You are Captain Chuck Baker and you’ve just landed on Planet 51. From the information available to you, you think you’re the only living being on the planet, but soon you’ll discover the strange green beings that inhabit it and think you’ve come to invade them. You’ll have to escape from them and recover your ship in order to return home. But you won’t be alone; you’ll have the help of Rover and your new alien friend, Lem.
Developer: Zed
Genre: Action
History dictates that however well it may be going, however close the bond between the two of you, someone somewhere is going to come and snatch that princess away from you, using her as bait to drag you through a series of levels pumped with peril.
In Demon Killer's case, that someone happens to be a demon lord named Malaki, who steals your other half in an attempt to sap her blood and open the door to the Kingdom of Twilight.
Like the most bizarre episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show ever, the game tasks you with chasing him down, using your ability to change into a demon summoner to wipe out his minion legions and free your paramour from his clasp.
If that sounds like complete hokum, it is. Demon Killer is, in fact, a fairly plain side-scrolling beat-'em-up that resembles the love child of Altered Beast and Streets of Rage. The problem is, it has the subtlety of neither.
A good kicking
The majority of levels are fairly standard affairs, where enemies - which range from typically savage degenerates to WWII zombies - appear on screen in small packs, your primary action being to give them a solid thwacking with the '5' key.
Each beastie takes several kicks before they fall for good, any contact with them naturally depleting your – initially meagre – health.
Every brute you take down adds credit to your tally that you can trade in at any time to upgrade your HP, or even extend your abilities or magical prowess.
As play moves forward, such additions to your arsenal become vital – tapping the '7' key, for instance, unleashes a brief burst of energy that takes down multiple opponents at once, while the '1' key summons your inner powers, causing wings to sprout from your back and blue fire to burst from your arms.
In short, it makes taking down your foe a touch easier, but also saps your energy.
This makes Demon Killer a typical case of choosing just when to transform and use the easy way out, and when to battle on the old fashioned way, punching and kicking through the hordes while risking being taken down yourself.
No killer instinct
While some stages put a unique spin on this setup – an early level charges you with firing missiles at a dragon while in flight – Demon Killer generally plays the same trick from beginning to end, the only difference being each new level is slightly harder than the last.
Simply hammering the '5' key level after level does not an inventive side-scroller make, and while Demon Killer is free of any slip ups or gaffes, it's also lacking when it comes to creativity.
From the banal, almost self-deprecating storyline to the plain manner in which the game's challenges are delivered, Demon Killer plays out like a lukewarm attempt to capture an old skool magic it doesn't quite understand.
Help Chuck to escape from Planet 51! To do this, find the lost parts of his spaceship! It's time to drive an alien car and shoot the incredible cities of Planet 51 together with Salem and Chuck!
Developer: Zed
Genre: Romance
In Life is a Love Story you play Lima Coconut, heir to the almost extinct Coconut family fortune. Unfortunately, her batty Aunt has decided to alter her will so that the two remaining children, Lima and her brother, will be cut out of the inheritance unless they marry by the end of the week.
Luckily, you only need to steal a flower to achieve this. At least it’s original.
Instead of being able to just pick the flower from the beginning, the game only allows you to examine specific items at prescribed points during the story. Consequently, the game turns into ‘hunt the magic pointing hand’ as you rush between rooms desperately trying to work out it wants you to do next.
This wouldn’t be so bad if the tasks followed a decent logic. In one particularly annoying section a character needs a pair of sunglasses before he can be persuaded to go to a party. After fruitlessly searching every room without success I suddenly saw the aforementioned pointing hand in the corner of the lobby.
They were in a pot plant. Of course.
Like the ‘puzzles’, the writing is skittish, vying between odd streams of conciousness, kooky jokes and some less than perfect translation. The descriptions and dialogue skirt over things extremely quickly, resulting in a plot that feels incredibly rushed, especially near the end of the game.
To balance these frustrations, the graphics do a good job of being bright, colourful and cartoony despite the locations being limited in variety. The controls are responsive and the animations simple but non-intrusive.
The most disappointing aspect, however, is the length - it took forty minutes to complete the game the first time, and around twenty on subsequent playthroughs. There are multiple endings depending on whom you marry to add a bit of extra distance, but these choices essentially boil down to a different line of text at the end with no variation in the plot or gameplay.
Life is a Love Story ’s brevity would be fine if the story and alternative endings justified the length, but the rushed nature of the plot, illogical puzzles and the lack of reward for replaying sully the experience significantly.
