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Centipede
You are the chosen one! Cool, huh? Oh, wait...chosen
for what? You are Wally, a bumbling elf who is apparently destined to
rid the elven world of a vicious army of centipedes and other bugs. You travel
from village to village in different locales to undertake your divine
exterminating duties, armed with a hovering weapons platform/vehicle simply
called the Shooter.
(Hasbro Interactive, 1999)
Sometimes it seems as though the modern video game manufacturers are
overdoing their attempts to bestow a Hollywood plot upon the simpler games of
the past. Exhibit A: Centipede, based on the mega-hit Atari coin-op of the same name - a game which, to my
knowledge, never really needed a plot because most people don't look
kindly upon wormlike creatures with a hundred legs anyway.
But for some reason, there are suddenly villages full of elves in this game.
Go figure.
The various animated settings, complete with waterfalls, ponds, drawbridges,
and other sights to see, are a nice addition. There are two "camera"
modes - a sort of quasi-overhead view and a first-person view which is
completely useless since, in this revival of the game, the spider tends to sneak
up behind you.
For those who play the new Centipede for a while and wind up pining
away for the original, there's a decent emulation of the original aracde game
included, though for Playstation owners, the Atari Collection 1 volume of Arcade's
Greatest Hits has a better version.
One last complaint...this game fairly cries out for a musical score with both
whimsical and menacing overtones. Why, for a Smurf-like setting, are we stuck
with techno music?!? (For that matter, why are most games saddled with
that style? I have nothing against techno, but it doesn't fit every situation!
The Game Boy Color port of Centipede is more of a rehash of the arcade
game, and - thankfully - this nicely playable version of the game trades in
techno for what sounds like the occasional harp glissando.
Rating: 
Three quarters - worth repeat play, but with some annoying features that
might alienate less patient arcade veterans.
Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster
 
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