Back in the old days, before PlayStation, before Xbox, and in the era when Sega and Nintendo ruled the roost, one of the most popular genres of games was the run & gun shooter. Made popular by games such as Ikari Warriors, and of course the mighty Contra, this sub-genre of shooters was the ultimate in copycat games, like FPS or horror games might be today. Since the dawn of the PlayStation era, however, this genre has been a dying breed - shallow, repetitive gameplay and a tired premise has been blamed. With the exception of a select few (such as Contra for PS2 which is a brilliant shooter), this genre is extinct nowadays. Unfortunately, the now defunct Rage Software didn't get the memo in the late 90's, as they delivered a Dreamcast launch title of this particular brand, this being Expendable. Hailed as an old-school shooter for the Dreamcast, Expendable did nothing but live up to its name - completely expendable. It might be good to go back to relive the memories of the golden era of gaming by playing Expendable, but I suggest just breaking out the NES for a round of Contra or Smash TV instead of wasting your $10 on this game.
In the future, aliens have...yadda yadda, you know the song and dance. However, the government has taken a different route to fight the aliens this time - clones. Clone Wars begun, they have. As clones can be constantly recreated and thrown on the battlefield, the soldiers they use are...drumroll...expendable. So if you die, they don't care, long as you don't run out of credits to continue. After that, well, the story is all but forgotten, as you get tossed into 20 plus levels of shooting action! For you and/or a friend! Who won't be your friend anymore after exposing them to Expendable!
As you might expect, Expendable a pure, mindless shooter. Strategy? Unless you count picking out the right weapon from a selection of nameless, stupid weapons selection, there's no strategy outside of blowing the living crap out of the aliens, and occasionally saving a hostage (if you don't blow them up accidentally, as it happens way, way too often). On the surface, this is fine - shooters are never supposed to be a brain game, but a reflex game. But even your reflexes can't save you from this abomination.
The first problem with Expendable is the overall action. There can simply be too much going on at one time, losing your character in the process. This usually means either missing powerups or health, or accidentally killing an innocent because they're hidden behind 50 exploding boxes. Worse yet, the HUD that you get in the corner of the screen is so damn small, you can't see hardly anything important, like remaining ammo (yes, can you believe a game like this has limited ammo - blasphemy!) or your health (no one hit kills in this game - thankfully, that would be a disaster), which is just kinda important in the game. After a while I just said forget it and went along blasting stuff and not worrying about health or items or hostages, I just blew up anything that moved.
If I could properly aim at it, anyway. Despite having analog control for the Dreamcast, Expendable controls like a car that Tommy Vercetti just popped 3 tires from with his sniper rifle. Just awful. There could be an enemy 5 inches away and yet you can't aim at it because it's not right in the center of your screen. Ridiculous. When you have analog control, you're supposed to have 360 degree range of motion, aiming in any direction. Not in Expendable. This makes firefights incredibly annoying just trying to line up the shot instead of just doing the shooting. At first you can deal with it, but as the game gets more challenging later, it becomes a nuisance instead of a silly quirk.
The biggest problem with the game though, is how boring it is. Despite all the action on screen and lots of killing aliens, Expendable fails to be exciting. There's absolutely no personality to the game - no memorable levels, no interesting bosses, nothing. Too many levels also - 20+ is way, way too much for a shooting game before repetitiveness kicks in. Look, Contra only had 8 levels for a reason - the game was phucking hard, and took weeks to beat even with the Konami Code (I can say I beat Contra with 3 lives, which I did when I was 10, and can't do it anymore - getting old sucks). Plus the levels were mad memorable and different each time around. Expendable's levels are the same old song and dance every time around, with a different stupid boss at the end. Cut the game to 10 levels, make them all different, and perhaps we're talking a better game. But this one...blah. It might be fun for a few levels, but after getting to about level 6, I felt very little interest in playing any further. It's no doubt better with a friend for some 2 player co-op action (the best kind of multiplayer, one that has been so ignored since everyone wants to kill everyone else online these days), but even then, I suggest playing Contra multiplayer, and use Expendable as a coaster for your beverage.
The graphics in Expendable are pretty nice, though. While the game is in a perspective that doesn't require lots of details, it does have tons and tons of explosions and effects, which really demonstrates the ability of the Dreamcast hardware, especially in 1999 when the console launched and actually had a friggin' future. Characters are small and featureless (as they are expendable fighters, they didn't bother with appearance it seems), and wave after wave of repetitive enemy designs aren't great, but do a decent job. It's the explosions that star the show, and it's not too hard to look at. So just watch the in-game demo, and don't dare press that Start button or you'll ruin the entire experience. I hate games that look cool but are crappier than a Nelly record. Expendable is a prime example.
As for the sounds, the explosions are pretty nice and they managed to make each gun somewhat distinguishable from each other via sound effect, but that's about it. The Techno music they put in here sucks, and there's nothing else besides the loud scream when your little expendable guy gets blown to bits. It really doesn't matter though, as the explosion effects are about the only thing you can hear until you hear the screams of your poor little clone guy dying after the mean old aliens blew him to shreds of beef jerky.
The Real Bottom Line
Look, Expendable sucks. That's all there is to it. It's repetitive, it's boring, it's mindless, it controls like crap, and it's just plain pooptastic game design. I paid $10 for a new copy because it can't be all bad for $10, but it definitely is. If you want to relive the golden era of the shooter, just go buy an NES or Genesis, or start importing Ikaruga or Border Down when it comes out and you'll be content. But Expendable needs to find a home in the circular file.
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