Game of the Day 4/8/2016: Mazer

[celerystalker]

Oh, man, Mazer... Mazer is an overhead action game... an arena shooter of sorts, vaguely in the vein of Robotron meets Alien Syndrome, but not even kind of as good as either of those. No, what makes Mazer worth a play is that the 3DO is short of fast-paced action games, and Mazer is nothing if not fast and action-packed.

The game puts you in a digitized arena that is a single screen when zoomed out. You have humans trapped in cylinders, aliens and cyborgs popping up in random locations throughout the stage, and a single stationary generator, typically in the center of the screen. Rescuing humans gives you a score bonus, and also causes a random powerup to show up in the stage. Enemies will constantly appear until you destroy the generator, which causes the stage boss to appear. Kill the boss, go to the next of 25 stages, rinse, repeat.

Powerups range from platforms that fill your turbo running meter and health (or both), rapid fire, three way shot, super shields, and shield refills. This makes it sound like freeing the humans first to load up and then taking on the boss sounds like a great strategy, and it is at first... but more on that in a second. You can activate shields at the press of a button, which weaken with each hit, and you can dash by pressing B. This seems like a good evasive maneuver, but the real way to use it is by dashing at bosses and attacking for extra melee damage with knock back power. You also have a medium range weapon you can activate by pressing fire and shields together, which is good against a few bosses.

There are four playable characters, and I'm pretty sure the same guy modeled for all four. There's the poncho-wearing son of a bullfighter, cyber-freak viking girl (yes, same guy), a samurai, and an American soldier. Each character has their own attributes, and in the end I mostly gravitated between the girl and the American for their speed and range.

Where things go kind of awry are from the speed and difficulty of the game. Mazer comes out guns blazing, and enemies swarm you quickly. By a few levels in, it becomes apparent that what you really have to do to win is just pop the generator as fast as possible so that enemies stop coming and kill the boss. You have three lives, but unlimited continues, but continuing restarts the current level, so you must clear each stage in three lives. If you like to try and 1cc games, Mazer will drive you batty, as it's a feat to clear three stages without a continue... hell, at times two feels like a feat. The game very quickly becomes a brutal, fast-paced slaughterfest that will truly challenge your ability to figure out how to approach and clear each stage before you get annihilated.

Graphically, Mazer employs digitized sprites and a muddy color palette, only occasionally deviating from earth tones to deliver some bright colors in the generator and volcano stages. It's a shame, as some colorful arcade aesthetics could have given the game an over-the-top cartoon-like carnage-fest flavor instead of a gloomy fight for survival. A little intentional comedy really would have injected something special into the game. As it is, it was a rewarding game to finish, though taxing enough that it won't get a ton of replay. Still, it does support 2 players, so maybe I can sucker my brother into going in co-op sometime.

I played through the entire game to write this up tonight, as I do with a big chunk of these posts, and found beating it again rewarding and absurdly frustrating. Still, I had a good time, and it definitely offers up something different as a 3DO exclusive. I enjoyed it, but it should only be played when you're in a masochistic mood, because you don't beat Mazer so much as survive it.

Played this one? Anyone do it co-op?

[Steve W]

I have a copy but I've never played it. I bought it due to an absolutely terrible review I read about it when it came out. I even grabbed a copy of the game to try out in emulation, I then upgraded OpenEmu only to find they removed the 3DO core due to stability issues.

[Emperor Megas]

I really appreciate this review. I always wanted this game back in the day, but never knew very much about it, until now. I'd all but forgotten about it until this post.

[celerystalker]

I really appreciate this review. I always wanted this game back in the day, but never knew very much about it, until now. I'd all but forgotten about it until this post.

Glad it brought up an old memory. Mazer is one of those games that's not really great, but benefits by comparison with tje dearth of traditional action games on the 3DO. I had a lot of fun playing through it again, but there's definitely problems... I was cussing pretty hard in the Cyborg II stage, which is the next to last one. Those fuckers just charge and swarm you, and if they trap you, there is literally no escape. I bet I continued as many times on that one stage as I did on the rest combined.

[goldenband]

I played through this game in a single afternoon (i.e. played it for the first time & finished it in the same session), and have fond memories of it since right after I finished, my wife came home with $1K worth of video games and consoles that she picked up for $20.

It's rough around the edges in a way typical of early 3D and/or 3DO games, but I found it moderately entertaining. I seem to remember needing to kludge my way through certain battles, especially the final one, though I can't recall the exact trick I used.

[celerystalker]

I played through this game in a single afternoon (i.e. played it for the first time & finished it in the same session), and have fond memories of it since right after I finished, my wife came home with $1K worth of video games and consoles that she picked up for $20.

It's rough around the edges in a way typical of early 3D and/or 3DO games, but I found it moderately entertaining. I seem to remember needing to kludge my way through certain battles, especially the final one, though I can't recall the exact trick I used.

I always get a kick out of those games that end up being little memory markers for things that happened. Sounds like your wife made a hell of a score, too!