Chakan (Genesis)

TITLE: Chakan The Forever Man
GENRE: Platformer
SYSTEM: Sega Genesis
PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER: Sega

This game is for those who hate long drawn out cinematics. This game has practically no cinematics AT ALL! The only thing you could possibly count as cinematics are when you enter a level and it gives a brief description of the bad guy and how he remembers when he had a soul.


STORY:
There is almost no story behind the character, or what happens after you beat the game, so this section will be short. You do find out that he has given up his soul for immortality and now regrets it, so he spends his time keeping demons and evil creatures in the "after life" realm. Upon entering each level he describes the boss bad guy person and then recalls how he would have felt hunting this creature when he was alive. After you beat the game, you get a very, very short ending with him saying he will always hunt evil and some other stuff. This is just about all the story you get from the game.

CONTROLS:
The controls are reactive to your button presses. When you say jump, he jumps. When you say swing your sword 6 times, he does. He has a mid-air jump that allows you to spin and swing your sword at the same time, which is a little tricky to master, but very valuable.

GRAPHICS:
What do you expect from a Genesis title? The game is 2-D, but it looks rather amazing. Very similar to Mortal Kombat 1 and 2, but more like it was from a comic book. The levels are quite detailed, from clouds moving in the background to the floating rock platforms in the foreground.

OPTIONS:
As I said before there are no cinematics. This game truly is for people who want to just jump into the game, as there is very little to the options menu. You can only set the level of difficulty and change the button configuration to some pre-designed settings.

SOUND:
The sound isn’t all that great, but pretty awesome for this game. You got the demonic drum beats and the enemy death cries and the howl when your character dies. The only thing I find disappointing is that there is no ambient sounds like in the level with the fire, you don’t hear the fire crackling, or in one level, the thunder is just a beat of a drum. Not the greatest quality sounding game, but enjoyable. It adds to the mood, and calms you at the same time.

DIFFICULTY:
Playing on the normal level, it is pretty challenging. The challenge lies in getting to the boss, while jumping around the level as there are no “run-through-enemy-forces” areas, like Mario or Zelda. And when you get to a boss, they almost always run back and forth across the platform you are on, so there even more jumping.

OVERALL:
It may not sound like a great game, but it is definitely worth checking out. It is also about 5 hours long, if you know what to do.

SCORE:
I give it 7 out of 10. I do recommend this game to people who wish to have an enjoyable Sega experience.