Comix Zone - PS3
Revisiting this game as I played it back on the Genesis...boy, time has not been kind to this game
Comix Zone is a frustrating game. It does a lot of brilliant things. The idea of playing through an interactive comic book is great. And the game visually executes this idea perfectly with you literally moving from panel to panel on comic book pages and an unseen character drawing in enemies. Comix Zone is one of the better looking Genesis games and it still holds up now as a great looking game. There's lot of cool, clever details like sending enemies flying through panels of the page. Or how your rat friend can find hidden items or routes by actually ripping part of the page. You also get to pick different paths in the game by deciding which panel you want to go to next.
And the fact that characters get to speak a lot with all of it being conveyed through dialog bubbles is great. In fact, a cool little touch is that enemies will say different things depending on the situation. So if you're using the same move over and over again and the enemy is blocking it they'll say, "This is getting old" or if you're standing on an object above an enemy he'll say, "Get down here!". I even had an enemy tell me my jump kick is lame after I tried hitting him with one. It's wonderfully dynamic and makes every play through feel a bit different.
Unfortunately...Comix Zone isn't very fun to play. The game is a beat 'em up, which means its number one goal should be to make "beating people up"...fun. However, enemy encounters in this game are just obnoxious. The AI in Comix Zone seriously needs to be turned down a bit. EVERY enemy blocks EVERY...FUCKING...MOVE. They are also smart enough to counter and out maneuver you...all while talking shit to you the whole time. It makes you want to punch your fist through the TV screen. The only way to successfully win most fights is either to spam items or hope that the game decides to be nice and randomly let some of your attacks get through the constant turtling that enemies do in this game. The game seems to want you to mix up your attacks as a way to get past an enemy's guard, which is great in theory, but sometimes even when I was trying different combos I would still get constantly denied by the enemy's incessant blocking, following by cheap, counter hits. At no point while playing through Comix Zone will you actually look forward to fighting things...a colossal failure in a beat 'em up game.
On top of that, the level design is cheap in some spots. Plus, the game screws you in other ways like how it forces you to destroy certain objects in the game and hitting them with your fists and feet does damage to you. Is that realistic? Yes. It's also cheap. It's damage you are FORCED to take. Plus, there's the obnoxious, question mark items, which often have explosives to damage you. Also, it's annoying that some stages don't start you with your health back. There are other problems too. Like the little rat guy, who is actually one of the game's cool features. He can find secrets for you, which is critical for getting through the game. And he can even take out certain enemies. However, the game can be pretty random about whether or not he takes out those ninja girls. And it's also annoying how you have to remember to pick him back up after you use him
On the plus side, the game's boss fights are pretty cool. There's usually a trick to winning and unlike the cheap, regular enemies in the game, bosses have patterns which means they regularly leave you openings for attacking them
The game also has some nice, puzzle solving elements that typically require you to smartly use your environment to make progress or defeat certain enemies.
Conceptually, the game is great, and still feels unique today with the only other game I can think of as similar to it being Comic Jumper (ironically, another frustratingly hard game). Comix Zone is something of a cult classic because of how unique it was, and still is today. However, "timeless" classic is not a label that can be applied to this game as I think most modern gamers would just find this game too frustrating to play. There are far better old school beat 'em ups from that era, like Streets of Rage 2, Turtles in Time on the SNES, Batman Returns on the SNES, Ninja Warriors Again, Hyperstone Heist, Final Fight 3, etc, etc, etc. Comix Zone just doesn't hold up to the test of time while those games do. Streets of Rage 2 is still heralded by many as the best beat 'em up ever and Turtles in Time is not too far behind it in prestige. If Comix Zone focused less on being cool and different, and more on being a fun and well playing game, it'd be mentioned alongside those games. Ultimately, this game commits the sin of style over substance.
And since I'm being so mean...the music sucks too, but that's a problem a lot of Genesis games had. I know some people praise the game's soundtrack, but honestly not a single tune stood out to me, and it's far below the standards set by games like the Streets of Rage series, the Sonic games, Batman, some of the Shinobi games, Earthworm Jim, Gunstar Heroes, and Jesper Kid's work on The Adventures of Batman and Robin
