Expendable

The Good
Rambo banzai!! Shoot everything that moves! - and everything that doesn't.

The point of Expendable is like Contra, you have to progress forward while opposing enemies stand their ground and try to kill you. But there are 2-3 times more enemies than in Contra games, they are harder to get to, and in general the game is DARK. The precise warfare found in other one-man-army games.. isn't there. This definitely isn't Shinobi, or Metal Gear. Imagine Raiden, a game where bullets and missles never stop flying. Now imagine Raiden on the ground, in a pitch black night, and in control of a small man who can rotate 360 degrees to kill everything he encounters. That is Expendable. It isn't a fun game, but isn't complete "Vusar Zusar" garbage. It doesn't really do anything too bad.. but the problem is that it doesn't do much of anything good. Perhaps you could imagine Gauntlet Legends, but in a big exploding dark mess, with even worse graphics, and without the 4 player mode.

You just keep running up while holding the fire button down. When you get to a trench, its a 30 seconds fire-works display. You strafe avoiding the enemies bullets. Here and there you throw a grenade, or they shoot some rocket at you, or an explosive barrel blows up.. When the trench is cleared you start running again, after 5 seconds of empty road you come up to the next trench, and the action repeats.

The Bad
The worse part about this game are the graphics. Even when this game came out, I thought it looked terrible. Basically it looks something like a 3rd party N64 game, terribly blurry and blocky. The sounds and music in this game are not even up to par with Crusin' USA in the arcades. The control is the best part of the game and isn't even good at all, but it gets the job.

The Bottom Line
This is a typical Playstation game; on the Dreamcast. Imagine Fighting Force 2, and the pros and cons of that game. Now take almost all the pro's away, but leave the cons. The only pro being there is a 2 player mode where friends can team up together and run around 'Zombies Ate My Neighbors' style. Other than that I can't think of a single redeeming value for it at all. But if you like to blow stuff up, and have played through all the much better Dreamcast ground-shooters out there (Cannon Spike, Charge N' Blast, Alien Front Online, Fur Fighters, Zombie Revenge) just to name a few, you could give this one a try if you really feel like you need to. It is a fully working game, just not a very pleasing one.

The Good
As with Rage's other famous product, 'Incoming', this exists primarily as a show-off for accelerated 3D graphics, with gameplay secondary. On the other hand, it's actually quite fun to play, and it's nice to see an uncomplicated, non-FPS shooting-game being released for the normally strategy-obsessed PC.

The Bad
Apart from the looks, it's not really any more advanced than a million mid-80's vertically-scrolling, 'Ikari Warriors'-esque arcade games. The gameplay revolves around collecting ever-more-outrageous power-ups whilst facing-down bigger and tougher bosses, and has absolutely no longevity or replay value. You could probably get as much enjoyment from watching somebody else completing the game for you.

The Bottom Line
Attractive retro 3d-ish shooting game, fun for a short while.