Junkman
Dec 13 2004, 05:06 AM
Game: Commander Stan 1
Creator: Stanster
Genre: Platformer
Description: With his trusty blaster gun, help Stan defeat the evil forces that invaded South Park and save his kidnapped friends.

Rating: 82%

Review: There's always some games that you just can't express your feelings toward correctly. One of these particular cases is this game in particular. When I firstly played Commander Stan back in 2000, I was blown away. Sure, this was an incredibly basic game, but the fast action and the rather fun level design was definitely great. I didn't saw yet in the SPG community an action game alike that mixed platform elements with guns, baddies, bosses which was as effective. I thought back then SP Mario by Matthew Crosta and Deputy Cartman were the best exemples of good platform action... well that was until I saw this game.

As I mentionned, this isn't a complex game, but it's surely the reason why it's that fun in the first place. Playing as Stan, you must venture through several places that include a dangerous turkey pen, a winterland landscape filled with icy traps, the town of South Park and even the depths of Hell in order to save all of your friends. You have the right (and duty) to shoot every enemy that threaten South Park's well-being and some of these guys will make your life quite hard. Turkeys, zombies, aliens, UFOs as well as Officer Barbardy's clones will put on a fight and will try to stop you. The enemy AI is pretty simple, but it does the job. Most enemies aren't the toast of the town when it comes to battle you, but the bosses manage to put on a pretty decent fight, especially Mephisto and Evil Stan, the latter which is one of the hardest bosses ever made for a platformer. This bastard runs quite fast and he shoots lasers at you that are hard to avoid. One single hit and you're out! The first time I've played through this game, I probably have spent about 20 minutes in order to defeat him once. Even the final boss is easier, for Christ's sake!

Graphically, the game looks okay, although the details are pretty sparse. In some levels, you get to see snow falling down, most backgrounds are single-colored but the active background elements look good enough. The South Park characters are mostly graphics from Chris Pirillo (whose SP icons' graphics have been used in an uncountable number of games) but cutscenes and boss graphics take up graphics from Subwoofer and Andrew Rumney. It was looking good for a 1999 game, although the game certainly shows it's age graphically today.

Sound effects do the job, as they are finely used and don't get incredibly annoying over time. Stan's voice is a little too loud at times as he picks up extra lives, but that's about the only complaint I've got sound-wise. Music is good and finely suits the game, although the music has been heard before in other games already, namely Rise of The Triad. The music still kicks, though.

Overall, this was a great platformer when it came out, and it still retain it's charm even after all these years. The engine might be a bit dated, but the game still is a load of fun. This game stood as being a very important milestone in platformers and it influenced many other game creators. Many games tried emulating the gameplay found in this title, but very few games managed the journey. A good example about why sometimes, less is more.