Tuesday, June 18, 2019

SNES Game Review: The Lion King

Like Goof Troop (reviewed earlier and link at the bottom), The Lion King was another Disney video game.  This was mainly made through Virgin Entertainment.  Yes, that company that Richard Branson owns was part of the video game craze known as the 1990's.  The Lion King was a highly successful movie that has gone through sequels and now the live-action version movie that is probably going to garner like 482 quadrillion dollars in the opening week.  The Lion King game was also highly successful, having sold across all platforms about 4.5 million copies (Sega, SNES, Windows, etc.)  The Lion King the movie was also highly acclaimed.  The video game, at least the SNES version that I can review, is one that gets quite a lot of acclaim as well.  How do I rank it?  Let's see below.

Positives:
1. Graphics: The graphics to this game are very well done.  The Virgin people and staff did a very good job with Disney and Westwood to make a very well done graphical game.  You can't put any one of the ten levels in a bad setting and it is terrifically well done.

2. The ability to grab lives: There is a massive reason I say that.  See below.

3. Simba's progression: No, it's not like the movie.  But the cool part of the game is seeing Simba go from cub to lion to overcoming his past like the movie is really cool.  They did well to incorporate parts of the movie to make it a good feature for the game.

4. Music: Yep, you knew this would be on here.  Literally, YouTube the music.  It is fantastic for this game.  (Yes it helps when Disney literally was part of this and gave the game the music from the movie, but just roll with it.)

5. The Ending: Personally, I get a great sense of pride at the end of the movie.  If you know the ending of the movie, in a lot of the same the way Simba does the ending of the movie is the ending to the game.  Connect the dots to it yourself, but the level is exceptional and worthy of a high ranking with how you win the game overall.

Personally, before I go to the negatives (oh yes, there are those too) my favorite level of this game had to be Can't Wait to be King.  The music is terrific.  Once you figure out what you are doing for that in terms of jumping, you'll be fine.  Plus it is one of the best levels to gain lives for later on.

Negatives:

1. Difficulty: Alright, it sounds like I am complaining here.  And yes, I am aware of that.  BUT FOR GOD SAKE THIS GAME'S DIFFICULTY IS STUPID.  I get why The 7th Saga was hard as heck, but for gosh sake how on Earth was The Lion King this freaking difficult?  Everyone might say "David, your skill at these are lackluster" and I would say "Okay absolutely fair" but GOOD LORD THIS GAME.  You will die repeatedly, again, and again, and again.  A lot of gamers rate this in the top 10 of hardest games, and I tend to agree.

2. Too finite on controls: Yes I understand being perfect on controls.  No I do not understand on how bats can hurt Simba when I hit them already previously.  I also don't know how Simba can't grab onto an animal's tail when he is directly over it.  I also don't know how he can hit panthers despite not reaching them.  Anyway, you have to be way too perfect with the sprite lineup to do some things.  That would be a personal negative to me.

Overall rating and rank:

First, yes at times you will notice a game I rate like a 8.2 or 7.4 or whatever may be lower than a 8.0 or something.  One reason for that: Genres.  EX: Tecmo Super Bowl III may be rated an 8.2 (which I think I put) will be far lower than a platformer or RPG likely rated a 7.7 because of the genre aspect.  Plus unless you are 3 NHL games and one MLB game, you likely weren't worth a high top 100 merit in the world of the SNES.  ANYWAY, to my rating of The Lion King.  To me, I would actually rate it an 8.3.  The music, graphics, the progression, and most levels all warrant high mention.  The perfection of the controls though listed above and the ungodly and unreasonable difficulty is just something that knocks it down for a supposed kid's game (Your kid will break controllers.)
For the ranking, The Lion King's difficulty will make a lot of people despise this game.  This is a game though that overcomes that.  It also makes it a top 50 game with everything else incorporated.  To me, it's the back end of the top 50 of SNES games with it being ranked 48th.

https://davidswideworldofblogging.blogspot.com/2019/04/snes-game-review-goof-troop.html

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