Galerians (PSX)

This time I'm taking a quick look at another requested game: Galerians on the original PlayStation. From the title I thought this one was going to be a shoot 'em up until I saw this JRPG kid growling at me on the cover. Not that I'm saying it won't be a shoot 'em up, it's just that with three CDs I wouldn't bet on it.

The game begins with flashes of creepy scenes and creepier faces beneath a horror movie film grain filter, while our hero pants and grunts all over the music.

Oh hey it's this guy, I've been wondering when he'd turn up since I first opened the CD box and found his face staring up at me.

You can't tell it's a guy's head on the disc though, so it just looks like a really miserable CD.

The intro proper starts with the camera moving down this grim futuristic city street with an ominous building dominating the background.

Then it cuts to a lab inside Michelangelo Memorial Hospital, presumably the building we were just looking at, where our protagonist is currently strapped into a bed and getting shot up with two ridiculously oversized syringes at once.

"Won't that destroy his brain cells and prove fatal?" asks one of the scientists in the next room. I'm not a doctor, but with a dose that large I think they'll be lucky if his head doesn't inflate like a balloon and then explode all over the lab.

Rion survives the procedure, but he's lost his memory and now he's hearing a girl's voice crying for help inside his head. I think she might be yelling at the wrong person though, seeing as he's still held down by some fairly solid looking metal arm restraints and could do with a bit of rescuing himself.

Fortunately Rion's released from his bed off screen by telekinesis, though it's not clear yet whether it was his own power or the voice in his head helping out. But now it's entirely up to me to get him out of the room.

The game has Resident Evil style controls left and right to turn on the spot, up and down to walk, so it's a little awkward to steer him around. Especially as it likes to switch angles every few steps and leave me trying to figure out where I am now.

Well the door on the left won't open and this cabinet is locked. No PPECs for me.

The wall opposite was a bit more useful though, with some documents left behind by a doctor on a table. I'm optimistic that it'll be a full account of Rion's entire life story (with pictures) along with complete explanation of where he is and what they just did to him. Also it'll no doubt tell me who the girl is and exactly where to find her.


NINE PAGES LATER.

And next up is Delmetor: a capsule developed to words words words words words....

I just can't take any more of this text in, my brain is rejecting it. I mean I'm sure this will be all be very important later, but right now it might as well be telling me about the optimal soil conditions to cultivate deciduous hydrangeas. I'll hold onto it all though, so I can check it again when I actually find any of the stuff it's talking about.

There was a second locked door in the room, but this time I tried to scan it with Rion's brain powers and ended up blasting it open in a CGI cutscene video instead.

Resident Evil shows a slow animation of a door opening as you step between rooms, but the developers of this must have realised that kind of thing gets annoying fast and have replaced it with... the game's title flashing up two or three times on a loop.

I know they have to stick something up here or else it'd look like the game had crashed, but it's a shame they couldn't have put something interesting up instead like a helpful map, or an image of that CD with the guy's face on it; his miserable eyes glaring out of the screen as he slowly rotates around and around.

Artist's interpretation.

There you go, there's some proper horror for you.

The video continues after the break with Rion trying to get some information out of a scientist hanging around outside, but the man claims that he's just here to administer the PPECs. Plus a bit distracted with a headache right now, the kind you'd see in painkiller advert with a decent CGI budget, with lightning crackling across his head.

Well fine then, we'll just have to go and find someone who actually knows what's going on then. Good day sir!

Hey, the scientist just jabbed Rion in the ribs! I'm not actually sure what to do about that; Rion's even skinnier than he is and I can't find any kind of punch button listed in the controls. 'Charge' kind of sounds like an attack though, so I'll try that.

Whoa, Rion crackled for a bit and then the scientist keeled over and sprayed his brains all over the tiles. I thought he'd just, I dunno, charge into him and push him over!

Still, there's no fingerprints here and I don't see a security camera around, so I think if Rion makes a swift getaway now he might be able to get away with it.

Aww shit. We ran into two more scientists right outside the door and now they're yelling at us and backing away. Hey, it was self-defence, okay? Your colleague violently assaulted a young and vulnerable teenager without provocation and so he protected himself with the only button on the controller that seemed to do anything.

Hey are you even listening to me? Can you not hold onto your heads and keel over screaming when I'm talking to you please? It's very distracting and, I have to be honest, a little unnerving.

Damn, press a charge button once and you're screwed forever. Everywhere Rion goes he leaves a trail of corpses in his wake and he's not doing so great himself. If I can't find a way to turn charge off he'll be dead in minutes.

"You're dead. Game over..."

Final score: 4 rooms explored, 4 kills, and one boring stack of documents collected. Wait, what did that document say again...

"Delmetor: a capsule developed to words words words counteract the effects of shorting." There you go, I must have shorted somehow by using the charge ability and a Delmetor tablet would have fixed it. That's what I get for not memorising my tutorial pages.

Nothing I can do now but start a new game and be grateful that the cutscenes are skippable.


SOON, BACK AT THE START.

I escaped the lab and killed the scientist in the observation room again, but this time around I took a pill to turn off Rion's overcharge power and it's given me time to go snooping around here for a bit without worrying about my health steadily draining away. The camera jumped at the chance to show me some new views of the room as I walked around, and it quickly switched to one that revealed a security card lying on the unfortunate victim's console.

Also there's health tablet lying on the desk to the left, absolutely invisible with not so much as a helpful sparkle to hint at its presence. It seems that this is the kind of game where I have to search absolutely everything in the background.

I'll use the keycard over here in the room that Rion expired in earlier to open up the security gate and escape this section of the hospital. The inventory doesn't seem as limited as Resident Evil's and I don't expect to have to be swapping stuff in an out of boxes, but it wouldn't surprise me if I can only carry a handful of pills.

A guard walked up and attacked Rion with a stick as he stepped through the security gate! This is a hospital full of jerks.

Fortunately taking the Delmetor pill has reset Rion's AP gauge to zero, meaning that the charge button actually charges up the psionic attack now without immediately shorting him out. I hit X a second too soon though and only fired off a low powered Nalcon blast. He was getting a bit too close and I got nervous. Plenty of Nalcon left in his blood to try again though (it was a bloody huge syringe).


TEN MINUTES INTO THE GAME.

Oh so the game does have save points, I was starting to worry. It seems I have to walk inside HAL to use them though. In fact now that I think about it, I've been seeing more than a few HAL-style glowing red 'eyes' on the computers in this place; it's giving me techno-fear.

LATER.

Another locked door. I suppose I'll move along and try the next door instead then.

Actually, I've just had an idea.

I used the scan ability on the locked door and had a vision of where the key can be found! Of course it might just be what's on the other side of the door, but I'm always optimistic.

Unfortunately I haven't got the faintest idea where the creepy baby jar room is. I suppose I'll move along and try the next door instead then.

Just for a laugh I thought I'd mix things up this one time and use Rion's other psionic superpower instead, and holy shit it instantly burns people alive! Fortunately his friend down the corridor doesn't seem to have noticed. Either that or he's hoping we'll ignore him and go away. No such luck though unfortunately for him, as now that I know that everyone in this hospital is a threat I'm taking each of them out on sight.

That red door on the right is supposed to open to reveal the staircase leading off this floor, but it's sealed shut. Rion's first idea is that he could blast it open, but scanning it gives him a vision of that locked PPEC cabinet I saw at the start of the game, so I'll hold onto my fire power for now.


EVENTUALLY.

Okay I found the PPEC key near a computer and then used the Freezer key to get the fuse to open the second door to get back inside the starting room with the PPEC cabinet inside. Lots of getting items and then taking them to other places basically.

PPEC stands for Psychic Power Enhancement Chemicals, so I'm hoping for a least two new psychic powers out of this thing, in two giant colourful syringes, so I can immediately inject them both into Rion's neck simultaneously.

Oh crap, doing that actually causes brain damage and memory loss doesn't it? So even if I did find new powers in here, I wouldn't be able to inject any of them or else I'd totally forget that I opened this cabinet to find the... uh, thing to open the thing.

Well that would certainly help me blast through a door. For a moment I wondered why something like this would be locked up in the drug cabinet in a psychic research lab, but then I remembered that everyone here is evil.

Alright, the door to the stairs is just down the corridor outside, though I'd better take a Delmetor first to lower my AP again so I can use my powers without the head exploding side-effects. That AP bar really didn't take long to fill up again; it must either tick up over time, or as I walk around. Or both.


GALERIANS GALERIANS GALERIANS.

Oh shit, there's a guy out here waiting for me and I think he's carrying a shotgun! But this corridor was clear a second ago, I made sure of it, and dead enemies don't respawn.

I kind of wish I hadn't taken that Delmetor tablet right about now, as this guy could've been drowning in his own brain juice right about now. Still, a super charged Nalcon shot should take him off his feet.

Definitely a shotgun. Well at least from this angle I can see what I'm doing now, he said sarcastically.

I'm burning through my health pills just trying to survive long enough to get Rion pointed in the right direction, and charging up a power has become even less fun now that I'm being shot at from off-screen. It doesn't help that I can't actually see which way I'm facing!

THERE! I GOT FULLY CHARGED NALCON SHOT AIMED RIGHT AT THE BASTARD. He took a fair number of hits to take down, but I think that one has finally finished him off. It damn near finished Rion off too, as he's got half a hit-point right now and there's no way to recover health outside of using health pills, which I've already found and used on this floor.

The correct thing for me to do now would probably be to turn the game off, load up that save I made quarter of an hour ago, and avoid losing all my health this time. It'd give me a chance to do things more efficiently too, so I wouldn't have to munch through as many Delmetors to keep my brain powers in check.

But fuck losing all that progress, I'm going to stumble around half dead and go blow a door open with my mind!

Rion just stood there and detonated the explosives at point blank range. Rion is insane.

Okay then, time to go downstairs and get Rion instantly killed by a single hit.


THIRTY EIGHT MINUTES INTO THE GAME.

Aw... crap. Actually it seems that they haven't noticed me yet, so maybe I can still sneak through to the door on the other side if I'm quiet. Nope, the guy on the left is half obscured by the mini-map but I'm sure he's on to me. Fuck it, RUN!

I did find a save room immediately before I came in here, but the things don't restore my health and reloads aren't going to do me much good if I'm in an unwinnable situation.

I made it through the gauntlet of scientists! Fortunately they're too dumb to follow me in here so I'm safe for now. It's a shame though that all I can find hidden in these control panels is a single tablet of Delmetor, as Rion kinda needs a health pill right now to stand any chance at all.

Oh, I've just realised something: I'm in the baby vat room I saw in a vision earlier. That means the Special PPEC Office key must be in here somewhere, and if I can back sneak out with it and take it upstairs to open the office door I might find a health pill inside! Or maybe I'll find that corridors full of shotgun troops have spawned in up there instead, who knows?

I guess I'll never know, as I was taken out by one jab from a scrawny scientist on the way back out. I could always reload that save I made 10 minutes into the game, but nah.


Galerians seems very much to be a direct descendent of games like Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil, in that it tries to instil fear into the player through awkward controls, irritating fixed camera angles, frustrating combat, and very limited resources. I imagine I was actually supposed to be conserving my Nalcon power by running straight through the rooms containing rubbish enemies, instead of standing in one of the corners, turning myself around to face in the vague direction of my assembled nemeses, and beginning the combat ritual (hold down charge, wait for the bar to fill, hit X, hold down charge etc.) But that would require dodging things with the terrible movement controls and it's hard enough just to get Rion to take corners.

Storywise it doesn't seem that bad so far, although the vats of body parts and grim psychic testing rooms have told me more about what's going on than any of the characters have. Also I hate to say it, but the voice acting and translation is not laughably bad. Well, not entirely anyway. I found to the main character to be likeable enough at least, which is impressive considering that he's an angsty 14 year old drug addict amnesiac who likes to grunt a lot and make people explode with his mind.

Overall it really doesn't seem like one of the better survival horror games on the PlayStation and personally I found myself eager to turn the game off from the very first room, though it could be worth a look for fans of the genre. In fact I'd go as far as saying that if this is the kind of thing you like, then you might like this thing. Kind of.

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Then I stopped talking about Galerians at last and there was much rejoicing. By the way, I don't know if there's any truth to this rumour, but I've heard it said that's a sign of great mental acuity and intellect to leave comments on my site, especially if those comments are not crap.