Athena's
stylish and very difficult Snes shooter..
Destroy all Biometallic Monsters!
I
remember seeing a review of Biometal in a UK Snes
magazine a few years back and salivating over the
screenshots.. It sure is a looker, and
alongside Axelay and Macross Scrambled
Valkyrie, I would have to rate it as one of the
best looking Snes shoot-em-ups ever. However
looks alone do not make the perfect game, as we
shall see..
'Ladies and Gents..your pilots
for this evening are..'
Biometal's plot involves the usual
Japanese space sci-fi themes. A newly discovered
alien civilisation of bio-mechanical nasties
needs to be wiped out before they destroy
humankind, and you along with your female
biologist sidekick have been sent in your lone
(but luckily rather nicely equipped) starfighter
to take 'em out on their home turf.
And a rather neat looking vehicle it
is too, although it seems to be lacking in a few
fundamentals (where is the cockpit?!). Still,
it's certainly not lacking in the big-gun
department, and that's the main thing eh?
Weapon power-ups are gained by
destroying pods and picking up the released
power-ups, which cycle through the various weapon
types as in Raiden. Some
weapons cancel each other out though so a little
experimentation is called for. You also have a
shield at your disposal in the form of four
spinning orbs which circle your ship when the A
button is pressed, and are retracted by pressing
the button again. However while activated they
drain charge power and need to be used sparingly.
These shield orbs can also be used as a smart
bomb if called for, whereby they spin outwards
destroying anything within their area, although
you are limited to using these only when your
charge power is high.
The graphics are very Giger-esque
(the guy who designed the creature from 'Alien' -
a popular style during the late 80's/early 90's)
and none the worse for it, with some nicely drawn
alien craft and fairly spectacular end-of-level
bosses. Unfortunately you will need to run ZSnes
in 16-bit mode to appreciate all the in-game
effects, which use a lot of mode-7 raster effects
and some impressive parallax scrolling. (Or do as
a did and have a hunt around for the original
Snes version..)
The price of all this graphic detail
however is that there is so much going on at some
points in the game, with swathes of bullets,
explosions and FX that it is hard to keep track
of your ship in the mayhem! Using the shield orbs
becomes mandatory at many stages of the game, and
you soon realise that the best way to progress is
to learn where and when to use your shields
rather than relying on any high degree of
shooting skills. More of a shield-em-up than a
shoot-em-up in my book!
Biometal
is certainly exteremely stylish and is very
nearly a great shooter, but is let down by a few
niggles here and there..although it's still good
enough to get:
Score
out of Five:
 
Mike B
Mission On! : The first stage
starts with you decending through the clouds
towards the surface of the Bio-metal alien's
Planet..
|
