Mercs Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]
30Developed and published by US Gold in 1991
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My final longplay video of 2015 is a conversion of the Capcom, top-down arcade shooter, 'Mercs'. The game is a follow-up to the highly successful 'Commando' and bears many similarities to it's predecessor.
US Gold developed and published a number of of versions for the 8-bit home computers of the day, including the C64. I didn't get to play this back on my real C64, but I remember the screenshots in Commodore Format magazine looking pretty cool and I always wondered whether the actual game was any good or not.
The objective of the game is to guide your mercenary through a number of combat environments, including jungles, mountain ranges and urban cityscapes on a mission to rescue a former president of the United States from a hostile rebel faction. Each level is populated by swarms of hostile infantry, all trying to take the heroes down before they can reach the transport plane where the ex-prez is being held captive.
Each merc is armed with a rifle and limited stock of smart bombs that can be used to clear out any enemies within a short radius of the player. Shooting open supply crates can reveal bonus weapons, such as the spread-shot and a couple of other weapons that didn't really seem to be any different to the starting weapon; considering that the spread-shot is much more effective at killing soldiers then I recommend that you stick with this weapon once collected.
Whilst you'll spend most of the game on foot, there are a couple of occasions where you will be able to enter vehicles. Unfortunately, this conveys absolutely no advantage to the player at all; what it DOES mean is the vehicle sprite makes it much, much easier for enemy bullets to hit you. For this reason it's much simpler just to avoid the vehicles altogether.
If you manage to make it to the end of the stage then you'll need to take down a boss before being allowed to progress to the next. All of the boss fights are pretty simple affairs that just require you to stay away from their gunfire whilst filling them full of lead. The tank boss at the end of the second level deserves special mention for having absolutely no collision detection with the player whatsoever, which seems quite an oversight!
One of the biggest annoyances with the game is the way the player (and enemy) bullets travel parallel to the character that fired them. If the player sprite moves then any projectiles on screen will shift along the horizontal/vertical plane as well so as to align with the centre of the sprite that fired them. This means that it's possible to 'drag' bullets into the path of the oncoming enemies, but also for enemies to do the same to you. Combined with some already questionable sprite collision, this makes avoiding bullets next to impossible and quickly using up all your health.
Although the character sprites are drawn and animated reasonably well, everything else is a mixed bag. Some of the later stage art is pretty grey and blocky, and the player-controlled vehicles look ridiculous.
Unfortunately, the in-game audio is even worse and is limited to a single, repetitive loop of music that just plays continually throughout the entire game. I couldn't see any mention of a SFX mode, so it seems that the only sound the game has is the music.
To it's credit, simultaneous two-player co-op is supported and it would probably make the game somewhat more bearable. Unsurprisingly, the three-player mode from the arcade version is absent.
Whereas the C64 version of Commando was pretty darn good, Mercs completely misses the mark. Graphics and audio limitations can be forgiven, provided that the game works and is fun to play, but this is just a stodgy, half-broken mess and is best avoided.
#retrogaming