Review: Turrican Flashback (PS4)

image 

Turrican Flashback brings the classic Turrican series to the PlayStation 4. This collection includes: Turrican, Turrican II: The Final Fight, Mega Turrican, and Super Turrican, but what the heck is Turrican?

Turrican is a classic action game series originally released in the early 90’s on the Commodore 64, Amiga, and other obscure retro consoles you’ve probably never heard of. It was a technical achievement at the time and managed to gather and maintain a cult following to this day. The series has been dormant for a few decades now; can this love letter to classic action gaming entice a new audience?

image 

As far as remakes go, Turrican Flashback is as barebones as they come. The new features added to these classics are what you would expect. You got filters and aspect ratio settings, save states, as well as a rewind feature. With the latter two disabling trophies, arguably the biggest addition. You’re not gonna find any fancy behind the scenes features or art gallery in this one. At least a music gallery would have been nice, the music was, and still remains, a highlight of the series. Your love for this collection hinders on your enjoyment of the original games, not any additions made in these ports. So do these games hold up?

image

The Turrican series holds up surprisingly well. The games are less linear than other games in the genre from the 90’s. But the level design can sometimes have you running around lost without direction, making the timer on each stage actually relevant. Each subsequent entry in the series works toward rectifying these issues. At times this makes the levels feel more linear, which takes away from what made the series stand out in the first place. It’s a delicate balance that will play a role in deciding which game in the series is your favorite. The games are classic gaming levels of difficulty. Each new entry is more accessible, with Super Turrican and Mega Turrican having difficulty options. You’ll naturally get better at the game and this’ll make the next installment easier by design. At some point they added a grapple hook, which I’m not a fan of. It sounds great in theory, but by the time it was introduced, I was an old dog trying to learn new tricks. Having the series all together helps you see the changes made with each entry and appreciate the series’ growth. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see where the series ended. For some reason, Super Turrican 2 was omitted from this collection. I couldn’t find a good reason for its absence, so I’m just gonna smh and count it as a negative.

 image

If you’re a long time Turrican fan, the addition of trophies gives you incentive to play through these a couple more times. Maybe you remember the game from your childhood, this is a good convenient way to replay these classics. If you actively hate the Turrican series, why are you even here? To everybody else, it’s hard to recommend jumping into these games at the asking price. No noteworthy new features and the exclusion of Super Turrican 2 don’t take away that this is a fun collection. But the $29.99 price point makes it a hard sell for new comers. 

 

7.5/10

 


Title: Bug Fables: Turrican Flashback
Developer: Factory 5
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4
Release Date: January 29th, 2021
Reviewer: Jon_Mclane

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Super Bullet Break (PS4)

Image
Super Bullet Break is a turn based strategy game with a hint of roguelike elements all wrapped in a Japanese waifu exterior. I feel like that sentence is gonna tell most people whether or not they’ll enjoy this game. So let's talk about what makes this game different and stand out from a sea of games that have a similar description. The story is as cliche and presented in the most lazy way possible. Through static cutscenes and tons of dialogue, the characters even make references to how boring all the dialogue is, which doesn’t make it any less boring. But, you do get a handy skip option that solves this problem for those who want to get into the meat and potatoes of this game.  Super Bullet Break is broken up into 7 levels with unique themes inspired by different game genres. These themes have “bullets” that synergize to fight together. Bullets are what the games equivalent of cards are called. See each playthrough you begin with a premade deck consisting of cards, or bullets...
Read more

Review: Just Die Already (PS4)

Image
Just Die Already is a game where you choose an old person to play as and cause mayhem around a sandbox area. The best way to describe it is, goat simulator but replace the goat with a boomer. That sentence will be the best rundown I can give for those who have played goat simulator. Otherwise read on to get an idea whether or not this game is for you.    Once you select one of four old people to play as. Your character is free to roam an open area with loose goals and objectives. There are puzzles and items you can interact with to cause crazy stuff to happen, and unlock new areas and objectives. Everything feels optional past the 5 minute point. Once you’re dumped into the world, you’re on your own. The exploration is one of the strengths of the game. It feels refreshing to have no tutorials or a large arrow pointing you to your next objective.  Another strength of the game is in its humor. This can also be a weakness depending on your brand of humor. Slapstick comedy is...
Read more

Review: King of Seas (PS4)

Image
King of Seas is an open world adventure RPG where you play as a disgraced captain of a royal lineage who is exiled from their kingdom and takes on the pirate life. The game shares more in common with the classic Sid Meier Pirates series than the recently popular Sea of Thieves in the pirate genre. But can we expect this title to live on as Sid Meier’s classic has 20 years from now? Probably not, I gave you the general plot in the opening paragraph and that all happens within a matter of minutes. From there the storyline takes a backseat to the gameplay. You have a choice to do mainline missions and progress the story or do side missions and progress your level and ship. Mainline quests will reward you with a cutscene but that’s the only difference between the two types of missions. They are largely uninteresting and share the same framework, using about 4 or 5 mission types to make up the infinite amount of randomly generated quests you can take on. It’s a recipe for repetition, a ...
Read more