Overkill (1992)

Name:Overkill
Number:262
Year:1992
Publisher:Epic MegaGames
Developer:Tech-Noir
Genre:Shoot 'em Up
Difficulty:4/5
Time:1 hour
Won:Yes (116W/88L)

I do not care for shoot 'em ups in a broad sense. It seems to be that the genre tends to indulge in the worst part of hardcore Japanese design tendencies. Make it so that the only way you can ever beat the game is to replay it until you have everything more or less memorized. I realize that not everything in the genre is a bullet hell, but it does seem like most of the genre past the '80s indulge in this to some extent. The exceptions being a small window in time when for some reason Apogee and Epic both decided to publish games where instead of fishing for upgrades, you can just buy them.

Unfortunately, this is neither Raptor nor Tyrian, so instead we're going to get ourselves a regular old shoot 'em up, this time on DOS. That title screen and this cool little picture that pops up if you wait are writing checks that the gameplay cannot possibly cash. Sure, they overuse dithering, but god that's rad as hell. That's the kind of picture that you use when your game's character is musing about his use of force in wrecking the Orion homeworld, not a game where you just shoot things until the game says you've won.

One of the strangest ways this differentiates itself from the competition is that it has music using a Roland MT-32. It's always a treat hearing this thing, but the actual music feels strangely out of place, and the sound is PC Speaker anyway. People mock Ultima Underworld for having piano footsteps, but it's better than spending hundreds for a high end piece of musical equipment only to get blips and bloops for laser shots.
 

The game was of course shareware, and came with one out of six planets. There are three difficulties, which mostly affect how fast enemies are and how much health you have. Since these stages are short and they need to pad this game out, this doesn't help you too much. There's no backstory in-game, but the accompanying text file explains that everyone else has been killed by psychotic and xenophobic aliens, so kill all of them. Okay, that does fit the opening images, even if there could be a bit more to it than that. Also, I'm not sure the music fits the theme, considering it sounds like the jaunty tune.

Starting up the game and everything is quite mundane for a a shmup. It's vertical scrolling, which means a bit less playing area. Arrows move, and you move kind of slowly. Except diagonally, which is annoying. Ctrl shoots. These keys are all rebindable. Where it gets strange is with the equipment/upgrades. Tab activates your current number of upgrades. See that thing in the lower right? Well, for each upgrade package you pick up, you go one category lower on that side. (There are also health and fuel pickups, the later of which I'll explain at some point)

While it seems like this system should be straight-forward, it isn't. It's quite esoteric and incomprehensible. I think it's designed like a pyramid, you need a certain amount of upgrades from a previous tier before you can get the next in the next tier...but that doesn't always seem to bear out. Sometimes you need more in a previous tier than you should need for the next. Sometimes you can get something from the later tiers without losing out on something with your basic weapon. There's nothing in-game explaining the system, the closest you get is a demo screen showing the various upgrades. You just have to remember which combinations might result in you wasting an upgrade.

The most basic upgrades are to the lasers. Which go from basic, to double/rapid fire, to diagonal, move left or right to shoot in that direction, works oddly, then go through laser. The double fire is actually the best option until you get some upgrades which give you various side bits to your fighter. A nose piece or side bots which increase your firepower. How these work is again, beyond me. Even the missiles I don't understand much beyond "get missile and missiles start firing".

One fun thing is that those two bits I just mentioned can get damaged instead of you, and then destroyed. The side bots are particularly interesting, because during the tighter sections, they're going to get damaged, and if one on one side gets destroyed, you start leaning towards the other. It's a nice touch despite being annoying.

There's also a fuel system, which at first isn't much of a concern. As you get upgrades though, it requires more and more to the point that you actually need to worry about it when you have more upgrades. This is primarily concerned with ship size, but it might be linked to how much you're firing at a time. Generally speaking, this isn't too much trouble, but be careful.

Each stage goes along similar lines, even if there's some differences between them. Each starts with a quasi-Galaga set of enemies spawning in, which you have to kill, and you can theoretically stop before they all pop up if you kill the lead ship. Theoretically, because even if you have a bunch of upgraded weapons, they don't activate here and the lead ship is tough. It's a test of skill.
 

Not all sections in the middle are exact copies of one another in design and in order, but there's always a general type. Your basic corridor; The tight area where there are turrets on the wall you need special weapons to take out; The one where missiles get thrown at you from an area you can't shoot. Enemies too, in addition to the turrets and missile shooters, there are enemies which move around like a slinky, up and down; Ones which walk up and down the walls taking potshots at you; Random flying rocks; Enemies which shoot a million bullets at you; And regular enemy fighters.

The end of each stage is usually some kind of asteroid field or group of enemies which go on for much longer than they should. Before you get any real power-ups, it's kind of nice. Having a pure dodging section makes me feel clever. Shmups are generally more about positioning than actually shooting things down, and having that feeling without having to dodge ten thousand things at once is nice.

Stages are meant to be played in sequence, and picking a later one kind of feels like using a level select code. This sounds odd, I must admit, but compared to other games where 1 credit clearing is the ideal, this is one live clear as the hopeful standard. As you can imagine, the basic laser is quite useless against some of the later enemies, even in the first stage getting killed could put you in a bit of a death loop. Although that said, I tried for the true ending starting at the fifth stage, and I never had any actual trouble, so this could be me talking out of my butt.

In all my plays of the game, nothing really sticks out to me in the stages beyond visual changes. Oh, this one has spikes shooting out of the walls and monsters you have to destroy three sections of. Well, that means more power-ups. Obviously there are more enemies on-screen as you go further, but for the most part, it kept up with the amount of damage I was outputting.

The final level has a boss and it's okay. It's big, it moves around some, and I never had any trouble with it. It exists and I shot it down. Then the game seemingly ends the same way as the other levels, with the player entering the main ship and getting his stuff, but there is an ending. 

Are you kidding me? It loops? Is this one of those situations where it only counts if you beat the game on the highest difficulty? Well, I tried my hand at beating a second loop a couple of times, but I actually managed to get myself killed after a certain amount of upgrades. Not because I got killed, but because I ran out of fuel. Which is an instant game over. Since there isn't anything new in these replays that I can tell and I generally don't replay games which place their endings like this, this is where I end.

Weapons:
The gradual increase in firepower and number of upgrades are cool, but there's very little practical strategy to picking them out. Some upgrades hurt you, and sometimes you just have to hold onto the upgrades until later. 4

Enemies:
A nice selection of the usual sort of enemies you would expect, but nothing memorable. 3

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Were it not for different graphics I could scarsely tell the difference in level design. 2

Player Agency:
Very basic. You move a bit slower than I'd like, but considering how big you get, this is probably intentional. As usual with this genre, it annoys me that there's a firing rate difference between hammering the fire key and holding it down. What I'd really like is the option to just put my upgrades into a particular group instead of having it as one key. 4

Interactivity:
Anything that isn't trying to kill you somehow just doesn't really matter. 0

Atmosphere:
It's strange. The backstory says fighting back after a horrific genocide, everything else says jaunty space adventure. 3

Graphics:
Once again, I genuinely can't tell if this is EGA or VGA, though considering the massive amount of dithering, I lean towards the former. Either way, the variety between the stages works out, and because it's a space game, it doesn't matter that it doesn't have that much animation. 5

Story:
The backstory and the in-game ending seem somewhat at odds. If you're not going to bother, why contradict yourself? And if you're going to lazily copy names from better known franchises, why would you not throw in a Star Trek reference? 0

Sound/Music:
It's fine, but unmemorable. It strongly benefits from using a MT-32 for music. Otherwise, the sounds are PC Speaker, and by this point that's not acceptable. 4

That's 25.

It feels generous, it's more than Electro Man but less than Epic's other titles. I can also tell you right away that unless Major Stryker has some issue I'm not aware of, it's probably going to be the worst rated title out of all the DOS shmups from the shareware era. (That I'm inclined enough to play) As a shareware experience, this would have made me not inclined to buy it, and if I did, I would have felt robbed. There is a certain amount of me not being a fan of the genre, but at the same time, being me, I beat it in under an hour. Yes, there are harder options, but even that wouldn't last that much longer.

Oddly enough, Tech-Noir isn't just some in-house developer, it's an actual British coder, Ste Cork, who did the DOS ports of Obitus and Armour-Geddon. Technically, the company is just him, both of those games were developed by other people and the only other game the company is credited on doesn't involve anyone else from this game. These days, he works for Raven Software, being one of the thousands who work in the Call of Duty mines. Oddly, he's been there since 2000, starting with Soldier of Fortune. Which is quite impressive given the scores of developers who seem to be constantly let go after games are released in AAA studios.

Next time is Spear of Destiny - Ultimate Challenge, because I might as well get it over with.