Sam / 22 \ Dead and rotting
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lamp post
Charge ‘n Blast (2000)
Charge and Blast delivers on it’s promise to all gamers, you get to both charge N you get to blast.
Hey this was a weird game. I hadn’t played or even head of Charge N Blast before so my curiosity was peaked. It turns out that this game is mostly an on rails shooter in which you control a person in a mech(?) that has a limited amount of time to destroy all of the on-screen monsters. To do that, you choose a weapon (CHARGE) by pressing the X, Y, or B button. Then, you aim and (BLAST) by pressing A. Really the only other way you’re able to interact with the game is by moving left or right with the shoulder buttons, which you can use to attempt to dodge some of the attacks. I usually was just strafing back and forth, which weirdly worked out pretty well.
Similar to 4 Wheel Thunder, this game inherits some game design choices that seem like a hold-over from the arcade days. The most obvious of these choices is the presence of continues in the game. Similar to an arcade game, when your health depletes you are presented with the option to 'Continue??’. Of course, there was no quarter slot on the Dreamcast so instead the designers opted to just give you a predetermined number of continues.
I feel like I saw this method applied pretty often, and especially on games that were ported from, or originally designer for the arcade. I certainly don’t think it’s a bad approach, and in the cold daylight of 2022 feels almost roguelike given that you have to go all the way back to the beginning once you run out of continues. However that would like also come packaged with some variability in the power ups or levels, which this game does not.
I’ve found that I tend to enjoy the aesthetics of this generation of games, and Charge N Blast fits nicely in that group. It’s got this very bright palette of colors while still remaining fairly low poly. It’s something that I’m sure doesn’t appeal to everyone but I’ve found it to be really charming the farther away from these releases we’ve gotten.
I saw a review on Backloggd from user NewYokohama which said: 'Easily one of the most hopelessly stupid game I’ve ever played. It’s like Virtual On but you can’t move forward. Also it sucks.’ That feels a bit harsh. The game IS simple and I likely won’t be returning to it day after day, but there’s something to be said for a simple game that just lets you Blast and also Charge.
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Eating by candlelight during a 1972 power cut - Ironbridge Power Station in the background
Photo by David Bagnall
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Christina Bothwell, Awakening, 2021, Cast glass, raku ceramic, oil paint
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“There’s only one bed” scenes but it’s the fucked up repressed gay bed from Revolutionary Girl Utena
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