Game #1227: GoDai Elemental Force

 Paper! Metal! Sand!

 Nobody wants to say it, so I'll go ahead and say it... 3DO wasn't very good at making videogames. Case in point, GoDai: Elemental Force, a game I read about in an old gaming magazine. Oh, they panned it alright, but for whatever reason the game stuck in my subconscious.

 GoDai looks like a very early PS2 game, but it plays more like a very bland PS1 game. It''s an adventure/beat'em up game in which you go from stage to stage beating up baddies. As Hiro you can punch your enemies, dash or dodge in slowmo(Why?), perform magic, use projectiles or... perform the funniest wuxia-inspired but dorky looking glide in the history of gaming.

 When it comes to fighting, it feels super sloppy, you just run up to the enemies and mash the attack button and hope for the best. You can find and equip weapons, but they eventually break unless you find a hammer power up. Platforming feels super spotty too, no wonder your jumps default into a glide. Plus, if you run towards a wall while jumping, it will cancel your jump. Oh, and the slo-mo dodge seems to actually harm enemies? I don't know.

 Level design is, in a word, boring. You run around the most boring looking landscapes ever while defeating every enemy that you see. The game forces the worst fixed camera angles out there, sometimes it's too close, sometimes it simply looks awkward. The fixed camera angles also seem to create invisible walls on the sides, which is super wonky. Sometimes you won't be able to attack enemies because they invisible wall doesn't let you reach them. The fire element themed stages are the worst, you must press switches in a specific order, otherwise you'll spawn enemies. In some parts you can destroy enemy-spawning statues, in other parts you can't destroy the very same statues. Sometimes the switches will work, sometimes they won't... it's not very clear. The art between stages is really neat though.

 The best part about the game is that enemies will scream the name of the elemental magic they are using. And the game is divided into themed elements, so during the Water stages enemies will shout "WATER!" all the time, during the Wind stages they'll scream "WIND!". It's really dumb, but it's also really funny.

 GoDai: Elemental Force isn't very good, it's quite bad actually, but the audio clips at least make for some accidentally hilarious moments, so it's not all bad... in a way.

 3.0