If you want to relive the good old memories of Cybernator, this isn't the way to do it
Unfortunately Assault Suits Valken, better known by western gamers as Cybernator on Super Nintendo, takes much concern into IGNORING the above requisitions of a video game remake. This new Assault Suits Valken totally tears apart everything that made the original mech action-adventure fun to begin with and feels like a total cash-in on the whole. Not even Valken's budget RRP of £9.99 can save it from the excruciation of my Playstation 2 gaming critique HAHAHA! *Ahem* Evil moment over. As a 3rd person mech game, Assualt Suits Valken has an emphasis on action and platform elements. Valken is set during the beginning of the 22nd centuary. The globe has split into two factions fighting for the remaining oil, water and natural resources remaining on the Earth.
With levels plummeting to all-time low levels, the war spreads to the moon where the government's interests lie with mining and creating military bases to pin the opposing governments army. Caught in the middle of this is Colonel Jake, a veteran Assault Suit Valken fighter and recognised forerunner of the 68th Assault Suits Batallion. It is him and his squad who are caught up a mist in the fighting and solve the outcome of the war. When you start Assault Suits Valken it'll be hard not to be disgruntled by how dissimilar it actually plays on Playstation 2 compared to on Super Nintendo back in 1993. The biggest gripe found with Assault Suits Valken is evidently in its lacklustre sound department, a understatement to say the least.
The music is very synthesized and processed, often with the inappropriate instruments being played on each song. The songs also play at the wrong pitch with low quality sound effects. The developers clearly didn't take advantage of the extra DVD space either with a complete lack of voice acting; in Japanese or English. This, to me, is a huge mistake for developers Psikyo to make. The visuals of Valken are consistent of the same 2D graphics of the original Cybernator, only with much smoother filtering effects. So basically the picture is cleaner. They're not necessarily bad 2D graphics but not Playstation 2 standard either. Unbelievably, there is an omission of parallax backgrounds too which means the stages are entirely static.
Valken's gameplay is again indistinguishable to the Snes Cybernator, with the fundamental difference in that Valken is infact broken. It doesn't take a genius to notice that not only are the controls less responsive and sluggish now but the difficulty has been vamped up incredibly. Enemies are alot harder to kill and the mal-timed aiming only enumerates the existing gameplay issues Valken faces on Playstation 2. Worse still, there is no save feature between levels – despite the game featuring an appendix in which you can replay the levels you've previously completed. Auto fire is also evidently missing from Valken which makes killing bosses a thumb blistering exercise.
Valken finally lacks any real improvements or additions to the original Cybernator itself. Besides a new prelude to the first level, the standard four weapons are still all that is available and the levels are largely the same as on Snes, minus the censorship. Not that it matters anyway since the English translation is largely basic to begin with. And on the whole it is a fairly short title to play as well. Had it not been for the immense difficulty there might of been some replay value in Assault Suits Valken.
So, summing this review up – stay clear of Assault Suits Valken on Playstation 2. If you want to relive the good old memories of Cybernator, this isn't the way to do it. Instead, buy a cheap Super Nintendo and grab yourself a loose copy of the game off eBay, it would only cost you a couple of bucks extra but it's well worth the investment. Once again, it has to be said, you get what you pay for.