Bio Menace

The Good
The graphics of Bio Menace are very nice: colourful and fun---with just a splash of gristle. The player is also treated to globby synth music and sound effects. Gameplay aspects that make this game somewhat unique are its crystal-shard system (usually the player must find crystal shards to unlock the exit to a level), its key system (almost all doors must be opened with keys---laser walls must be opened with special keys called key cards), its colour-codes (to unlock hidden stores of booty the player must memorize a sequence of colours and input them in the correct order using colour switches; if the player fails to put them in the correct order, the floor collapses and the player falls into a trap---usually a deadly pit or a room of monsters or spikes), and finally its weapons (there is a wide assortment of weapons to collect, some of the powerful weapons even going through multiple enemies). There are also a lot of enemies in this game (mutants and robots), and some are very unique; one never gets bored with fighting the same things. Finally, the backstory, while not very involved and a tad cliche, has classic appeal: a psychopathic doctor performing hideous genetic experiments and creating an army of mutants and robots to take over the world, and a shadowy, evil mastermind behind it all.

The Bad
The player cannot switch weapons. The most powerful weapon must be depleted before the player can use the next-most powerful weapon and so on. As soon as a player gets a more powerful weapon than the one he or she is using, the player must use that weapon until it is depleted. This can be annoying. For example, if you want to lob grenades over a wall and you just picked up some landmines you have two choices: (1) waste all ten landmines to get to the grenades, or (2) don't. This problem, however, is very minor; most often any weapon will suffice in killing hordes of enemies.

The Bottom Line
You play a mustachioed, mulleted, bad-ass CIA operative trying to save the world from masses of mutants and swarms of cyborgs all to modish, gloopy synth tunes.