I just finished this tonight, and JEEEZZZUS it is f*cking awful in every sense of the word. Let me just run down the list of problems;
-There isn't even a hint of parallax. Not even one background layer.
-The worst flicker I have ever seen in any game, period. Remember how bad the first generation of SNES games were for flicker? Well Strider is like that times about 10. There are parts on every level where you literally can't even see Strider because his entire sprite disappears. For example, when you beat the first boss (or any boss actually), you disappear for a few seconds while the smoke sprites appear. It's not limited to Strider either, everything flickers in and out of existence, there are a few parts in the game where you will get hit by invisible enemies every single f*cking time you play, it's maddening. The game can't even display every sprite in the snake bosses at once, and if Strider is standing on the same line then about half of the boss disappears (either that or Strider disappears).
-Strider doesn't move his legs when you swing your sword and walk, it looks like he's just sliding along the ground.
-His sword swinging animation has exactly 2 frames of animation. Instead of his sword making one cool looking swath like in the arcade and Genesis version, here his sword flickers between an upper/lower half that just looks plain amatuerish.
-Horrible, horrible collision detection. Sometimes you can be inches away from a projectile or enemy, and it'll score a hit for some reason, and other times I've had projectiles pass through Strider's limbs with no hit scored. It's very inconsistent and frustrating.
-The controls are f*cking trash. Sometimes Strider jumps straight up when you jump off objects, sometimes he jumps a little up and to the left or right, depending on how he feels. Sometimes this causes you to fall into pits. When you're running down soemthing sometimes the game just decides to ignore you pressing the jump button, especially if it's something like a vine.
Especially annoying/frustrating/retarded parts of the game;
-Beating the gravity boss on the last level will dump you straight down into a pit about 75% of the time.
-The gravity bosses take about 4 times as many hits as in the arcade/Genesis, and you get knocked out of your rotations by invisible things (I still have no idea what does it, but every 2 rotations you just get hit for no reason no matter what).
-The gorilla boss will cause you to roll INTO him if you get hit instead of knocking you back like EVERY OTHER f*ckING thing in the game.
-You don't fight the Gorilla and T-rex at the same time like in the arcade, you fight the t-rex first which is pointless since he doesn't even attack you, he just sits there. The gorilla also takes about 2-3 times more hits.
-In level 2 you have to duck to hit the stupid dogs, in the arcade you could just walk forward and smash them.
-Level 4 the brontosaurus' don't even move! In the arcade they walked along with you on their back, here they just stand there and make you jump off their heads (Which is ultra annoying since Strider tends to fall through shit easily, and you have to inch your way to the tip of the first one's nose to be able to jump to the next one).
-The ending sucks SHIT. They give you a few decently cool (but short) cinemas in between levels, then you get 3 f*cking crappy little barely animated pictures for the ending. They even took out the cool scene from the arcade ending where he lands his glider on a whale. Why was this an arcade card game?
THE GOOD!
-The extra level is decent, even though it's ultra easy.
-The intro/level intro cinemas are really, really short, but pretty cool.
-The voice acting is nice (even though I can't understand the awesome "All sons of old gods, DIE!!" speach since it's in Japanese).
-You get unlimited continues so you can beat it in one night and never touch it again. Good luck with the last boss though, I had to play through that last level about 15 f*cking times before I got lucky and beat him.
