365//365: Day 122 – Wolfchild (GEN)

It’s a weird experience to go from a review of a Sega Genesis game with a title that describes as a wild beast sound, to an animal-like game with a name that describes an animal’s child. At least this time around, the game being reviewed has a more prominent featuring of “animals” than Growl did. Enter Wolfchild — a 2D action platformer with something seldom featured in Sega Genesis games — an excellent soundtrack.

Up there with titles such as Castlevania Bloodlines and Sonic the Hedgehog, Wolfchild has some of the best music on the system. Each level is pushed along with some great tunes, although they won’t be anything you’ll remember soon after the fact. Unfortunately, once again the sound effects fail to impress. They fall under the same classification that just about every Sega Genesis game falls under when it comes to sound effects – sloppy and under developed. It’s quite a shame really, as the music plays off the highly impressive visuals with a surprising success. There’s a plethora of little animations all around you throughout most of the stages you visit. Some stages, like the third stage in particular, have a ton of minute animations all around you, helping breath more life into the world around you. Top to bottom, Wolfchild puts out a commendable effort in the visual department.

Some stages have some brilliant detail to them, with some animations to them as well.

Unfortunately, there’s two big issues that take a bite out of Wolfchild – difficulty and length. While they can play off of each other to lessen the blow of their singular faults, it’s not a good enough reason to not be upset with the two aspects. With the difficulty, there’s a few problems that combine into one. First, you have zero invulnerability between hits, which translates into some quick deaths at certain points of the game, thanks to the rapid fire lizard monsters that chip off chunks of health at a time. Second, your wolf powers only seem to appear when you have more than full health. Losing those powers drops you to, what I guess is “child” mode (in full adult stature nevertheless), bearing nothing but punches to use against all the projectile wielding enemies ahead of you. Finally, continuing at any point throws you to the beginning of the stage, even if you’re at the very end of it. Combine the fact that the game barely have a half dozen stages to it, and it feels like the game was built with artificial challenges and setbacks, in order to help “lengthen” this title.

Wolfchild is a strange beast. It’s a visually pleasing title, with some of the better Sega Genesis music you’ll hear, as well as a good enough difficulty, when you don’t consider the artificial additives thrown in. Unfortunately, thanks to those additives, the experience is slightly marred with frustration. Even still, this is definitely an interesting title, one that you should give a try, if you can find it cheap. Just be warned of the unfair difficulty, as well as the overall length of the game.

MOTHER!

Rating: 7.0