Nut Load. Mini reviews of games old and new. No fuss. No spoilers. Occasional shock face.

Friday, April 8, 2016

MotU: He-Man: Defender of Grayskull (2005)

Genre: Action / Adventure  |  Players: 1  |  Developer: Savage Entertainment

The objective of the game, if I'm not mistaken, is to advance through poorly designed and repetitive levels battling bland enemies, employing badly animated sword strikes to end their miserable existence. You'll use a roll manoeuvre during combat in an attempt to add variety, but it's not necessary and you'll soon grow tired of even that. You'll discover that it's quicker to simply lock onto them with L2 (if you're lucky) and hack and slash until they become a crumpled heap.

He-Man can also jump, which comes in handy for cocking-up the awful platform sections. At those times, collision detection in hinted at but largely absent.

He-Man's muscular physique is referenced often, in the piss-poor animation and in having each step he takes be accompanied by monotonous heavy footfalls that drill deeper and deeper into the player's brain with each laboured step.

You'll be required to hit switches and then wonder if they even registered, collect keys that are approximately half as big as you are, and reset your game often because of getting stuck in parts of levels that are easy to get into but impossible to exit from. On the plus side, you don't actually have to carry the keys once you find them, because he has a magic gaming pouch in his furry pants.

If you endure, like a real hero would, you're rewarded (compensated?) with special moves that do more damage but take an age to enact. I'm genuinely not sure if they were purposefully slow-mo or if the frame rate actually shit itself.

The Eternian hero is voiced by Cam Clarke, who also played him in the short-lived but fantastic Masters of the Universe reboot in 2002. That series was never released outside of R1 territories, whereas this game was only released in Europe. MotU fans from R2 got shafted in the first instance, but MotU fans from countries other than Europe should consider the second instance an act of mercy.

My time with He-Man: DoG ended when I rose from sitting, walked purposefully to the console and said aloud, "Get the fuck out of my machine!"

1 drawbridge out of 5

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