[s2325]

This is Magniforce, an Amiga-styled Turrican Clone! That I myself made, interestingly. (With Game Maker, so don't expect the next great Turrican II from this game.)

Before I start off my review of it in this description, let me tell you a story - this game is actually pretty far from finished, despite getting an official release. Let me explain. When I was working on this game, Game Maker kept getting more and more updates, in which all they did was introduce one terrible bug after another, to the point where GM would crash and freeze an unforgivable amount of times. I got so fed up that I had no choice but to just rush the project out. Therefore, you can see that there are multiple bugs, and trust me, I was planning to fix them, but I never got the chance to. This might go down in history as one of the buggiest games in history, and I have absolutely no shame in saying that. Thanks GM, you really screwed me over.

Now, what do I think about this game? Well, as I said, it's pretty (and by that I mean extremely) buggy, but other than that, it's pretty great, but it has it's fair share of problems, glitches aside. First off, the game is excruciatingly difficult, and NOT always because of stage design, but rather because of lousy programming at parts. (Like I said, I made this with GM. Whaddaya expect.) For some reason, if I used an actual health system, the game would crash right at launch. So I had to improvise and use a fake Mario-esque health system. Any hit without a powerup is a death. This has it's fair share of issues, especially in the last stage, which might go down as one of the hardest stages in Turrican history. I'll explain why when I get to it. And the health bar gets in the way of seeing what's above you, and I didn't know how to fix that. It always caused graphical glitches if I tried to. And because I made this with GM, of course some important Turrican elements, like the rotatable laser or the powerlines are missing. And last, of course, no save feature. We've got ourselves a 40-minute game, and you have to beat it in one sitting. I was planning to put in a save system, but remember, I was forced to rush this out, and never got the opportunity to put in one. And this also means that if you lose all your lives, (which you will if you don't know where they are) GAME OVER. No continues. Back to stage 1. But enough with the negatives.

I've gotten lots of good feedback on the presentation. I've been told the graphics are extremely good, and the programming, while unfinished, is exceptional for a one-man GM game. For what it is, at least. The only part of this game I didn't do is the music, which is pretty awesome. Other than a questionable but still great remix of Stage 2 from the original Turrican, almost the whole soundtrack is completely original and beautifully made.

Overall, I can't really give this game a grade, with it being unfinished, but to get it finished I'll have to wait until the bugs are sorted out and get my hands on $60 to get GMStudio: Professional if I want to improve it, but so far, it's pretty good. Sure, it could be considered lackluster compared to other retro games today, but this game is made pretty much for Turrican fans only, and like I said, all things in this game are subject to improvement, so take that for what you will.

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