Friday, November 20, 2020

PrinceWatercress plays Power Blade - Part 1 of 7


Are you ready to throw boomerangs at robots and jump off the edges of platforms like your life depends on it in non-linear stages? Then this is the game for you!

The Story So Far...

In 2191, the Master Computer governs the entire planet of New Earth. One day, however, the Master Computer malfunctions somehow, and widespread panic and chaos ensues.

Nova, some guy with a boomerang who looks a lot like Duke Nukem, is called up to search for six agents hiding in the six sectors that protect the Master Computer. You'll need to meet up with them, get their ID cards, and defeat the boss in the security room to get the secret tape units. These tape units will disarm the sectors and allow security clearance. Getting all six allows entry into the control room.

From there, Nova has to make it to the control room and destroy the master computer to bring peace back to society. That's the game in a nutshell.

Stuff

As you'll play the game, you'll notice that you'll never see the names of the contacts again, yet their faces look somewhat similar when you see them in-game.

Also, the game uses a lot of ideas from both the Mega Man series and Super Mario Bros. 3, particularly with enemies and obstacles. You were warned.

Normal difficulty gives you 999 seconds to get through each stage, and you don't take knock-back when you get hit. On Expert, you only get 300 seconds, and you receive Castlevania-style knock-back when you get hit.

You'll start on the world map, and you can pick the first six sectors in any order. I'll be doing these first six sectors in order.

Sector 1


The Control Pad lets you move left and right, duck, open doors and climb ladders. B attacks, and A jumps.

When you begin the game, you'll be able to throw only one boomerang. It won't be very strong, and it won't go very far. You cannot throw boomerangs through walls, so don't even try. You can, however, throw boomerangs in eight directions. Every time you throw the boomerang, the power meter empties and then fills up again. The more it fills up, the farther your boomerang will go.

Picking up stars gives you distance, while the two boomerang and three boomerang icons allow you to throw more than one boomerang at any given time (allowing for more onscreen boomerangs). The red boomerang icons make your boomerangs stronger.

The boomerang can hit enemies twice: one after you throw it and again on the way back to Nova.

The grenades destroy all enemies currently on the screen.

The hamburgers restore a little of your life, while the health containers act like Energy Tanks from the Mega Man games - pause the game, use Up and Down to select the health containers, then press Select to use one of the four that the game lets you pick up and store, and you'll fully replenish your health. The grenades work the same way.

The guy that looks eerily similar to Nova is your contact. Talk to him and he'll give you the ID card. You'll find the first contact somewhere around the space shuttle.

Whenever you die, you lose one of each power-up. Keep destroying enemies to get them back.

You're going to be climbing a lot of ladders in this game. Thankfully, you can throw diagonally while you're on them.

The helmet and the three squares next to the time indicate the health meter for the Power Blade, the suit of armor that beefs Nova up dramatically. For three hits, Nova won't be able to take damage, and he can fire through walls by throwing energy blasts that travel the length of the screen. After three hits, you lose the Power Blade. You cannot repair any damage done to the Power Blade, but if you beat a sector with the Power Blade, you'll be able to start in another sector with all three hits again.

The enemies in this game are nothing to ride home about. They're really easy to destroy and it appears that some of them take a page out of the [i]Mega Man[/i] series.

It is pretty easy to find the contact for this stage and find the ID Card for the boss door for the stage. If you lose a life after getting the ID card, you'll start back at the spot where you got the ID card instead of back at the beginning of the stage.

The boss behind the Sector 1 door (which will happen if you have the ID Card, which you should definitely have by this point) is really, really easy if you've been collecting power-ups. Duck to avoid being shot at, then run under it and stay on the move when it floats upwards to avoid being shot at. Sometimes the boss will have a shield up; attack when the boss has its gun out instead.

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