Published and developed by Xicat Interactive, Charge n' Blast is an on-rails shooter that was released on June 29th, 2001, and like a few other titles its a game that I missed on my first Dreamcast outing. As is the story in many shooters, once again planet earth has been invaded by hostile aliens (this time in the guise of giant ants and lizards) who are intent on blowing us back to the Stone Age. Friendly E.T they are not! Luckily for mankind we have 3 (only 3? Gulp!) super soldiers with BIG guns to take of these scaled terrors. Enter the cool sounding Johhny Rock, the Mr T-alike Nicholas Woods and the token woman of the squad, Pamela Hewitt, who quite frankly sounds more like a librarian than a kick ass soldier.
Players begin in the city (The City Of Nest) and battle on through ever differing scenarios like beaches and such. Whereas other on-rails titles like House Of The Dead 2 were First Person shooters, Charge n' Blast is Third Person which is a nice change from only seeing a pistol's cross hairs. For me anyway. I kinda liked seeing Mr Rock slide (or charge) along the surface onto his next wave of foes.
Controls are pretty simple, you can strafe left or right, charge the gun with button X and fire with A. Initially having to recharge before each shot is frustrating but it soon becomes second nature and you're blasting those ants BIG TIME!
Looks wise it doesn't have the polish of other games on the Dreamcast but its far from horrible to look at. Personally speaking I think it looks fine and dandy.
What Charge n' Blast does have is its arcade gameplay and that One-More-Go factor. Even when my Johhny died for the tenth time at the hands of Godzilla's twin brother it never grated at my nerves once but instead had me firing up for another round.
Ignore the nay sayers and doubters who like to put this game down. If arcade shooters are your thing then Charge n' Blast will entertain you for a good while. And considering you can pick this up on auction sites for less than it does to park a car (I paid £2.60 for mine) you really shouldn't be complaining. Not at that price. Good game which im STILL playing.
Check it out here.
On 9th September 1999, Sega released a new console to an excited public, the now legendary Dreamcast. Many would argue the first in Next Gen visuals, and online gaming, the Dreamcast was overtaken by Playstation2 but never forgotten. To this day, a decade on, it is still a powerful force in the gaming world. This is my tribute to the console and games, where a poet becomes fanboy.
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