Monotonous but worth a shot (or five hundred).
Overall: 6.5/10
For an arcade game that's hardly any younger than GBA consoles, Mag Max is an incredibly impressive game.  If it weren't for the few little signs here and there that give its age away, I'd say this masterpiece is comparable even to some modern age games.   Like all games, it has a few set backs, but I personally felt there weren't as many as would be needed to take enjoyment away from the game play.

Interestingly enough, this game was also one of the first (if not the first) to have a feature which allowed players to fast forward through the shooting and scrolling.  Most arcade games before this one had not even considered an increased speed to be possible, and this feature of the game sets it miles ahead of its competitors.  It's a shame that other neat aspects weren't flaunted more often, but I'll talk about those further along in the review.

GRAPHICS: 7/10
Fast scrolling wasn't the only unique feature of Mag Max.  The developers of the game decided to be brave when they programmed it, and it happened to be one of the first scrolling shooters which had 3-D scrolling.  What does this mean?  Not only does the camera scroll forward through a stage, but the player can control their sprite to move further away in the distance horizontally, or closer to the perspective of the player.  Instead of being restricted to forwards motion, players can guide their sprite in any direction they wish.  This was an amazing feature for the time, and this alone is worthy of high praise.

Here's part of the issue: the 3-D scrolling is only limited to the above ground play. As soon as you strive to play underground, the programming resorts back to straightforward movement with no deviation other than height.  This was especially disappointing to me because I found the below surface portion of the game to be more interesting (visually) than the above surface.  Nonetheless, the 3-D scrolling is pretty awesome.  It does, however, bring up another point.

Most of the ground and wall textures are pretty lackadaisical and flat.  If you are above the surface, you will be faced with one of four landscapes: greenery littered with dirt roads, dessert, vast bodies of water, or some man-made surface.  In each case, it's obvious that the terrain is meant to be 3-D, and yet the art fails to capture the effect.  The trees and shrubs look like miniature Mario Brother bushes, and the ocean looks unrealistically calm and flat.  The desert landscape and man-made surfaces do a better job, but still miss the mark by quite  bit.  Therefore, when playing the game, there's a juxtaposition between the fluidity of movement and the flatness of the surfaces which are moved over.  It's kind of an odd mix, but I honestly didn't notice it myself (someone else pointed it out to me) because the game was enjoyable enough despite those circumstances.

The underground textures are a little more disappointing.  Although there is no need for 3-D graphics in the 2-D movement, it's obvious that the creative juices weren't flowing when someone designed the walls, ceilings, and floors.  Walls have either maroon brick-like textures or gray less-than-dazzling displays of digital technology.  Neither are very appealing, and the similarity of color palettes between the upper and lower levels is a little much.

That aside I couldn't find much worth complaining about.  At first, I was astonished that there were so few bad guys because the game loops infinitely and I felt that I was seeing every few sprites.  When I started trying to list them all, I realized how untrue this observation was. Just to list a few, there are:
orange domes that open up to shoot, floating metal sailboats, standing drills that rotate, flip flopping gray triangles,pipe like objects that pop out of the ground like Pokémon, 3-D diamonds that shoot at you, metal muffin shaped robots with red orbs on their circumference, pincers that come out of the ground and snap at you, spiky urchin like creatures, funny robots that march along the surface, and space ship shaped objects hovering on top of yellow beams. Keep in mind that there were easily half a dozen more, at least.  It seems like this is one of the first games in which enemy variety was not a complaint for me.  The sprites are almost too imaginative for me though, making them hard to describe.

The lack of color also left something to be desired both in enemy sprites and landscapes. Upper landscapes were green, tan, blue, or gray... while lower landscapes were maroon, gray, or blue.  Enemies were almost always gray, with occasional red or green parts. Considering that the game continuously loops, this was a bad decision in my opinion, lending to a feeling of monotony while playing.

One aspect I found both praise-worthy and a let down, was the shadows portrayed by the sprite.  Although the game designers were attentive enough to include the shadow crucial for the 3-D feel, the shadow is simply a black circle whose radius changes based upon the distance between your bot's two feet.  Bullets also had shadows, which I found to be completely awesome.

There are other aspects of the graphics which make me consider this a 'meh' game, but I don't want to bore readers by delving into each aspect in great detail.  The things I mentioned above were certainly the most obvious flaws.  There is one more major flaw dealing with the graphics, but I'll discuss it when I cover the game's depth.

All in all, I think it suffices to say that the graphics are almost more disappointing than they are impressive.  In my opinion this game showed far more potential than many of its time.... but the awesome graphics certainly weren't flaunted as they should have been.

Sound:5/10
Thankfully, the game designers of Mag Max had enough sense to keep the speed function applicable to graphics only.  If the music had sped up while game play did, I would have been forced to shut the game down almost immediately.  I felt the music really needed no help in being more annoying, as it sounded rash and unplanned.... as though random techno noises were thrown together and called 'music'.  Even the quality isn't that great and reminds me of music played on old Sega handhelds.

Basically, there are two types of music in this game: one for game play above ground, and one for game play below ground. Out of the two themes, the underground one is certainly the more aggravating one, being much faster paced and irritating to the ears.  However, it at least matches the tempo and feel of the game.  The upper surface music caused me to envision robots skipping through flying bullets and singing a song about lollipops. One of the worst parts about the horrible music though, is the fact that you must listen to it over... and over... and over again as you continuously loop through the game world.

Equally upsetting is this:  up until I gave this game a shot, I had NEVER played a game in which the 'boss' of each round did not have its own music.  When I first saw the boss of Mag Max, I was very confused;  Here was obviously a creature much tougher than others, but why had the music not changed?  Was I actually supposed to kill the thing or pass it by? Why didn't the boss at least try to frighten my boots off with a terrible scream?

There were other times in which sound effects would be appropriate as well, but weren't existent.  For example, when your sprite loses a body part, not a single sound is made as the part explodes out of existence.  When a Stalagmite crashes from the ceiling, it falls silently.  If other explosions and crashes were silent, this might have made some sense.  However, nearly all creatures have a unique sound upon dying at the onslaught of your bullets, making for a very awkward audio environment.

Addictiveness:7/10
Despite some graphic flaws and irritating music, I found the game to be surprisingly addictive.  Perhaps it was the level of difficulty which drew me in since I've never been very good at scrolling shooters, but I think it was the ability to choose an upper or lower level that drew me in.  It even took me quite some time to realize that the same game world was looping endlessly and that I had probably flown through the same space more than a dozen times.  It was only when I realized the game had no ending, that I was able to break away from it and look into doing something else.  I usually hate games with no ending, but I wouldn't mind coming back to this one at all.  It's a bit impressive that the game is able to keep me interested even in light of everything I mentioned above, so I have to rate this pretty high.  It has wonderful replay value if you're a high score seeker.

Story: N/A
As far as I am aware, there is none.  What a shame.  There isn't enough offered in the play to hint at a unique story either.

(Grrr... ignore the rating I gave it.  Totally accidental, and I didn't notice until it was after set, meaning I can't leave that category blank any more.)

Depth: 6/10
This category was slightly difficult for me to rate.  As I mentioned above, this game is -solely- a high score game, which I usually deem pretty shallow.  However, it's also go this endless loop of play which I can't decide whether I like or hate.  I mean, if I had loved the game, I could play it forever and ever, always working to increase my score.  On the other hand, there's not a huge sense of drive when you know there is no ultimatum for game plot.  Even if I adored the game, I'm sure I'd get tired of it after the 100th loop.  That being said, one revolution of the world is quite impressively extensive.  (Geez, I need to work on improving my vocabulary for these reviews!)  I think I couldn't have handled the looping otherwise, but it's almost unnoticeable until you've found yourself playing the game for an hour with no stopping.

Then too, there's the fact that repetition of a set world doesn't allow for the introduction of new things.  Offering such a huge variety of enemy sprites is a wonderful thing until you consider the fact that ten days of gaming won't result in new actions or characters.  There are also only three types of weapons in the entire game (a gun with 'normal' bullets, one that spits fireballs, and a drill like thing that can bust through barricades and enemies).

Even the lack of story takes from the depth of the game.  I think the 'bosses' are arguably some of the coolest ones I've seen in any game I've ever played... but this doesn't change the fact that defeating the boss only allows you to move forward in the game and does nothing to add to the game play.

Hence I'd say my rating of 6/10 is solely for the sake of the looping world and being able to play the game indefinitely.

Difficulty: 6/10
Even by simply viewing a few screen shots, it's probably no secret that this game isn't exactly difficult.  It's not easy enough to drive someone into boredom quickly though, which is probably about perfect for me personally.

One of the things I did like about the game was that being shot doesn't necessarily mean losing a life.  As you scroll through the game, one of three body parts will appear on the ground (legs, arms, or a head), and you can fly over them to collect them and add them to the body of your ship.  If you have any of these parts, they get destroyed when shot and this is the sole consequence.  You only die if you have no spare body parts and you get shot.  Personally, I think this is a great idea, but the downside is that the body parts are -way- too frequent.  Whenever I did lose body parts, I could replace them within a minute or two in most cases.

Also, picking up those body parts doesn't mean an upgrade in weaponry.  Instead, picking up another part only increases the number of bullets you can shoot.  Normally you can shoot one row of bullets from the body of the ship, but if you pick up legs, for example... you can shoot two rows of bullets: one from the body and one from the legs. Your bullets always follow a straight path however, so I'm not sure that this really improved your ability to take down enemy ships.  In fact, picking up more body parts could mean difficulty later on when bunkers lie in your path which you can not crash into.

Speaking of which, the bunkers can't be destroyed with your bullets, so if you crash into them, you die.  This is a nice addition to the game which forces the player to make use of the 3-D scrolling.  There is one weapon that can destroy the bunkers though, and it's a bit rare in comparison to other body parts.  (It looks like a drill sword which stays held out by your sprite, and you can still shoot bullets while holding it.)

Probably one of the bigger disappointments concerning Mag Max's difficulty is the pathways of enemy bullets.  Almost every enemy shoots toward your current position, with only one enemy shooting only straight forward.  The lack of variance in flight path makes the bullets just -too- easy to dodge.  The predictability makes it simple enough to establish a pattern of flight which avoids most damage.

The only exception to this, actually, were the boss machines.  On the surface above, the boss is a gray tank with three dragon heads or a black machine with three dragon heads which turns the whole game screen black during battle.  While underground, only the black version of the boss is available.  The black dragons cause a pause in movement, meaning the game does not continue scrolling until the machine is defeated.  With the gray tank however, the screen keeps scrolling. What's common between all three versions however, is the fact that all three have variable shooting patterns.  They are the only enemies in the entire game with this characteristic, of which I was grateful for.  It's a shame that there is only the one dragon template for the boss sprites though, and an even bigger shame that coming across them is pretty infrequent.



Overall, for a game that established so many precedents (speed play feature, 3-D scrolling, and endless play), Mag Max comes off as slightly disappointing.  It's full of so much potential, but the designers squandered much of that.  I think there's a lot to be said for the game though in the fact that I would still play and enjoy it....... that is, as long as my computer is muted!  It's a decent game worth playing by gamers of all ages though I'd be hesitant to advise hardcore gamers to give it a shot.



((I didn't really see much of a point in adding images to this review, and for that I apologize.  The color scheme is just unappealing, and with my gray layout for reviews, I figure adding more gray to this post would only make the game look even worse than it actually is. There's a lot of gray in the game though, I'll say that much!))

























  Graphics 7   Sound 5   Addictive 7   Depth 6   Story 1   Difficulty 6

Overall 7.3    Graphics 7    Sound 5    Addictive 7    Story 1    Depth 6    Difficulty 6

Monotonous but worth a shot (or five hundred).   Singelli
Overall: 6.5/10 For an arcade game that's hardly any younger than GBA consoles, Mag Max is an incred...
  Graphics 7   Sound 5   Addictive 7   Story 1   Depth 6   Difficulty 6
      Review Rating: 3.7/5     Submitted: 02-17-13     Updated: 02-17-13     Review Replies: 5

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