Entry #669: Time Commando

 An antique of times past.

 Time Commando is one of those games I used to play a lot when I was younger, and I thought it was just as good after I played the first few levels only to discover that it has aged as tastefully as milk as I got further ahead. Time Commando was probably one of the games I played the most growing up. I first heard about it when a friend of mine talked to me about it before eventually getting to play it at his house. A few years later I would end up purchasing the game on PC for myself and having a grand old time. About 10 years since I last played it, here I am, revisiting on PS1, and boy oh, boy was this game best left off in my memories or what?!

 I'll describe the game pretty much like it was described to me back when I was a wee lad: It's an action game in which you go through different time periods beating up enemies, each period having its own set of weapons. I bet that sounds awesome, and I still think that the concept is brilliant. The game has 18 stages, divided through 9 different time periods, and you get 5 different weapons per era. You start during the prehistoric era, fighting cavemen and bears using clubs, stones and a basic spear, then you move on to Ancient Rome, peaking up a dagger, a sword or even a trident, eventually making it to  the Conquistadors, when you'll be using a rapier alongside a flintlock pistol. There's a lot of variety, both in enemies, stages and weaponry, making it very hard not to anticipate what'll come next.

 Sadly, age hasn't been kind to this game, and it's as clunky as clunky gets. Firstly, while backgrounds look pre-rendered, they are actually a pre-rendered cutscene that 'advances' as you walk forward. It doesn't look as bad as it sounds. Combat is when it gets choppy, you get a backstep and two sidesteps, but attacking is done by holding the attack button and pressing different directions on the D-Pad. Combat is pretty bland, but passable throughout most of the game. Once you hit the middle ages you'll start noticing that enemies start soaking up too much damage. But as soon as you hit the second half of the game, starting with the Wild West, the game takes a nosedive down, down, down as most weapons from then on become guns. Melee combat was sloppy, but projectiles are cheap. It's incredibly easy for enemies to lock you in place once they get a single shot in. You also have to keep in mind that aiming is harder than it should be, particularly at a few choice enemies that use height to their advantage, and you can actually run out of ammo, essentially spelling your doom.

 That's not to forget about some of its terrible ideas, like the 'corrupting memory', y'see, the story involves some Virus-thingie, so the time machine's constantly corrupting. You have to collect chips which you can then spend on Terminals to 'fix' the corrupted memory. If the corruption gauge fills completely you'll lose a life. I actually lost a few lives to this stupid mechanic, aided by the fact that sometimes you'll have to interact with very specific background elements, and if you don't interact with it at the right pixel you'll get a big 'Nope' from your character as you aimlessly explore the environment not knowing that you had the right idea, just that poor programming  led you astray. And losing a life sucks because it'll also remove a segment from your maximum HP, which you can increase by collecting batteries, very rare pickups. So not only do you lose a life, you also get penalized for it. Fun.

 The game has no memory card support, which is interesting to say the least, and you only get a few seconds to write the level password before it fades into oblivion. You'd better pause the game as soon as that bastard pops up, and good luck understanding the password's font. Don't even let me get started on the music, at first I thought I had a faulty disc, but I found a Longplay on youtube that had the same audio issues: The music begins and stops seemingly at random. It's incredibly jarring.

 While I had fun revisiting my childhood, at least during the game's first half, there's no denying that Time Command is a pretty bad game. While I think its time travelling ideas, and how they pulled it off, were great, there really is no point revisiting this game unless you have some form of nostalgia for it.
 3.0 out of 10