This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on October 20th, 2018. It has been edited slightly for formatting. Again, there are way too many pictures, sorry haha!
Today is a spooky Saturday in October, so welcome back to 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.
Today’s game is Swagman. “Um… what?” you may ask. A swagman is a term for a wandering laborer in Australia and New Zealand, a swag being a sleeping bag used as a backpack. It’s similar to a hobo in the United States and originates from around the same time period. Though swagman stories are often romantic and heroic, the swagman of this game is nothing of that sort. “Swagman” is an adventure/platformer from Core Design and published by Eidos. It was released in 1997 in both Europe and North America, and it came out on Sega Saturn in addition to the PlayStation. The entire game feels like an early Tim Burton movie combined with the child adventure films of the 1980s like The Goonies and E.T.. I was interested in this game as a child, but I have only got to play it now.
The cover art drew me to Swagman when I saw it as a kid. The purple, sinisterly grinning titular character was so dark and strange. He reminded me of poems I had read in The Random House Book of Poetry for Children about the boogeyman and also of the Clown from Spawn, which I only knew of from action figures and POGs. The European cover more prominently displays the character models from the in-game cutscenes of the Swagman and both main characters amidst a swirling, rainbow corona. It’s sensory overload, hallucinatory, and sort of makes me think of a rave that is also a fairy tale. I’ll take the US cover.
Graphically, Swagman is of a very specific time period. Just like the realm of Faerie that the Swagman seems to come from within the game, this time period was most prominent when the barrier between worlds was thin. While faerie stories often mention the times of twilight and dawn and areas like the edge of a wood or a coast, the barrier I mean is between the worlds of 2D and 3D. Swagman utilizes a pre-rendered sprite style similar to games like Donkey Kong Country, Bug, Killer Instinct, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, and various Jaguar, CD-I, and 3DO games in addition to a few early Playstation and Saturn titles. Swagman places these graphics in a top-down, Zelda-style adventure with a lot of jumping involved. I’m not sure that’s the best use of this style gameplay-wise. Still, the graphics look fairly nice with fairy-tale enemies such as trolls, evil pumpkins, shadowy monsters, and the goblin-like scallywags. The game also has a rudimentary lighting system and some 3D effects. It’s all somewhat dated, but it really reminds me of that short period of time in the mid-90s when 3D was just beginning.
Swagman has a beautiful soundtrack and great effects to match. The music, composed by Nathan McCree could give Danny Elfman a real competition. McCree is famous for his music for the Tomb Raider series, also published by Eidos and developed by Core Design, and there is certainly a similarity here with the same kinds of instruments and cinematic compositions. Interestingly, if you put the disc into a computer, Windows Media Player reads it as Nightwish's Angels Fall First, and there is a rip on YouTube with these song titles as well. The sound effects in Swagman are pretty weird and fit the tone of the game – wild yells, rumbles, and screeches abound. I really like the bassy sounds used for the main characters’ footsteps and some of the weapons. The sounds of Swagman make this game really feel alive.
In Swagman, the player controls the twins Zack and Hannah on their quest to free the eleven members of the Dreamflight from the clutches of the Swagman and save the town of Paradise Falls. You can switch between the characters at will, though you only start as Zack. The switching has a bit of a delay that is a little longer than I would like it to be. Paradise Falls has gotten pretty messed up from the Swagman and his minions so Zack and Hannah will have to do a lot of platforming over bottomless pits trying to find the right way to go. You start in Zack’s house and end up going to all sorts of areas from a dark series of tunnels to outside into the neighborhood to a dark wood and even Limbo. Controlling the characters is pretty easy with the Playstation d-pad, but I did have some trouble moving diagonally and with some of the jumping with that top-down perspective.
There is a maze-like nature to many of the game’s levels, and the player must find keys, bugs, and other important items. You also find useful weapons and a special item for each character that costs Dreamdew to use, which you must find throughout the world. I wish the Dreamdew was better utilized, as it's only for these two special items. Items and weapons can be set in either hand for each character and freely swapped between characters at any distance. You can use items with the corresponding button for each hand, though most key items don’t need to be used, just possessed. The characters both start with the extremely close-quarters flashlight weapon, but gain character-specific ranged weapons later. Bugs help guide the characters through Limbo and take some searching to find. Finally, our heroes also transform into Dreambeasts, monstrous humanoids, when they enter a mirror and gain new abilities. Zack becomes more combat-ready, and Hannah becomes significantly better at jumping.
Overall Swagman is a really fun game to play. There are some difficulty spikes, especially the first boss, but the game is fair. It is certainly challenging for sure. I felt like once Zack frees Hannah from her imprisonment the game picks up a lot. The puzzles are fun and take some time to solve, and they incorporate the two-character dynamic well. The music and graphics make Swagman very fun to play, even if the gameplay is a little dated. If you liked Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and movies like Beetlejuice, you may like this.
Swagman receives a rating of Good (8).
Today is a spooky Saturday in October, so welcome back to 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.
Today’s game is Swagman. “Um… what?” you may ask. A swagman is a term for a wandering laborer in Australia and New Zealand, a swag being a sleeping bag used as a backpack. It’s similar to a hobo in the United States and originates from around the same time period. Though swagman stories are often romantic and heroic, the swagman of this game is nothing of that sort. “Swagman” is an adventure/platformer from Core Design and published by Eidos. It was released in 1997 in both Europe and North America, and it came out on Sega Saturn in addition to the PlayStation. The entire game feels like an early Tim Burton movie combined with the child adventure films of the 1980s like The Goonies and E.T.. I was interested in this game as a child, but I have only got to play it now.
The cover art drew me to Swagman when I saw it as a kid. The purple, sinisterly grinning titular character was so dark and strange. He reminded me of poems I had read in The Random House Book of Poetry for Children about the boogeyman and also of the Clown from Spawn, which I only knew of from action figures and POGs. The European cover more prominently displays the character models from the in-game cutscenes of the Swagman and both main characters amidst a swirling, rainbow corona. It’s sensory overload, hallucinatory, and sort of makes me think of a rave that is also a fairy tale. I’ll take the US cover.
Graphically, Swagman is of a very specific time period. Just like the realm of Faerie that the Swagman seems to come from within the game, this time period was most prominent when the barrier between worlds was thin. While faerie stories often mention the times of twilight and dawn and areas like the edge of a wood or a coast, the barrier I mean is between the worlds of 2D and 3D. Swagman utilizes a pre-rendered sprite style similar to games like Donkey Kong Country, Bug, Killer Instinct, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, and various Jaguar, CD-I, and 3DO games in addition to a few early Playstation and Saturn titles. Swagman places these graphics in a top-down, Zelda-style adventure with a lot of jumping involved. I’m not sure that’s the best use of this style gameplay-wise. Still, the graphics look fairly nice with fairy-tale enemies such as trolls, evil pumpkins, shadowy monsters, and the goblin-like scallywags. The game also has a rudimentary lighting system and some 3D effects. It’s all somewhat dated, but it really reminds me of that short period of time in the mid-90s when 3D was just beginning.
Swagman has a beautiful soundtrack and great effects to match. The music, composed by Nathan McCree could give Danny Elfman a real competition. McCree is famous for his music for the Tomb Raider series, also published by Eidos and developed by Core Design, and there is certainly a similarity here with the same kinds of instruments and cinematic compositions. Interestingly, if you put the disc into a computer, Windows Media Player reads it as Nightwish's Angels Fall First, and there is a rip on YouTube with these song titles as well. The sound effects in Swagman are pretty weird and fit the tone of the game – wild yells, rumbles, and screeches abound. I really like the bassy sounds used for the main characters’ footsteps and some of the weapons. The sounds of Swagman make this game really feel alive.
In Swagman, the player controls the twins Zack and Hannah on their quest to free the eleven members of the Dreamflight from the clutches of the Swagman and save the town of Paradise Falls. You can switch between the characters at will, though you only start as Zack. The switching has a bit of a delay that is a little longer than I would like it to be. Paradise Falls has gotten pretty messed up from the Swagman and his minions so Zack and Hannah will have to do a lot of platforming over bottomless pits trying to find the right way to go. You start in Zack’s house and end up going to all sorts of areas from a dark series of tunnels to outside into the neighborhood to a dark wood and even Limbo. Controlling the characters is pretty easy with the Playstation d-pad, but I did have some trouble moving diagonally and with some of the jumping with that top-down perspective.
There is a maze-like nature to many of the game’s levels, and the player must find keys, bugs, and other important items. You also find useful weapons and a special item for each character that costs Dreamdew to use, which you must find throughout the world. I wish the Dreamdew was better utilized, as it's only for these two special items. Items and weapons can be set in either hand for each character and freely swapped between characters at any distance. You can use items with the corresponding button for each hand, though most key items don’t need to be used, just possessed. The characters both start with the extremely close-quarters flashlight weapon, but gain character-specific ranged weapons later. Bugs help guide the characters through Limbo and take some searching to find. Finally, our heroes also transform into Dreambeasts, monstrous humanoids, when they enter a mirror and gain new abilities. Zack becomes more combat-ready, and Hannah becomes significantly better at jumping.
Overall Swagman is a really fun game to play. There are some difficulty spikes, especially the first boss, but the game is fair. It is certainly challenging for sure. I felt like once Zack frees Hannah from her imprisonment the game picks up a lot. The puzzles are fun and take some time to solve, and they incorporate the two-character dynamic well. The music and graphics make Swagman very fun to play, even if the gameplay is a little dated. If you liked Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and movies like Beetlejuice, you may like this.
Swagman receives a rating of Good (8).
Comments
Post a Comment