Strontium Dog and the Death Gauntlet (1984)

Nothing screams Strontium Dog like whatever this is.

Name:Strontium Dog and the Death Gauntlet
Number:242
Year:1984
Publisher:Quicksilva
Developer:Argus Press Software
Genre:Shoot 'em Up
Difficulty:2/5
Time:40 minutes
Won:Yes (107W/77L)

The last Strontium Dog game was interesting, but absurdly difficult. Undoubtedly suffering for being an action game on the ZX Spectrum. So, what does the broadly superior C64 game do? It's a shoot 'em up. Only, it kind of isn't. It's an endless runner, sort of.

The story, as told by a pirate intro, is that our hero, Johnny Alpha, crash landed on a planet full of renegades (bad guys, presumably) while being pursued by the Stix Brothers. Run until Johnny gets to the ship where his partners are waiting. The death gauntlet of the title is him just walking across the desert to survive.

This, in contrast to the last game, is not based on any story, but just uses characters. The Stix Brothers, which is actually an entire family, are a group of mutants who all look and dress the same way. Very convenient for a video game adaptation.

The controls are weird if you don't play them on an emulator. Basically, space shoots and the joystick moves. What makes this really weird is that because I'm generally emulating my joystick, space is the joystick button. A whole lot of effort just to get back where it all started. Function keys deploy a timebomb, which sends you forward. I never really had need of it.

At first, the game is insanely confusing, bordering on insane. Randomly running into things, not understanding why you've suddenly died, and things just happening. There's very little visual clarity, the most detailed objects on-screen are Johnny and random rocks. Everything else is somewhat detailed but one bit. It's odd, visually.

Very quickly, things become clear. The first part is that the game runs weirdly. Up and down move up and down, but left and right control your speed. This is different from plain old moving left and right. No, going faster depletes your strength, while going slowly allows it to slowly restore. Oddly, when you move very slowly, it's basically impossible for any significant amount of damage to happen.

When Johnny inevitably crashes into something or gets shot, he loses a life and starts flailing around on the ground like he's screaming about life not being fair. The other game didn't exactly put a big mental image of the guy in my mind, but at least I can attribute that one down to forced choices. This just feels like it's mocking the guy while he's down.

The inevitability of getting knocked down and how low amount of damage and quick regeneration actually creates a weird effect. It's not quite an endless loop, but it comes off as something where you have to put in very little effort to play. It's almost like the player is useless in the equation. There are powerups scattered around which increase strength, but why break what's a winning strategy?

This creates a weird loop. Playing it as slowly as possible is fairly simple to play, but it isn't very fun. Speeding it up kind of makes it interesting, but adds in danger. The thing is, I never quite figured out why one form of injury resulted in Johnny's death and another just resulted in him flailing around for a bit.

While it is difficult to fully avoid getting knocked down, individual pieces of scenery are easy to dodge. Johnny's hitbox is just his feet and all the scenery is surprisingly small. It's very generous, the game just throws a lot at you. That, along with the enemies is what gives the challenge, such as it is.

Enemies too, have a hitbox that seems to just be their feet. While this makings dodging most a cinch, it also makes hitting them trick. You only get one shot on-screen and most duck and weave enough that hitting them is rare. The ones you're most likely to hit are the ones that are most likely to cause you trouble if you don't, ones that slowly move to where Johnny is.

After a while, they start shooting back. It's not difficult to avoid. I never got shot once and I wasn't exactly putting 100% in at that point. All of the shooting in this game felt superficial. It's there because it's supposed to be there. I think the cracked version I played had an issue with the infinite ammo cheat, because I suspect ammo was supposed to drop down at one point and it never did. It didn't really matter that much, but it might have affected things a little bit.

As you gradually move through the area, scenery begins to change. This is the only obvious indication that you're moving. Yes, there's a bar at the bottom that shows how much progress you're making, but it uses white to show where you are. In case you haven't noticed, there are parts of the bar that are white. Which means you can't see precisely where you are.

That said, visually, most of the later screens are uglier than the earlier ones. The rocks looked nice, the trees less so, and then it seems like it degenerates into random pixels. I guess it's a ruined city, but it sure seems like it's a lot more ruined than the worst bombs designed by man could ever do.

At the end, the game stops, two figures pop up. Is this a boss fight? No, I've won. The game ends with two figures popping up and then the game just loops. If I'm charitable, my winning playthrough took a half an hour. Which is kind of embarassing, even in this era, since there's basically no point to replaying it since it wasn't fun the first time. To the rating.

Weapons:
Your basic blaster, the time bomb isn't really a weapon. 1/10

Enemies:
A mass of vaguely humanoid and robotic creatures with some variation in behavior. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Rocks and tress slowly move towards you. 1/10

Player Agency:
Very smooth and easy to understand as far as movement goes.  5/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
Nothing positive. 0/10

Graphics:
Detailed, but as a whole, feels unfocused. Johnny has considerable animation, but feels oddly smooth for the action around him. 2/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
Blips and bloops. 1/10

Just going to subtract 2 points before finalizing for a total of 10.

There's no going around it, this game is bad. I try to see the good in creative matters, but no, this game is just bad. The kind of bad where you question why the developers chose to pick a creative field and charge money for the end result. Which usually is something we all ignore, but tends to hit harder in licensed media, because this is a character people like getting turned into a joke.

Next time I'll pull out something a bit off beat in Obitus, a game which is of many genres and nobody can quite agree on which one it truly is.