Soulstar for the Sega CD/Mega CD is a 3D shoot-'em up that combines several different types of gameplay into one game. Some levels in this game are on a fixed path, similar to Space Harrier or Star Fox. Other levels allow your space craft to hover freely around a 3D environment, and in other levels your craft transforms into a walker robot for close-up attacks.
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decent star fox clone, but the soundtrack is what carries this game.
the controls ruin this otherwise impressive-looking tech demonstration. it starts rough with the rail shooting's bad collision detection and acceleration on movement, and then you get to the ground missions and face one of the worst doom-style control schemes ever conceived. It's like, the dpad moves forward/backward and strafes, except when you're moving forward which replaces your strafing with turning, but that's inverted if you're holding the strafe button, which you also use to control your Z axis hovering, which also locks your forward momentum in place until you release it, and moving also skews the axis of your shot, so if you ever shoot while moving ahead your shot just hits the ground, and even if you do land a hit everything takes like 20 shots to kill.
All you had to do was show off some impressive pseudo-3D sprite scaling. What should be the highlight of the console's graphical capabilities is reduced to floppy, unplayable drivel. Man.
All you had to do was show off some impressive pseudo-3D sprite scaling. What should be the highlight of the console's graphical capabilities is reduced to floppy, unplayable drivel. Man.
this seems like it could be pretty cool during the first on-rails shooting stage, if a bit unpolished. the graphics are ultra slick. when you get to the second stage where you move around like a tank, though, it all goes down the tubes. would've been a bummer to pick this one up retail based on how it looked back in the day, only to find it's a bad game.