Retro Review - Blackthorne
I have stable internet again, I bought a new modem and I put to rest the old one that was with me for more than 11 years, it lived for a long time and had an honorable death. As I mentioned in the previous post, the days I was without internet I was playing several games and the game I will talk about today, is one that I had pending to play for a long time, but I always forgot it, an action and platform game that entertained me a lot, a game with a lot of violence and blood and that was programmed by Blizzard Entertainment.
The plot of this game is quite interesting, the truth is that it has a plot much better worked than other games of this style, although it is quite logical to be a game created by Blizzard Entertainment. And although in itself, the story of the game focuses on the salvation of a planet, the events that were achieved for this to happen are very good. Blackthorne, first tells us the past (according to the events of the game) and tells us that on the planet Tul, which is ruled by Thoros, who in the last moments of his life does not know how to choose, between his two sons, who will be the next ruler of Tul, therefore, makes a decision quite "LOGICAL", so in a family trip, he takes his two sons to the desert and upon arrival, Thoros commits suicide (family trips are always the best). After Thoros commits suicide, his body is transformed into two rocks, the rock of light and the rock of darkness, giving one rock to each of his two sons, because this way, using the power of these rocks they will be able to form their own kingdoms and rule... What could go wrong?
From the rock of light was created the kingdom Androth and the rock of darkness was created the kingdom Kadrasuul and after this, something totally "unexpected" happened and is that the inhabitants of the kingdom Kadrasuul reject the powers granted by the stone of darkness and use those powers to create destruction and chaos throughout the kingdom, in this way, due to the evil and terror they are causing, little by little they are transformed into grotesque creatures. So an inhabitant of Kadrasuul takes the power of the rock of darkness and forms an army to attack Androth. The king of Androth, seeing that the destruction of his kingdom is inevitable, manages to send his son, Kyle, to the planet Earth so that he can save himself (Superman are you?) and together with him he gives him the stone of light. Twenty years pass and Kyle is now a very important military man for his country, but suddenly he begins to be contacted by the sorceress of Tul, Galadril, who asks Kyle to return to his home planet to save them.
Graphically this game has aged quite well and has a lot of detail in both the scenery and the characters. In itself, the character sprites are relatively small in size, but with enough detail to make them stand out and look good on screen. Our protagonist has a good set of animations, which are reminiscent of those seen in the first Prince of Persian, as they have that degree of "realism", which is so characteristic of that game.
The scenarios are also quite good, always decorated by dark and gloomy things, like skeletons and dark colors. In the SNES version this game was heavily censored, so we won't see blood or destroyed bodies as graphically as in other versions, Nintendo always ruining the fun by being "Family Friendly". However, there is not much variety of scenarios, there are many with very similar decorations, but still have good atmosphere, as it manages to capture very well that dark and dangerous environment in which our protagonist must develop.
The music is pretty good, very consistent with the scenarios and the atmosphere of the game, there will also be the typical action melodies, in terms of audio quality, it is quite good, but in terms of variability, it is quite little, that is, it is a game with little amount of melodies, since it only has 8 melodies in total, so many times they will be repeated while we are playing. The sound effects are normal and are nothing spectacular, but they fulfill their purpose.
In simple terms Blackthorne is a Prince of Persian with shotguns, as it is the main weapon of our main protagonist, with that weapon equipped, you must go through a series of scenarios and shoot our enemies. It is a game with simple and intuitive mechanics, our character is controlled extremely easy, but it is a game that has a fairly tight difficulty curve, which gradually rises as we advance in the game.
In terms of movement it is very similar to Prince of Persian (practically the same), he can run and hold on to certain corners to climb places. We always find prisoners in the scenarios which in some cases, will help us with items or some information to help us do certain things or we can simply kill them to put them out of their misery (Kyle is not as much of a hero as you might think). We can also use bombs that will help us to destroy doors to access other places and the typical health recovery items. Overall it's a pretty basic game but with great personality, it's quite entertaining to shoot enemies and destroy them, especially if we play the uncensored version.
Blackthorne is a very entertaining game, that despite being quite basic in many aspects, it is still a very classic game of its genre and will give us some moments of fun and entertainment.
