Decap Attack (Mega Drive Review)

Look, it’s what’s inside that counts…

There’s an appropriate term for Decap Attack and that term is “In your face!”.  This side-scrolling platformer makes no qualms about what it is and there’s a lot to like. Our protagonist, the mummified Chuck D Head (you’ll see how “clever” this is later) needs to defeat the evil Max D. Cap (sorry) who has returned from the Underworld to wreak havoc, havoc I tells you!  Chuck’s main problem? He doesn’t have a head!  Instead his face is on his chest, a problem none of us would like to have.  And what’s this now?  The face can punch enemies?

A tattoo of my face on my chest? Yeeah, double me!

The graphics are amazing which is quite a feat seeing as this is a westernised version of the Japanese game “Magical Hat no Buttobi Tabo! Daib?ken” whose license couldn’t be obtained in Europe and thus has been overhauled completely.  The stages are colourful and well detailed.  So too is Chuck and the enemies littered around the levels.  As well as the face-punch, chuck can also bounce enemies like Mario and obtain a skull power-up that sits on his shoulders (rather hilariously) and acts like a boomerang.  Whilst the standard enemies are fairly lame, the bosses are big and gruesome as they should be.

Where do you go! My looooovely

Each stage comprises of three acts with the final one containing the boss.  Sound familiar?  We shouldn’t be put off by its orthodox stance.  Although, I do have a few gripes with this game, the first being the sound.  It’s just too “in your face”, the music is loud and brash, the sound effects are borderline awful. Dial down the tone a little bit and it would have been perfect.

Some of the levels have really annoying blind-spots and Chuck can’t look down, which means sometimes you’re jumping completely into the unknown. Admittedly you do have a maximum of four hearts and three lives to play with, but the learning curve is sharp even for an experienced gamer.  But, you’ll get there in the end and there’s a good few hours of entertainment here.

Fun game, great to look at, which with a few tweaks here and there could have been legendary.