This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on October 6th, 2018. It has been edited slightly for formatting. Also, sorry, there are tons of pics for this one!
It’s the first Saturday in October, and I am here in the Playstation Basement! Every Saturday, I’m here reviewing obscure, weird, and unknown games for the original Playstation. My reviews use a nine-point rating system: 9-7 is Good, 6-4 is Neutral, and 3-1 is Bad.
In the past two weeks, I’ve reviewed two anime-influenced games – Ghost in the Shell and Ray Tracers. Today, I’ll finish off this trend with the Patlabor-esque Project: Horned Owl. This game is a light-gun game developed by Alfa System (Castle Shikigami 2, Godzilla: Kaijuu Daikessen, Elemental Gearbolt) and published by Sony. It was released in Japan on December 29th, 1995 and in the US on August 31st of the following year. The game features a mech-based police force, the Horned Owl Unit, battling the terrorists Metalica and their inhuman leader, Blair in the futuristic Metro City of 2055. Like Ghost in the Shell, the character designs were again done by Masamune Shirow. Some websites describe Project: Horned Owl as being based on an anime called Policenauts, but that’s just incorrect. Policenauts is Hideo Kojima’s 1994 adventure game, and does not seem to have ever had an anime adaptation
Project: Horned Owl has a nice cover that showcases the two selectable heroes Hiro and Nash, their mechs, and the Horned Owl logo. With the characters holding up pistols, ready to fire, the game looks like a shooting game. I really like the greys and blues used on the cover and that dash of orange. Everything about this works.
The graphics of Project: Horned Owl use the anime stylings of the cover. Like Duke Nukem 3D (which has a similar color palette), Doom, and other early first-person shooters, the rail shooter Project: Horned Owl uses the same kind of graphical style with 2D sprites in a 3D world. It looks pretty cool here with the more cartoony graphics instead of the digitized actors of Area 51 or Maximum Force. The sprites have some nice animations and the 3D looks decent. Most of the big bosses are fairly forgettable, but some are cool. Some of the levels can look pretty samey over time with lots of grey colors and the same enemies over and over, but I don’t mind it overall. The game has great looking anime cutscenes between the levels. The story isn’t particularly well explained, the villain Blair being some kind of alien, psychic, or mutant, but these cutscenes sure do look cool. Since I like the visuals so much, I've posted quite a number of screenshots.
The sounds are similar to the graphics here – they are nice but somewhat repetitive. The music is good, but some of the levels are a bit long to the point where it overstays its welcome. The ending theme is kind of goofy but kind of cool. The rest of the music tends towards a rock-ish metal with some synth elements. Sound effects are what you’d expect with lots of gunshots, explosions, and robot sounds.
If you have played Space Gun, Lethal Enforcers, House of the Dead, or the other light-gun rail shooters mentioned above, you know what to expect here. The characters move along in a first-person perspective, and the player controls either a crosshair (via controller or mouse) or aims a physical gun controller (the Konami Justifier or other non-Guncon controllers) and shoots. Most enemies take one-shot, some more. You can hold down the trigger to load up a barrage of shots, usually more trouble than it is worth. You also have a limited number of special grenades that wipe the screen and deal heavy damage to bosses. I like that in this game, a crosshair appears on enemies that will attack. It turns from green to red as they get closer to attacking, enabling the player to focus on the most threatening ones and giving a fair chance at survival. Of course, sometimes the enemy’s numbers get way out of hand or they use surprise tactics, both requiring some quick shooting to deal with. It’s pretty fun to blast through Metalica’s robots, and the environments in these five levels include a number of destructible items like signs, boxes, and cars. It’s the kind of action to be expected here.
I do have criticisms to make. The enemies are pretty samey as mentioned. While there are some very cool layouts with these levels, sometimes the game engine can’t seem to keep up in a way. Maybe it was the controller I was using (Mad Catz Blaster), but I had trouble shooting the enemies on the sides of the screen. Like other non-Time Crisis rail shooters, Project: Horned Owl requires the player shoot off-screen to reload. That’s fine, but it happened most of the time I tried to shoot at the far side of the screen. Since sometimes enemies emerge from around corners, I had trouble with some of these (the ones near the end of the game). The sheer number of enemies in this game made my hand hurt a bit, but I ended up changing the controller to turbo if I needed too. My final complaint is that a few of the levels have long segments of wandering through empty corridors with some average dialogue. It’s not particularly exciting, and it goes on for too long at times. None of these issues ruin the game, fortunately.
Project: Horned Owl doesn’t do anything new (especially considering it is 20 years-old hah!), but it is a fun game to play. The anime stylings make it unique, and I love seeing these 2D sprites in the 3D Metro City. It’s repetitive, the story is underdeveloped, but I’ve always liked these types of games. I’ve had a lot of fun playing Project: Horned Owl, though it is an easy game. I’ve only beaten the game on Normal, and it seems as if there may be an extra boss on the harder difficulties along with some unlockables. Maybe one day I’ll try to get that stuff, but I’m fine with the game as I have played it. I don’t know if you will ever see this game in the wild, but it’s definitely worth the purchase if you like this type of arcade shooting game.
Project: Horned Owl receives a rating of Good (7).
It’s the first Saturday in October, and I am here in the Playstation Basement! Every Saturday, I’m here reviewing obscure, weird, and unknown games for the original Playstation. My reviews use a nine-point rating system: 9-7 is Good, 6-4 is Neutral, and 3-1 is Bad.
In the past two weeks, I’ve reviewed two anime-influenced games – Ghost in the Shell and Ray Tracers. Today, I’ll finish off this trend with the Patlabor-esque Project: Horned Owl. This game is a light-gun game developed by Alfa System (Castle Shikigami 2, Godzilla: Kaijuu Daikessen, Elemental Gearbolt) and published by Sony. It was released in Japan on December 29th, 1995 and in the US on August 31st of the following year. The game features a mech-based police force, the Horned Owl Unit, battling the terrorists Metalica and their inhuman leader, Blair in the futuristic Metro City of 2055. Like Ghost in the Shell, the character designs were again done by Masamune Shirow. Some websites describe Project: Horned Owl as being based on an anime called Policenauts, but that’s just incorrect. Policenauts is Hideo Kojima’s 1994 adventure game, and does not seem to have ever had an anime adaptation
Project: Horned Owl has a nice cover that showcases the two selectable heroes Hiro and Nash, their mechs, and the Horned Owl logo. With the characters holding up pistols, ready to fire, the game looks like a shooting game. I really like the greys and blues used on the cover and that dash of orange. Everything about this works.
If you have played Space Gun, Lethal Enforcers, House of the Dead, or the other light-gun rail shooters mentioned above, you know what to expect here. The characters move along in a first-person perspective, and the player controls either a crosshair (via controller or mouse) or aims a physical gun controller (the Konami Justifier or other non-Guncon controllers) and shoots. Most enemies take one-shot, some more. You can hold down the trigger to load up a barrage of shots, usually more trouble than it is worth. You also have a limited number of special grenades that wipe the screen and deal heavy damage to bosses. I like that in this game, a crosshair appears on enemies that will attack. It turns from green to red as they get closer to attacking, enabling the player to focus on the most threatening ones and giving a fair chance at survival. Of course, sometimes the enemy’s numbers get way out of hand or they use surprise tactics, both requiring some quick shooting to deal with. It’s pretty fun to blast through Metalica’s robots, and the environments in these five levels include a number of destructible items like signs, boxes, and cars. It’s the kind of action to be expected here.
I do have criticisms to make. The enemies are pretty samey as mentioned. While there are some very cool layouts with these levels, sometimes the game engine can’t seem to keep up in a way. Maybe it was the controller I was using (Mad Catz Blaster), but I had trouble shooting the enemies on the sides of the screen. Like other non-Time Crisis rail shooters, Project: Horned Owl requires the player shoot off-screen to reload. That’s fine, but it happened most of the time I tried to shoot at the far side of the screen. Since sometimes enemies emerge from around corners, I had trouble with some of these (the ones near the end of the game). The sheer number of enemies in this game made my hand hurt a bit, but I ended up changing the controller to turbo if I needed too. My final complaint is that a few of the levels have long segments of wandering through empty corridors with some average dialogue. It’s not particularly exciting, and it goes on for too long at times. None of these issues ruin the game, fortunately.
Project: Horned Owl doesn’t do anything new (especially considering it is 20 years-old hah!), but it is a fun game to play. The anime stylings make it unique, and I love seeing these 2D sprites in the 3D Metro City. It’s repetitive, the story is underdeveloped, but I’ve always liked these types of games. I’ve had a lot of fun playing Project: Horned Owl, though it is an easy game. I’ve only beaten the game on Normal, and it seems as if there may be an extra boss on the harder difficulties along with some unlockables. Maybe one day I’ll try to get that stuff, but I’m fine with the game as I have played it. I don’t know if you will ever see this game in the wild, but it’s definitely worth the purchase if you like this type of arcade shooting game.
Project: Horned Owl receives a rating of Good (7).
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