Mazer (3DO) - Guest Post

Hey, folks! Today, I'm playing Mazer!

It's a 3DO exclusive developed by legendary arcade FMV light-gun shooter developer American Laser Games! Are you ready?

According to the opening narration, aliens have taken over the Earth. They're planning on taking it over even more and they're going to use advanced human cyborgs to do it. Guess who's got to stop them? YOU. (That is, me.)

Oh good God... I've just worked it out. The aliens in this game are called the 'Semag-Resal' and they come from the 'Nacirema' system. That's 'American Laser Games' backwards. Urggh...

Let's check out the cast of characters.

HAWK™. According to his bio, he's bent on destroyimg all alien life on Earth. BY HIMSELF. The 3D rendered weapon is a seamless addition to the photograph.

AZOTAR™, aka Hawk with a different hat on. He carries a drawn-on energy whip because he deems guns to be unmanly. If I were fighting off an alien invasion single-handedly, I'd be less picky.

FREON™. Pretty sure she's also the first guy in a wig. She ferociously carries an ice cannon the wrong way round above her head.

And finally:

ARASHI™. That's... the first guy again, painted yellow. That's weird.

So all four playable characters are the same guy.

I picked AZOTAR™. What's the difference if they're all the same guy anyway, right?

From the very, very slow moving level select screen, I can see there's 25 levels to go before we reach The Core and save Earth from the invasion. I don't think I'll get that far on this playthrough, but let's see what happens. Level 1: THE GRID.

It's a run 'n' gun with digitized characters! Check out Azotar with his crazy poncho and energy whip!

I haven't got a clue what I'm doing here. It's really hard to concentrate with this bright purple background automatically zooming in and out as I move. I can barely make out what Azotar's doing and my attacks barely scratch the enemies!

Inside the capsule is a giant, near invincible mecha with a huge health bar. Azotar's down so it's over to Hawk.

The aim of the game is to shoot stuff. You rescue hostages by shooting the glass capsules they're in. You shoot the enemy robot-whatevers which keep respawning around the arena and then shoot the centre capsule to release the boss.

It's trying to be Robotron 2084, and it's not succeeding.

You have to stand still to shoot and your shots don't really do anything. You can sprint, but it only lasts a limited time and it's not really much of a defense when the enemies are everywhere.

By the time you're ready to release the boss, you're all out of special powers and things to throw at it. You're lucky if the boss doesn't just decide to shoot you whlie it's facing away.

My patience is rewarded with a prerendered animation of the boss robot exploding. Take that, alien scum! Robot scum! Alien robot scum!

I'm now Arashi, decked out in his finest Rayden-esque gear.

You'd think an electric sword would be good against robots, but it's not. No matter which character I pick, and no matter whether I use the short or long range attacks, everything I do has no effect and just leaves me a sitting duck.

It took me over ten tries to defeat the Level 2 boss. Eventually I somehow managed to get Freon into a loop of smacking it and sprinting around it long enough to kill it. You can damage the enemies by running into them with the shield, but it doesn't last very long. Neither the sprint or the shield recharge, so I was reliant on the random power-up pads appearing as I needed them.

Level 3 was THE GRID II. I turned off the console in disgust. 3DO wins again.

This game is very difficult and very, very bad. Most arcade games have at least something good to them: nice graphics, nice music or even plain old pretty flashing colours. Mazer has none of those things.

I don't know what they were thinking. I looked it up and it's one of the few American Laser Games that was never in arcades. I can't imagine why.