Rail Shooter

POP: Methodology Experiment One is a "methodology experiment," because Rob Lach created the music first -- and then designed a minigame for each song intended to fit the emotional feel and impulse of the tune. Not surprisingly, the music is quite good; the gameplay less so, though still interesting.

It's carried in nostalgic, lo-fi graphics reminiscent of the early arcade, and the gameplay varies greatly from minigame to minigame. If the controls and gameplay is a little rough, that's perhaps not surpising, since this is seven games in one. Each minigame lasts about three minutes -- not surprising; so do the songs. Three minutes is supposedly the "perfect" length for pop music, at least if you want radio play.

In general, I am not a big fan of rail shooters, the genre of game in which you move along a fixed path and try to shoot as many of the things you pass as possible. In general, they take the least interesting aspect of shooters -- actually shooting -- and make it the focus of gameplay. Procedure did suck me in, however.

The game's conceit is that you are 'debugging' code by moving through a sort of cyberspace and shooting at things that look like actual bugs. Insects are, of course, fairly easy to recreate in 3D, since their exoskeletons can be represented by rigid polygons. But this also allows the rest of the game to appear somewhat Tron-like, with glowing polygonal structures, floating textures like the billboards in Bladerunner and so on; together with a curiously relaxed electronic score, the effect is pleasantly trippy in a cyberpunk kind of way.

Weapons, armor, and such can be upgraded between levels; and there's a boss bug at the end of each.

In Toon Crisis, you're a disembodied hand down streets in Soho, blowing away attacking animated characters. "Streets in Soho" is literally that; someone carried a videocamera through Soho. The disembodied hand is likewise a digital photograph of someone's hand, thumb up and forefinger pointing -- how every kid in the universe "makes a gun" when playing Cops & Robbers or the like. The only motion is traversing your "gun" left to right, with the mouse; you shoot with the left mouse button. The opponents, however (and various visual effects) are hand-drawn animation superimposed on the videography of Soho.

If you're looking for an Allied alternative to the old Panzer Commander simulation, this isn't it. But for a budget arcade game featuring tanks, you could do a lot worse than WWII Tank Commander. And let's face it: there aren't many games on this subject these days, particularly on the PC. It just might be what you need to get that arcade aficionado to move past fantasy or first person shooters long enough to take a tank for a test spin....