![]() ![]() Lethal Enforcers II is, for the most part, an excellent game. ![]() Other clever touches include a piano that can be 'played' by shooting it, bad guys who fall down stairs or into horse troughs and the town drunk who wanders through the middle of a gun fight, like some Crazy Guggenheim routine. Lanterns and bottles explode in showers of glass, chandeliers crash to the floor, and barrels spring leaks when shot, all adding tiny bits of verisimilitude to this otherwise very arcade-y game. Many of the object in the background respond to being shot, like signs & paintings that fall off walls and reveal weapon upgrades. Most levels also end with a boss who will really punish your trigger finger, as you try to land hits on him while fending off his attacks. Bonus stage awards you big points for shooting as many bottles off a saloon's bar or thrown in the air in a short amount of time. For example, Stage 2 has you defending a runaway stage coach from outlaws and indians on horseback. Most of the action in Lethal Enforcers II takes place in the aforementioned static environments, but it does mix in some variety. At the end of each stage, your score is tallied and you're given a rankįrom Posse (worst) to US Marshal (best) based on how accurate your aim was and how many innocents survived the onslaught. However, all of them disappear the moment you take a hit, so unless you're really quick on the draw, most of your time will be spent wielding the lowly revolver. Some weapons, like the rifle, can be reloaded while others, like the gatling gun, are dropped once they're empty. Lose all of your stars and it's game over, though you can continue up to nine times. There are several weapon upgrades to be found in each stage, such as a rifle with double the ammo capacity of your revolver, a fully-automatic gatling gun, and a cannon that looks more like a dodgeball launcher. If you get shot, or you shoot an innocent bystander, you lose a star. Pick them off in the split-second before they get a bead on you, but watch our for hostages or innocent bystanders who wander onto the screen. You start the game five lives represented by stars at the top of the screen. The criminals run the Old West cliché gamut from scruffy cowboys and outlaws to banditos, indians and even Derringer-packing hookers-and they're all gunning for you. (Aim the Justifier away from the screen & pull the trigger to reload.) In most levels, the bad guys move around a static background location like a bank or saloon, shooting at you from windows, kicking open doors, jumping out from behind barrels, etc. It's 1873, and you're a sheriff sent to fight crime in a nameless spaghetti western town by shooting nearly all of its inhabitants.Your weapon of choice is a revolver that holds six bullets at a time. Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters is an on-rails arcade shooter that plays like Hogan's Alley meets Mad Dog McCree. So now that we know all about the gun, let's talk about a game that uses it. Of course, you must use a CRT TV set with the Justifier, as it will not work with any other kind of television. Its accuracy is significantly better than the Zapper's, though, and it can't be tricked by aiming it at a light bulb. The Justifier's trigger feels mushy and imprecise and it lacks the Zapper's satisfying clang when pulled. Though not particularly heavy, the Justifier has decent weight and balance, and is comfortable to hold for extended periods. It's an awkward setup that requires the second player to sit uncomfortably close to both the first player and the Genesis, as neither of the guns' cables are very long. There are two versions of the Justifier: a blue revolver that plugs into controller port 2 on the Genesis and a pink revolver that daisy-chains into the blue revolver's butt for two-player games. Sega didn't see fit to include a light gun with the Genesis at all, so it fell to Konami to release the Justifier, which was bundled with its Genesis port of the arcade game, Lethal Enforcers. Unfortunately, light gun games always seem to get short shrift, as they typically make up a small fraction of any console's library. Though I've never shot anything more formidable than a BB gun in real life, nothing gives me greater joy than blowing holes in pixellated bad guys with a gun-shaped hunk of plastic. Love 'em! You can keep your Kinects and your Eye Toys and your Wii Motion Plussesses because video games attained interactive perfection with the NES Zapper. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |