Tigers" for instance, where you actually get a different soundtrack every level.
Final verdict: time killer. Space Bats of Doom is a decent little game you might want to try out if you're really bored, but the unfair challenge makes this a pretty forgettable title in the DOS collection and you'll soon feel the need for something better. This might explain why not many people remember this game.
Update: thought this game was hard ? I dare you to try the sequel: "The Return of The Mutant Space Bats of Doom" (like the title wasn't long enough already). The cheapness level in this one has been cranked up to ridiculous levels - it's the textbook definition of unfair: for one thing, the game doesn't seem to end ! I played for like 4 hours straight (no joke !), looping over the same levels over and over with no end. The progress bar on the right got stuck at around level 61 - either my copy has a bug, or it's designed to go on forever, like an endurance game. You start with 10 lives, and this is the important bit, NO continues. Yep, 80+ levels with even cheaper one-hit deaths AND no continues. Anyway, I don't want to squeeze in another review so let's end this. Bottom line: I dare you to play it !

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