Saturday, March 8

Retro Review: Sub Terrania

Holy cow B&W'ers! Can you believe it? I've actually done another Retro Review! This time I sat down with my good old Sega Genesis and popped in Sub Terrania from Zyrinx.

How should I describe Sub Terrania? Well, the back of the game's box says this;


"Aliens have invaded a vital subterranean mining colony. Fly a prototype fighter through impossible caverns to rescue miners and blast the aliens into the darkest pits of space."

That pretty much covers the basics, but let's dig deeper and elaborate after the break.

Sub Terrania is chopped up into missions revolving around the basic idea that the aliens are mad at you and the humans wanna be rescued. At the beginning of each mission there's a mission briefing telling you about all of your objectives which usually involve you solving some puzzle that opens up an area for you to acquire a certain pick-up or to save a couple humans by landing your ship next to them and allowing them to board the ship.



The controls are pretty easy to pick up on, but touchy at times. You have a forward thrust by pressing the B button and you control your direction with the left, right, and up directional buttons. The down directional button uses a reverse thrust. The whole movement of the ship is very well done, yet something about it feels off, for instance the controls are perfect for zooming across the map, but far too sensitive for the battling part of the game.

The A button changes your weapons which there's a couple that I found, mainly missiles with a limited use and an infinite machine gun styled attack. After you have the weapon you want to use selected the C button will fire it and cause imminent destruction to those whom oppose you.

Everything in Sub Terrania looks great, smooth, crisp and clean. There's not much too bad to say about the graphics, except maybe a little nit pick about the humans. All they do is run around on the ground as itty bitty shadows that don't have any distinguishable features about them. That was about all that bothered me about the style of the game.



As for enemies go, during my playtime I saw that there were definitely enough enemies to keep the fighting interesting and varied, and plenty of hidden areas with extra lives and pick-ups to make sure the levels aren't just getting from point A to point B.

The music, which is done by Jesper Kyd the award winning composer for IO Interactive's Hitman series, fits the game well and sounds pretty good with an impressive range of sounds. However, the music gets boring and repetitive quickly and is easily blocked out and forgotten.

In the end Sub Terrania is fun, yet forgettable. If you find yourself in a situation where you either have a chance to try it out, or pick it up for a couple bucks at a flea market; I say go for it. It's definitely worth your time at least once.

Sound: 6/10
Graphics: 7/10
Controls: 7/10
Fun Factor: 7/10
Replay Ability: 5/10

Overall Score: 7/10




-Undrallio

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