Skeleton Warriors

My first impression of Skeleton Warriors was stunning graphics, incredible music, but no play mechanics. Well, a few levels into it, the play got interesting too, so Skeleton Warriors truly does have it all. The Saturn's at it's best with SW's incredible 3-D 2-D and Tommy Tallarico's composed the best soundtrack of his life, by far. I wish you could run a bit faster, but otherwise, there's very little to find fault with here.

Good Lord! After months of dull Saturn games, the 32-bit Sega machine is finally getting its share of nifty software. Skeleton Warriors is a fine example of what can be achieved with even conventional game styles on the powerful platform.

More variety in the levels would have boosted this Fun Factor, but this traditional slashquest might hook you anyway For heroes who are happy as long as their sword works, Skeleton Warriors should be a keeper.

This is the sort of side-scrolling, run from left to right action I'd quite frankly hoped we'd seen the last of with the passing of 16-bit. However, wonder of wonders, I actually liked it - didn't love it exactly, but it kept me interested and even managed a few surprises on it's own.

The characters are large, finely detailed, and have a "claymation" quality to them. Some stages feature snow, which is always a nice bonus. Apocalyptic background music really adds to the intensity. Skeleton Warriors is hard as hell, and you'll soon discover that it will take more than non-stop hacking to beat this game - use your special attacks strategically. There's even a slick 3D hover bike level to break up the monotony. Skeleton Warriors is a surprisingly good time.

This is really a treat for those who enjoyed the platformers on the classic consoles and nothing more. You can imagine that this is how they would have looked if the hardware could have handled it. Why they chose to implement the shooting levels is a bit odd, but there are only a few of these to suffer through. If you can just enjoy "Skeleton Warriors" for what it is, you'll have a good time.

With such excellent graphics and music on a mediocre game, one has to wonder what the designers were thinking. If they had spent more time on the gameplay, Skeleton Warriors could have been the best game ever to come out on a Saturn. Instead, it is just a rehash of thousands of games we have seen before, with nothing new.

The game looks great. The characters are exquisitely rendered, making one of the best looking games of its genre. The control is well balanced and executed as well. Unfortunately, the very nature of the game ensures that it grows tedious real fast. You can only chop up skeletons for so long before you long for something new. Even a limited depth of field would be helpful, like in the side-scrolling levels of Crash. As it stands, Skeleton Warriors is a nice reminder of the past, but offers little in the way of innovation.

If you're a big platform game fan, or someone with a skeleton fetish of some sort, this title is probably worth playing once or twice. It does have a nice visual and audio presentation if nothing else, and the cut-scenes showing the prince's progression through the ranks to reach his evil cousin tell a brief but interesting story.