Turjah Episode II

Review #1

.: By: Seth Bilodeau :: Device used: iPAQ H3650 :: April 20, 2001 :: Buy this game :.

Turjah Episode II (known for the rest of this review as T2) is the sequel to the well-known Turjah, which many have called the best game for the Pocket PC. Indeed, few games on the platform have managed to match the level that Turjah reached, and none have surpassed it, until now. The problem with Turjah was that, when describing it, it was called a great game... for Pocket PC. By itself, however, Turjah had many flaws that would have doomed it on any other platform. T2, however, is a great game, period. Jimmy has released the definitive Pocket PC game, and a great shooter as well.

The first thing you see when you start the game is an animated intro, much like the ones that started shooters made in the late eighties/early nineties. It is well done with the exception of the translation, although I suppose this could be considered a shooter tradition as well. If you’re getting a kick out of the “All Your Base” phenomenon, this will be the high point of the game for you.

For the rest of us, the high point of the game is when we first start playing. For those of you who haven’t played Turjah, T2 is a vertical space shooter. You have a tiny ship going against an army of dimwitted aliens with massive firepower. However, while Turjah did much of what T2 does, T2 does everything so much better.

Everything from Turjah has been overhauled, and while the first game was a nifty little shooter, T2 is an intense game, with hardly a dull moment. The game starts off with your ship being chased through an asteroid field, with a large spaceship firing at you from behind the entire time. All the while, you’re treated to some of the best music found in a Pocket PC game, with its fast, pumping beat. The experience is quite a marvel on an iPAQ, and it only gets better from there.

The only thing that might turn some people off in this game is the difficulty. Turjah was incredibly easy for some, and very hard for others. For people who thought Turjah was too easy, this game is a godsend. The difficulty is cranked up high in this game, and unlike Turjah, there are no cheats to help you through the game. Personally, I still found the game easy.

The graphics in T2 are one of the main reasons why this game is so amazing. Everything is rendered and animated perfectly, and the game throws dozens of things at you with no slowdown at all. I cannot find fault with the graphics at all, try as I might.

The same can be said of the audio. The music is all very well done, and is quite varied (unlike Turjah, which had one song repeating into infinity). The sound effects are all well done, and all sound like they should. In addition, the sound is used in gameplay, so putting the game on mute is NOT a good idea (as I quickly learned after losing to the second boss three times in a row...). This may turn some off, but I think it’s good that the game is taking advantage of the capabilities of the Pocket PC. Finally, you can adjust the volume of music and sound effects separately, and as a bonus, you can also adjust Bass and Treble, as well as Jimmy’s overclock, built into the game. (iPAQ only).

Control is great on the iPAQ. I can’t speak for the other Pocket PCs, but given the record Jimmy has, I assume they work fine. You have standard fire and nuke buttons, and you fly with the stylus. In addition, the buttons can be re-mapped, in case you don’t like the default setup. And while I don’t have one, I’ve heard that the game also works great with the Stowaway.
Overall, T2 is the best game yet made for the Pocket PC, and is a fine game taken on its own merits. I think $25 is more than reasonable for the game (it’s the first game for Pocket PC that really justifies its high price), and if you have Turjah, this game is an absolute steal at $15. If you want non-stop action, Turjah Episode II is a perfect fix.

All your good points are belong to us:

• Amazing graphics and sound

• Fantastic gameplay

• Great price for Turjah owners

All your bad points are belong to us:

• Requires you to play with sound

• Might be too difficult for some

• Some problems at launch regarding corrupt files (now fixed)

Seth's score: 10/10

Review #2

.: By: Jason Surguine :: Device used: E-125 :: April 20, 2001 :: Buy this game :.

The Visiting of Turjah Episode II, the sequel to arguably the best shooting game for the PPC and very possibly the most popular, Turjah. So, does it live up to the hype? Does it suck? Is it just another overpriced PPC game with pretty graphics? Or does it even have pretty graphics? Etc., etc., etc… All right enough of that building up junk.

Okay, if you’ve never played the first Turjah, and are wondering what the game and story are like etc., don’t waste your time buying it. Here’s the story: it’s a shooter, it’s in space, and it has something to do with blowing up stuff. Here was the game: go through a few levels, blow up stuff, and finish game in a couple of hours. If you’re really curious, you can read the reviews.

Now, here’s the story and game of Turjah Episode II. The story: it’s still a shooter, it’s still in space, and you’re still flying around blowing up a lot of stuff. The game: go through levels, blow up stuff, die a lot, scream explicit words at the top of your lungs, be threatened to be evicted from your apartment complex because of your vulgarities, blame it on the game, continue to blow up stuff, lose any social life you might have had while trying to beat the game, and finally beat the game after several days if not weeks.

The game is set up as a combination of elements from the Gradius/R-type side-scroller games and the Xevious/Axelay top down shooters. If you are not familiar with these titles, don’t worry, it just means that you get to blow up stuff in a familiar way to the people that have heard of these games.

I won’t go into detail, but I do have to say that the game is a vertical top-down shooter as in Axelay or Xevious, (which includes not dying after being hit by one bullet) and uses the charge shot and a power-up system very similar to the R-type system. Basically, you have little ‘options’ that you collect which scroll through the power-ups (represented by different colors) on screen, before you pick them up. Thus, you have to pick them up at the right time to get the power-up you need. (If you are unfamiliar with some of the ‘shooter-game lingo’, a great way to learn shooter lingo would be to go here).

The game opens with a really cool cinematic (sprite based) graphical intro, some of the best graphics used on the PPC so far, in addition to having top-notch music. After the intro, you have a title screen with the selections to go to options or quit.

The options menu itself has even more selections including:

• Overclock/volume control, which allows you to adjust the sound levels of the music and sound effects separately and if you have an iPAQ, you can control what the MHz at which your iPAQ is clocked to, as well as the Bass and Treble controls for sound.

• The hi-score menu, which shows what the hi-scores on your machine are, as well as giving you the ‘code’ so you can list your hi-score online.

• The key control menu, where you can adjust the buttons to control the game (Cassiopeia users will most likely have to visit this menu a couple of times, due to the Casio update patches screwing up all the button assignments).

• The help screen.

The interesting thing about this options menu is the way you navigate through it is with a pseudo-address bar, as in a web browser. Needless to say, all of the menus in the game are displayed nicely and are very pleasing to the eyes, and relatively easy to navigate.

The in game menus/onscreen indicators are nicely represented as well. The screen layout consists of a health bar (not the kind you eat) and a charging bar (for your charge shot) at the bottom, along with two icons with numbers next to them representing the number of ships and bombs you have remaining. The top right hand side of the screen contains your present score. These indicators are easy to see/read and get the job done.

The graphics in the game are very impressive and some of the best (if not the best) 2D graphics that have been done on the PPC to date. It uses the full 16-bit color palette of the Casio (12-bit on the iPAQ, but it still looks gorgeous). This may not sound impressive to some, but for me, when I say that these graphics rival some of the 16-bit console systems (e.g. SNES, PCE, Genesis, etc.) best shooters, that’s a big compliment. Where these graphics really excel, compared to the old 16-bit systems, is that I have not encountered one moment of slowdown during this game once.

In the sound area, this game is one of my favorites for the PPC. Not just the fact that it has music in the game, which is a rarity in itself for the PPC right now, but that it has good rockin’ music (which is ideal for blowing stuff up) makes it incredibly good. That and it’s not the same repetitive song every board. There is a new song for every stage and each song is a pretty good length and you really aren’t sick of it by the time you’ve finished the stage (unlike some other ‘3D’ shooter out there, that starts with an M). The sound effects are nothing to brag about, but they get the job done, and just how interesting can you make a repetitive gun noises and explosions sound anyway?

Play control is relatively tight and I have no real problems with it, maybe the ship movement is a touch slow, but you get used to it pretty quickly. I did find that sometimes you actually have a little more control over the movement of the ship when using the stylus, but the d-pad still works well enough for me. There are no worries about having to press the fire/bomb buttons multiple, successive times to shoot (so there’s no problems for the E-115s) all you have to do is hold the button down and every once in awhile use a bomb. So the play control is overall pretty darn good.

The gameplay is interesting. Much of the basic stuff in the game is relatively easy, i.e. shooting normal enemies, dodge bullets, fight mini-bosses, etc. However, where this game really starts to get on your nerves is the cheapness of the game (obviously, I’m not talking about the price). While I don’t mind a little cheapness to a game, sometimes this is ridiculous. Many objects in the game will completely kill you in one hit if you run into it (with full health) or it runs into you, with no real warning, while other objects won’t. This gets really lame on the third level, where if you don’t have the level memorized the first time through, you will be cut off unknowingly and forced to crash into a wall.

The same applies to the junk movements patterns on the second stage, and the unbelievably stupid electrical currents on the fourth stage. I’ve also heard multiple complaints about the second stage boss being ridiculously hard. Worse yet, the third stage boss is a complete joke. The worst thing about this type of game is that you really can’t afford to die.

Once you die, you have to build up all your options again, and once you’re on the third or fourth level and you die, you’re stuck naked with a friggin’ pea-shooter trying to fend against impossible odds and hoping those 12 power-ups you collected will come along within the next 5 seconds before you die again. I haven’t been this frustrated since first Megaman for NES (if you remember that Cyclops boss before Dr. Wily, you know what I’m talking about).

Therefore, you have to be perfect to finish this game. I see Jimmy’s reasoning behind this, the harder and cheaper you make the game, the longer it will take to memorize and beat. This is true, however, the harder and cheaper the game gets, the more people will be turned off (or annoyed) and never want to play the game again. It really is possible to beat this game, it just takes a lot of patience, tolerance, memorization, and an extensive vocabulary of swear words. If you finally do finish the game don’t expect an amazing ending, you’ll be let down. Not to say that the ending is horrible, it’s just not at all what I was expecting.

Overall, this game can still be fun. This game has amazing graphics compared to other PPC titles (including a cool flashy intro), the play control is pretty tight, the general mechanics of the game work, and the sound is unsurpassed at this time. However, the game is fun when you first start, and then after you memorize all the patterns in the game, and then learn to be perfect. Therefore, you have to work to make the game fun. Which isn’t everyone’s idea of a good game. Then again, if you’re looking for a good challenging video game (which is rare these days) this might be for you.

Good shots:

• Excellent graphics

• Excellent sound

• Excellent presentation

• Excellent challenge (if you’re up to it)

Cheap shots:

• Super Challenging (if you’re not up to it)

• Super Frustrating

• May get you Evicted for Screaming Expletives.

Jason's score: 7/10

.: Game category: Action & Arcade Games :: Reviews Index :: Buy this game :.

Editor's Note:

The mathematics experts may question an overall score of 9/10 given that the two scores of 10/10 (Seth's) and 7/10 (Jason's) average out to 8.5. However, in this case, the score is rounded up!