Scud: The Disposable Assassin
Saturn * Segasoft

Review by Michael Vafeas
7.7

With games such as Scud, Segasoft may soon be known as a company of innovation and fresh experimentation. One part side scroller, one part shooter, and two parts completely odd, Scud is the perfect cure for the common game. While the game itself contains little that has not been attempted before, it is the first title to incorporate side-scrolling action with pistol-based shooting, and in the different modes of play available offers three distinct playing experiences.

If you were to play Scud for the first time, you would most likely play the side scrolling/action game first. In this mode, Scud is on-screen and is armed with a pistol with which he must shoot the many opponents that attack him on his journey. The action in these sections is limited to running, jumping, and shooting while making your way through the simplistic levels. Scud's control is a bit off, and would have faired better had it mimicked more closely the tight control of Earthworm Jim (a character on the same wacky superhero level as our favorite disposable assassin). The jumps are a bit too light, and the shooting should be quicker. In this mode, you are also automatically guided through sporadic 3-D corridor sections in which you see the action through the eyes of our hero and move a cursor around the screen to shoot at creatures which run towards you from the distance. Although this adds a bit of variety to the game, it becomes quite redundant after one or two tries, after which the action is reduced to nothing more than a reaction which requires more memory than skill. The levels in the side-scrolling stages suffer from decidedly poor layout and are often quite repetitious. Unfortunately, most players will likely ask themselves "When does this level end?" in some of the particularly monotonous levels, which takes away from the entertainment value of the game. In the two player mode, player one controls the character, while player two uses the stunner to blast the bad guys who would like to dispose of our assassin---which, despite the title, we don't want to happen. In the one player pistol mode, the screen scrolls and you must shoot the characters which appear before they either decide to leave or shoot you until you have no energy left. While shooters usually feature more than one enemy on screen at one time, Scud sometimes has up to six enemies which appear simultaneously and end up utterly confusing and frustrating you. Even the enemies that appear in sequence often move too fast and end up just draining your energy with quickness, which inevitably screams "No fair!" Perhaps the developers hoped to make up for the game's lack of levels by providing stages that are too difficult to complete on the first or second attempt. While this plan is occasionally successful, it simply leads to frustration in Scud, and forces you to go through some already boring levels more than once.

The graphics and sounds in Scud are all better than average, though in their distinction turn out to be a bit bothersome. The artwork in the game lacks consistency with some levels looking perfectly rendered and others looking like a mosaic of 2-D sprites. Though visual harmony is not to be found in Scud's world, such was likely the intention of the artists who did a nice job in animating the characters and providing actions which bring life to the silicon on the screen. Segasoft takes after its parent company in composing a soundtrack that delights the eardrums and strays from conventional game music in most ways. An interesting cross between rap rhythms and various styles of music makes Scud's soundtrack noteworthy for its innovation and accomplishment.

Scud is not one of those games that tries to turn the world on its ear. This is no Final Fantasy 7, this is no Super Mario 64, this is just a game which tries to offer something different while not doing so in an overly conspicuous manner. Although this title is sometimes boring, frustrating and unappealing, it is also on other occasions entertaining, quick, and humorous. Thus, while this game has several flaws and an overall lack of 32-bit luster, it features innovation by way of play and presentation. Although the game will most likely stay out of the top ten (or twenty for that matter), it will no doubt please the experimental gamers and hopefully will someday be reincarnated in an entirely different form which tries to combine shooting and side scrolling more gracefully. Scud fails to be a must-buy for Saturn owners, but at least it had the dignity to fail while traveling a path not yet taken by developers. As an experiment, this title might prove to be very important; as a game, it's just decent.


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