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   Company Hudson Soft ESRB Rating E for Everyone Release Date US - February 5, 2007 Controllers Wii Remote Classic Controller Gamecube Controller Wii Points 600  Review by: Corbie Dillard ©2008 Virtual-Turbo |
I
can
all but guarantee that most people that play Vigilante will think of
one game right off the bat. That game being Kung Fu Master. That's to
be expected since Irem basically used the game play engine from Kung Fu
Master for Vigilante. They pretty much slapped on a "City Streets"
theme and turned the Kung Fu Master into a Street Thug. It would be
easy to compare Vigilante to the other street-fighting type game Final
Fight, but unlike Final Fight, Vigilante doesn't allow your player to
move around the screen in all directions, instead, much like Kung Fu
Master, your character can only move left and right. There's still a
lot of strategy to the fighting, but not nearly the same level as that
found in Final Fight or Double Dragon. Overall Vigilante is just Kung
Fu Master with an all-new theme tacked on for good measure.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but if you've played Kung Fu Master, you've basically played Vigilante. Not much has changed other than the scenery and characters. You walk along in side-scrolling fashion punching and kicking everyone that gets in your way. You basically have 6 moves to choose from. Three variations of kicks and three variations of punches. You're first instinct will be to try to play the game using only one attack, but you'll soon find that you're going to have to use different moves on different characters. Some of the stronger characters require a little more strategy to defeat rather than just blindly walking up and kicking them. As you progress through each level, occasionally you'll come across a set of nunchucks. Picking these up will then add them to your punches. They also do more damage than a standard punch so save them for the tougher enemies. At the end of each level you'll have to duke it out with a boss character. I don't want to ruin it for you, but the sad fact is that all of the bosses you fight in this game are very easily beaten by getting into one specific location and using one attack over and over again. It's up to you to figure out which spot and which move. After you've beaten the boss you'll move on to the next level and one step closer to the lovely Madonna. The control in Vigilante is quite responsive. It's easy to pull off any of the character's moves, even in a pinch. If you get overwhelmed by enemies, you can even jiggle the control pad back and forth in order to throw off any enemies that have a hold of you. The level of difficulty gets a little harder as you progress through the levels, but other than the final boss, you shouldn't have too much trouble blowing through the game. As was stated above, all of the bosses have a very distinct weakness, you just have to find out what it is and exploit it. If there's one gripe with the game it's that the overall experience is a little on the short side. Other than that, Vigilante is a great beat em' up game that's got a lot of style to it. It might be just another version of Kung Fu Master, but it's still a lot of fun. There's no denying that Vigilante is a good looking game. Easily on par with Double Dragon or Final Fight on the other 16-bit systems. While the game's not quite as colorful as many of the previous Turbografx-16 titles, it still uses the large color palette of the Turbografx-16 to add a very detailed look to the backgrounds in the game. The characters and enemies in the game aren't too shabby either and show a good amount of animation for a 2-D hand-drawn game from this era. Each level has its own distinct look and feel to it, and luckily there's not a lot of repetition in the many areas of the game. You won't hardly see the same thing twice throughout the game. For an early Turbografx-16 titles, Vigilante looks fantastic. Any fan of the Turbografx-16 knows that it had an amazing built-in sound chip. So naturally many of the games for the system sported some absolutely phenomenal music and sound effects. Unfortunately, this isn't one of them. The music in the game isn't that bad, but it never seems to change much. Level after level, the musical tracks seem like more of the same. If they were a lot better to begin with, this wouldn't be such a big deal, but given the fact that they're not that appealing the first time, they tend to get old after long playing sessions. The sound effects in the game are pretty decent, but most of them are relegated to grunts and kicking noises than anything. There's really not a big need for a lot of flashy sound effects anyway in a game like this. It's a good musical effort, but certainly not up to par with what the Turbografx-16 is capable of. I've heard Vigilante called "a poor man's Double Dragon" many times over the years. While the game does share the look of Double Dragon, it's a very different gameplay experience altogether. You'd be more accurate if you called it "a street fightin' man's Kung Fu Master" to be honest. If you like a senseless side-scrolling fighting game, Vigilante should fill that need quite nicely. It's a very well laid-out game that has a solid and responsive control system and a decent amount of challenge. The game is a little on the short side, but it's a fun ride while it lasts. Vigilante proves that even some of the earliest Turbografx-16 titles were quite good. |
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