He-Man: Defender of Grayskull Review
He-man has finally arrived on the PS2 - have we at last a game worthy of the cartoons??
Today we have a guest review from my good friend Mark.
When I first heard that there was to be a game for He-man, I, like many others may have got a bit excited. For years, since the early days of the original cartoon, many of us have waited for a good He-man game... sadly though the wait must go on.
Having said that though, "He-man: Defender of Grayskull" is not a bad game. It's simply run of the mill in every imaginable aspect. The most clearly average aspects of the game are the graphics and the repetitiveness of the game-play. At first the game seems fun as you simply run around killing everything that moves in order to progress to the next stage. In order to progress you have to find keys and press the right buttons in the right place. However, this gets tedious extremely quickly. You can only look for the right key so many times.
Another aspect in which the game could be improved would be adding more diverse enemies to battle, simply changing the colour of the creature that you are fighting is not good enough. Also, there are glitches with the graphics that can hinder the game. For example, getting too close to some of the larger enemies cause them to shadow, enabling you to still see He-man, which is fine, but when this happens you are able to pass through different characters. Things like this annoy and prevent the game from being as good as it could have been.
All that aside though, there are some good points to the game that make you want to pick it up again and again. The game can cause an addictiveness to progressing. You may want to play on and on and see what the game throws up next, see if there is any common ground between game and cartoon and also see what surprises they have in store further down the line. Also, recognizing characters from the cartoons, such as Tri-Clops and Beastman, makes you wonder who else they have hidden away further on into the game.
Another downer regarding the game is the lack of options that are available to the gamer. There is only one game mode and one difficulty setting, making the game itself very limited. Once the game has been played and completed there is nowhere else to go, no multiplayer (which would have been an excellent addition), and no extra difficulty levels in order to challenge yourself further. So this game is not going to be in many peoples consoles for a long period of time.
The sound in the game doesn't seem to reach the heights of other similar games either, it's not bad however, just clichéd and old fashioned. You get the usual clangs and thrashes that you would expect from a sword wielding hero, but it's the annoying constant footsteps that once again take the shine off the game. No matter what terrain you are traveling across He-man's steps seem to make the same noise, yet another small annoyance that builds up the more you play. The script in the game is very good however and follows that of the cartoons, making the little cut scenes quite interesting, of course they are voiced with the usual camp macho man voice, and the cackling Skeletor to boot as well.
All in all, He-Man: Defender of Grayskull, is not a bad game, and as it is a budget release you can't expect a classic. There are too many small errors that could have been easily fixed that means the game is quite disappointing, but aside from that it is fun to play in many parts of the game and its always going to be enjoyable for a while just being He-man. The game does need more options to extend the game-play though as once the game is done, there is no need to load it up again for a good long while. If there is to be another He-man game in the near future the developers should take the time to go over the small annoyances and they could have a good, playable game on their hands. But for now the only thing that could be said is that this game certainly does not have the power.