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Monterey Jack's Beyond Oasis Review
Beyond Oasis
NOTE: This review is based off of what I played on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, so if there are any differences between it and the original Genesis version and you're going "wait what that ain't true, well, now you know to watch for those instances.
Beyond the oasis, into your Sega Genesis.
It's 1994. 3D gaming was on its way. People might've been buying some more 16-bit games at this time like Castlevania: Bloodlines and Sonic The Hedgehog 3, but not many, since they'll be busy playing the ones they bought years before, meaning they may miss some pretty damn good games. If they're not playing their older games, they're pissing away money on add ons with a few good games at the most, much more for the Sega CD than the 32X - that, or switching to the Super Nintendo, I don't know and I don't care. All that needs to be documented is that, up until in recent times, few people cared for Beyond Oasis/The Story Of Thor, and it's about time that I raised awareness for a game that's pretty damn good, so shut up and listen; you might actually learn something.
If I got bored, I'd go and be a tomb raider myself.
Prince Ali got bored of being pampored in his palace one day, so he set out to an island cave to search for treasure. He comes back one stormy night with a gold armlet, which, according to legend, was used against an evil being wielding the silver armlet to stop the war and chaos. It seems as if another person had discovered the silver armlet, because monsters are attacking the kingdom, so Ali sets out to recover the four spirits to use against the current wielder of the evil silver armlet. Given the time that this game was made, this was considered to be a fairly thick plot that's also kind of intruiging, even if you got most of it from the first scene and only bits and pieces every now and again. Even now, it seems fine, if cliched because it's stock standard shit you would've read or experience many a time in today's media...
Nice combination.
If you've played Streets Of Rage on the Genesis and The Legend Of Zelda on the NES, you'll be ahead of the curve in this regard, because Beyond Oasis plays like a hybrid of the two games. You'll be exploring via an overhead view through dungeons like in Zelda, while you punch shit up like in Streets Of Rage.
It manages to get Streets Of Rage down to a tee. Even though it's an overhead view, the combat plays out a fair bit like it. Whenever you run into some enemies, you can let loose with your weapons. You can also input button commands to perform some spiffy combos like in Street Fighter. Most weapons, like swords and crossbows, only have a limited amount of uses and will break after it's all used up, though you'll get some weapons – like Ali's dagger – which can be used again and again without fear of losing it.
Aiding you in this quest are elemental spirits which, when collected, sleep in Ali's gold armlet. These spirits can either aid you in combat via healing/shielding you or killing enemies, or they can help you solve puzzles by breaking doors down or crossing over gaps. To keep using them, though, you'll need to eat food to restore the spirit meter (yeah, you got two different meters to keep an eye on – health and spirit). Oh, and summoning them isn't as easy as just pressing the A button – you also have to be facing a certain sort of surface. For instance, to call out the water spirit, you'll need to face water and then press A – sounds a little silly on paper, and reading this section over, I thought “why not just press Start and have a bit with the spirits so I can just select one from there”, but in execution, it made more sense, since it actually prevents the inevitably annoying stop-start pacing from existing if they went along with my idea. That, and it's actually something different... I'm surprised to not see this in any other game, though maybe they can't do it as well as Ancient did here... meh.
This ties well into the Zelda-esque elements, as in each dungeon, you'll need to tackle dungeons, and there will be a good amount of puzzles to go through, each more difficult than the last, and will require some heavy brainwork and spirits to get them right. Well, they're not overly tricky, but they can give you some grief if you're not sure what to do to conquer them, like what spirit to use and what blocks to push, and some other stuff.
Your reward for braving each dungeon is a boss who takes up a good portion of the screen. Whether it's a dragon or a huge mother*bleep*ing spider, the bosses you'll be up against will be as big as you'd expect from a shoot em up game like Gradius or R-Type. They aren't exactly tricky. I mean, they can smack you around quite a bit, but if you can get their patterns down, you'll be able to smack them down without much trouble, unless you don't pay much attention to the enemies – in which case, better go level up, hey?
Word from the wise, though – it's a rare feat to actually level up. Finding gems for the spirits and big hearts for yourself requires you to explore as much of the island as possible. In fact, you'll need to do a lot of exploration around the island in order to find all the weapons and stuff that'll make your quest easier. If it'll make you feel better, the island isn't a hulking behemoth – it's kind of small, actually. Certainly no Hyrule, for sure.
Oily, yet artistic.
The graphics are pretty good for a Genesis game. The style is fairly different from what you'd expect – instead of pixel-heavy stuff, everything has that hand painted look so that even if you were to blow it up on a bigger screen, it'd still look pretty good with maybe some ugly pixellation here and there, though not nearly as bad as most Genesis games. The colors are pretty damn good, especially when you consider that vibrancy was the Genesis's Achille's Heel. No doubt, you'll find them quite pleasant and suitable for a fantasy setting such as this. The animation is quite fluid, especially on the larger than life bosses you'll be fighting. It's very impressive, easily some of the best I've seen from a Genesis game.
On a high note? Not necessarily.
At first glance, the soundtrack actually sounds pretty good. It certainly takes advantage of the Genesis's less than stellar soundboard, and each of the songs manage to convey the right moods, like dank and dark tunes for dungeons, or more blood pumping tracks for boss battles (not the most blood pumping out there, but it gets the job done), or serene for the island. The only problem is that none of the tracks seem to have the sort of spark that makes them memorable or totally awesome; they seem content with merely being good tracks with the right amount of ambience. Certainly not a big problem, but it's a little disheartening when you figure out that the guy behind this soundtrack also did the one for Actraiser, which was *bleep*ing awesome to say the least. Oh well.
Beyond a thrilling Arabian tale, or merely crap?
Beyond Oasis is a pretty well constructed game. Doesn't have the best story or trickiest bosses in the world, but it more than makes up for it with some well thought out puzzles and a large emphasis on exploration to make life easier for you. Just about everything that could make an Action RPG good is within this game. Quite a shame it didn't get too popular, or there'd be a hell of a series, I can tell you that much!
Value of treasure:
Story: 8/10
Has its share of predictable plot twists, but it's good for the time at least, and still fine by today's standards.
Gameplay: 8.5/10
Excellently well designed dungeons and some pretty slick combat and puzzles make for good times ahead. Bosses are a little too easy, though.
Controls: 9/10
They're easy to use, and they allow for some slick combos.
Graphics: 10/10
Very stylistic and fluid, and takes advantage of what the Genesis can manage very well in terms of color and stuff.
Sound: 7/10
The soundtrack was pleasing enough, but not exactly memorable or awesome.
Overall: 8.5/10
Beyond the oasis, into your Sega Genesis.
It's 1994. 3D gaming was on its way. People might've been buying some more 16-bit games at this time like Castlevania: Bloodlines and Sonic The Hedgehog 3, but not many, since they'll be busy playing the ones they bought years before, meaning they may miss some pretty damn good games. If they're not playing their older games, they're pissing away money on add ons with a few good games at the most, much more for the Sega CD than the 32X - that, or switching to the Super Nintendo, I don't know and I don't care. All that needs to be documented is that, up until in recent times, few people cared for Beyond Oasis/The Story Of Thor, and it's about time that I raised awareness for a game that's pretty damn good, so shut up and listen; you might actually learn something.
If I got bored, I'd go and be a tomb raider myself.
Prince Ali got bored of being pampored in his palace one day, so he set out to an island cave to search for treasure. He comes back one stormy night with a gold armlet, which, according to legend, was used against an evil being wielding the silver armlet to stop the war and chaos. It seems as if another person had discovered the silver armlet, because monsters are attacking the kingdom, so Ali sets out to recover the four spirits to use against the current wielder of the evil silver armlet. Given the time that this game was made, this was considered to be a fairly thick plot that's also kind of intruiging, even if you got most of it from the first scene and only bits and pieces every now and again. Even now, it seems fine, if cliched because it's stock standard shit you would've read or experience many a time in today's media...
Nice combination.
If you've played Streets Of Rage on the Genesis and The Legend Of Zelda on the NES, you'll be ahead of the curve in this regard, because Beyond Oasis plays like a hybrid of the two games. You'll be exploring via an overhead view through dungeons like in Zelda, while you punch shit up like in Streets Of Rage.
It manages to get Streets Of Rage down to a tee. Even though it's an overhead view, the combat plays out a fair bit like it. Whenever you run into some enemies, you can let loose with your weapons. You can also input button commands to perform some spiffy combos like in Street Fighter. Most weapons, like swords and crossbows, only have a limited amount of uses and will break after it's all used up, though you'll get some weapons – like Ali's dagger – which can be used again and again without fear of losing it.
Aiding you in this quest are elemental spirits which, when collected, sleep in Ali's gold armlet. These spirits can either aid you in combat via healing/shielding you or killing enemies, or they can help you solve puzzles by breaking doors down or crossing over gaps. To keep using them, though, you'll need to eat food to restore the spirit meter (yeah, you got two different meters to keep an eye on – health and spirit). Oh, and summoning them isn't as easy as just pressing the A button – you also have to be facing a certain sort of surface. For instance, to call out the water spirit, you'll need to face water and then press A – sounds a little silly on paper, and reading this section over, I thought “why not just press Start and have a bit with the spirits so I can just select one from there”, but in execution, it made more sense, since it actually prevents the inevitably annoying stop-start pacing from existing if they went along with my idea. That, and it's actually something different... I'm surprised to not see this in any other game, though maybe they can't do it as well as Ancient did here... meh.
This ties well into the Zelda-esque elements, as in each dungeon, you'll need to tackle dungeons, and there will be a good amount of puzzles to go through, each more difficult than the last, and will require some heavy brainwork and spirits to get them right. Well, they're not overly tricky, but they can give you some grief if you're not sure what to do to conquer them, like what spirit to use and what blocks to push, and some other stuff.
Your reward for braving each dungeon is a boss who takes up a good portion of the screen. Whether it's a dragon or a huge mother*bleep*ing spider, the bosses you'll be up against will be as big as you'd expect from a shoot em up game like Gradius or R-Type. They aren't exactly tricky. I mean, they can smack you around quite a bit, but if you can get their patterns down, you'll be able to smack them down without much trouble, unless you don't pay much attention to the enemies – in which case, better go level up, hey?
Word from the wise, though – it's a rare feat to actually level up. Finding gems for the spirits and big hearts for yourself requires you to explore as much of the island as possible. In fact, you'll need to do a lot of exploration around the island in order to find all the weapons and stuff that'll make your quest easier. If it'll make you feel better, the island isn't a hulking behemoth – it's kind of small, actually. Certainly no Hyrule, for sure.
Oily, yet artistic.
The graphics are pretty good for a Genesis game. The style is fairly different from what you'd expect – instead of pixel-heavy stuff, everything has that hand painted look so that even if you were to blow it up on a bigger screen, it'd still look pretty good with maybe some ugly pixellation here and there, though not nearly as bad as most Genesis games. The colors are pretty damn good, especially when you consider that vibrancy was the Genesis's Achille's Heel. No doubt, you'll find them quite pleasant and suitable for a fantasy setting such as this. The animation is quite fluid, especially on the larger than life bosses you'll be fighting. It's very impressive, easily some of the best I've seen from a Genesis game.
On a high note? Not necessarily.
At first glance, the soundtrack actually sounds pretty good. It certainly takes advantage of the Genesis's less than stellar soundboard, and each of the songs manage to convey the right moods, like dank and dark tunes for dungeons, or more blood pumping tracks for boss battles (not the most blood pumping out there, but it gets the job done), or serene for the island. The only problem is that none of the tracks seem to have the sort of spark that makes them memorable or totally awesome; they seem content with merely being good tracks with the right amount of ambience. Certainly not a big problem, but it's a little disheartening when you figure out that the guy behind this soundtrack also did the one for Actraiser, which was *bleep*ing awesome to say the least. Oh well.
Beyond a thrilling Arabian tale, or merely crap?
Beyond Oasis is a pretty well constructed game. Doesn't have the best story or trickiest bosses in the world, but it more than makes up for it with some well thought out puzzles and a large emphasis on exploration to make life easier for you. Just about everything that could make an Action RPG good is within this game. Quite a shame it didn't get too popular, or there'd be a hell of a series, I can tell you that much!
Value of treasure:
Story: 8/10
Has its share of predictable plot twists, but it's good for the time at least, and still fine by today's standards.
Gameplay: 8.5/10
Excellently well designed dungeons and some pretty slick combat and puzzles make for good times ahead. Bosses are a little too easy, though.
Controls: 9/10
They're easy to use, and they allow for some slick combos.
Graphics: 10/10
Very stylistic and fluid, and takes advantage of what the Genesis can manage very well in terms of color and stuff.
Sound: 7/10
The soundtrack was pleasing enough, but not exactly memorable or awesome.
Overall: 8.5/10
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