This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on December 14th, 2019.
Hello once again, and welcome back to the PlayStation
Basement. PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of games for the original
PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated
Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasis the review over just a number. Now, let’s go!
We are moving closer and closer to all of the winter
holidays around the world. I’m sure that Santa Claus is busy making toys for
all of the children at the North Pole with his elves. Thinking about those
elves, I have a game that makes me think a bit of elves, though the characters
in the game are some kind of robotic/digital creatures with elfin demeanors.
Today’s game is Silhouette
Mirage. I had never heard of this game as a kid. I first came across it
when I decided to get all of the games published by Working Designs for the PS1
and PS2. Silhouette Mirage was
published under their action label, Spaz. It was developed by the cult-favorite
Treasure and originally released in Japan on the Sega Saturn in 1997. A
PlayStation release followed in 1998 with a North America release not arriving
until January of 2000. This North American version includes a bunch of new
features and secrets to unlock, but the gameplay was also made more difficult.
Though I’ve never played the Japanese version, I feel like this reduced my
enjoyment of the game a bit, but we’ll see that in a moment.
First things first, let’s look at the cover art. The
original Japanese version, subtitled “Reprogrammed Hope”, shows the main
character, Shyna Nera Shyna, rising up as lightning crashes down. Her
expression looks mondo weird. The art is also just kind of melodramatic in a
very Sephiroth-style way. The American version has the glossy, shiny, Working
Designs production and shows various characters posing in front of a brick
wall. I like the heavy purple coloration, but everything looks weird. The
designs, in general, are just sort of strange; having them just standing around
doesn’t help anything. Silhouette Mirage
certainly isn’t selling many people on its cover art from how I see it.
The graphics in the game aren’t much different, though
seeing things in motion makes the wacky designs make more sense. Silhouette Mirage has the same art style
in the game itself, that kind of superflat, cutesy/creepy, psychedelic carnival
oddness that we saw on the cover art. The sprites are very well animated with a
lot of smooth movement and a variety of motions. Parallax scrolling and sprite
scaling effects really add some flair to the many different characters and
settings. In addition to the great 2D graphics, there are also a few animated
cutscenes and some nice illustrations on loading screens. Silhouette Mirage really looks great.
Silhouette Mirage
sounds great too. The musick goes for an electronic pop/rock style that reminds
me of a less-heavy Capcom. It fits the graphics very nicely and the quality is
good. Sound effects include laser sounds, explosions, thwaps, booms, snaps, and
all of those action effects you might expect. There’s some voice acting too
that is usually pretty good. Some of the clips play a bit too often during boss
battles, for example, that they can get a little stale. It reminds me quite a
bit of Treasure’s similar game for Nintendo 64, Mischief Makers. We’ll see more of that in a bit.
Silhoutte Mirage has
gameplay that twists the standards of a 2D side-scrolling platformer/shooter
into some new shapes. In the world of Silhouette
Mirage, a computer called Edo failed and accidentally morphed the
inhabitants into two classes of beings: Silhouettes and Mirages. You play as a
character who is half of both, Shyna Nera Shyna. This is good, because a being
of one type can only be damaged by a being of the other type (Silhouettes can
be destroyed by Mirages and vice versa). When I say that Shyna is half of each
type, I mean that literally half of her body is one type and the other half is
the other type. Silhouettes are creepy, shadowy creatures, and Mirages are
cute, doll characters. Shyna is half of both. When she moves left, Shyna is one
type, and she is the other type when she moves the other direction. This means
that you often have to attack enemies from one side to do damage. You can still
do something if you are the same type of being as the enemy though. Attacks of
the same type do reduce the power of an enemy by damaging their spirit. You can
also reflect attacks back at them. You can always throw enemies around, though
this doesn’t do any damage. It’s just one of a few moves that allow Shyna to
traverse the stage easier (and another thing that reminds me of Mischief Makers). If you really want to,
you can switch your type, reversing the set directions for Silhouette and
Mirage.
Unfortunately, switching types and using weapons (only in
the North American version) uses up your spirit meter. If it goes down a lot,
your attacks are much weaker. It can also be reduced by being hit by an attack
of the same type (Shyna functions just like other Silhouettes and Mirages). I’m
not sure how much I like this switching system. It’s kind of unique (though a
different version of this kind of mechanic can be seen in games like Ikaruga and Outland), but the game feels a bit unnatural to control. The odd
ramped difficulty from Working Designs doesn’t help either (neither does the
slowdown or Treasure's usual boss-focused gameplay). It’s especially a problem
when you consider that stores in the game, which allow you to obtain different
weapons, have their prices jacked way up. So now enemies do more damage, you
lose spirit power by attacking (and thus do less damage), and it’s really
difficult to get enough money to buy new weapons. You either have to try to
grind or go without. It’s really a pain.
Despite Silhouette
Mirage’s odd shortcomings, I did enjoy playing the game. I really wish that
Working Designs had left it alone. It really feels pretty silly to have a store
that you can't buy anything from at almost any point, one in which most of your
money will go towards refilling health that doesn't replenish between stages. At first, Silhouette
Mirage felt slow, kind of clunky, and a little unfair, but the gameplay
became fun and faster once I began to understand movement more. The storyline
about computer disasters and strange characters with Biblical names was
interesting though perhaps presented somewhat poorly (this, again, reminds me a
bit of Mischief Makers). It’s really
not the best action-platformer out there, but Silhouette Mirage is unique enough to stand on its own.
Silhouette Mirage receives
a Good.
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