Phadt Menace game review by Dean Arias
Game Rating = 2/5 Balls
Right out of the gates, UFO 2: The Phadt Menace blasts you with some nostalgic tunes and graphics from the days of the Sega Genesis. Blaring trumpets, odd sparkles, and shimmering noises fill your mind. If you look forward to this for the next 60-minutes of this game’s trial-run, then you’ll be in blocky 16-bit heaven.
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Next screen after the emboldening intro is a scrolling wall-of-text, explaining the game’s story; It’s a copy of the Star Wars method of story-telling. A slow reveal, lame plot, in other words, absolutely boring as hell if hell was having to read a giant wall of text, in slow motion, with trumpets blaring in the background. You may safely (and for your safety) skip it.
Help section reveals brief explanations of what’s in the game. Put simply, you guide your small spaceship with the mouse and the two mouse-buttons serve as a firing trigger and thrust, which launches the ship forward in the direction of your mouse cursor. Some keyboard-buttons are used for other weapons, like bombs. Your mission is to locate camps on the terrain, rain hellfire to break them open, then rescue the prisoners inside.
Okay, this is ridiculous! So you’re firing rockets, bombs, and nukes at a prison-compound, WHERE YOUR FRIENDS ARE BEING HELD, to BLOW UP the building! Then you’re supposed to swoop in and rescue whatever bits of their charred remains are still recognizable to their loved ones. Luckily, I love ridiculousness, so I’m liking this game.
Before I played this, I didn’t think there was such a thing as too much ridiculousness, now I know better.
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The game-play is a lot (almost identical) to Cobra Command, an old NES game. Similarly, you’re an aircraft rescuing hostages from buildings by destroying the buildings, then landing near those hostages so they can crawl into you. Cobra Command was fun, that is, until you took hits from the enemy and your chopper began to drift to the ground, damaged. You’d struggle with thrust to keep flying, while avoiding heavy enemy fire. Those were heart-wrenching moments, you were their only hope, and here you are, about to crash-land right on top of them, but you save them anyway! Well, UFO Pilot 2, has all of the same 2D side-scrolling action, with NONE of the satisfaction.
You’re a nifty-looking UFO-thing, only instead of remaining airborne, like you’d expect from future-aircraft, you’re constantly plummeting to your death because of gravity. Thrust is your only lifesaver. It doesn’t sound so bad, but I equate this experience with juggling knives on a roller-coaster, while people throw baseballs at you, while trying to rescue the princess from the castle. Except you have to obliterate the castle with a bazooka to get at her. It’s not like you could just land your spaceship somewhere and launch a stealth mission, right? It’s not like Starfleet could have said “Future-Rambo, here’s a battalion of our best warriors, rescue all these prisoners!” No! Of course not! Instead they said “Here’s a tiny space-pod and some pellets. Go wipe-out our enemies! Good luck!”
The controls are unwieldly, you can’t aim, dodge lasers, bounce around like a crazy-ball, AND stand still while your small ship fills with sluggish people. Mercifully, you’re allowed to upgrade your equipment. More responsive engines or armor. are some options, points can be distributed among many different stats at the beginning of every mission. Those stats are meaningless though. The only stats that matter here are living or dead, and you my friend, will be dead.
The game eventually devolves into the ultimate nihilistic experience. As you play, you realize there is no way for you to perform so many tasks and expect to escape with your life, much less with a hull-full of screaming hostages. So what’s left to do? Start dive-bombing into those enemy laser-tanks and proton-cannons to watch flames erupt all over the screen! Maybe you feel like sharing your new-found enlightenment with your shrieking passengers, take’em along for the ride of their lives! Er, deaths, I should say.
This could have been a fantastic game. It copies Cobra Command after all, and updates and polishes the graphics, but gravity complicates everything. 2 out of 5.
