Blades of Vengeance: An Intense Battle With Unbelievable Evil

When looking through Genesis games at a used game store today, a friend of mine decided to purchase Blades of Vengeance simply because under the title was written “Intense Battle With Unbelievable Evil.” Quite frankly, that description was worth dropping the two US dollars. It just sounds like it would be kinda fuckin' metal, and that seems like it would be entertaining. The game was made by Beam Software in 1993 for the Genesis. Beam Software has made quite a few games, but the only one I've ever actually played is the SNES version of Shadowrun, which was pretty neat.

 

Blades of Vengeance of is generally pretty disappointing. It's a bland action platformer in a fantasy setting. Granted, it is pretty fuckin' metal, in that your character choices are a nearly nude woman with a sword, a bigass barbarian, and hobo/wizard with an impressive beard. They all have different strengths and weaknesses in speed, power, and range, and I'm sure you can figure out who is good a what just from the descriptions I have provided. You get to kill zombies and fire elementals, and your standard fantasy monster fair.

 

I never got further than the first level. I got to the boss, but even that was a trying experience. The platforming isn't too difficult, and the jumping physics are fine, but the enemies can be annoying. I couldn't seem to get hit by any enemy just once. They'd walk into me, I'd take damage, then I'd try to attack, but they were in me so the attack wouldn't kill them, and then I'd get hit again. Maybe the proper strategy would be to keep on trying to walk through them, but that's just stupid. This problem was particularly annoying with the little fire demon guys because your standing attack will not hit them.

 

I have no doubt the game could be be learned and beaten, but I don't like to spend my time getting good at a game that's not that fun to begin with. I don't like games in which you need to learn the levels to be successful. I much prefer when you have to learn the mechanics of the game rather than the layout. I think I would be more forgiving about Blades of Vengeance if it had a corny epic power metal soundtrack, but alas the genesis sound chip can't pull that off. Oh well, we'll always have “Intense Battle With Unbelievable Evil.”