Daze Before Christmas
Reviewed by Inkhands
Daze Before Christmas is a very good platform game in which
you play as Santa Claus. Louse the Mouse, the Timekeeper,
and the Evil Snowman has stolen all the presents and scared
away all the elves just a few days before Christmas. Santa
Claus goes on a mission to save the presents and elves so
all the children around the world may have a Merry
Christmas. To do this, Santa Claus will use himself, and his
other self, Anti Claus, which he becomes for a few seconds
after drinking a magic potion.
Basically, this is a well done platform game for the
Genesis. There are 24 stages. Four of them are bosses and 16
are platforms stages to run and jump through. However, four
of them are something similiar to a bonus stage after you
beat a boss. Santa Claus takes his reindeer drawn sleigh and
takes to the skies over four different locations from around
the world - England, Russia, Japan, and the USA. There are
helicopters and other objects in the sky with you. During
the regular stages, if Santa picks up the cup of coffee, he
turns into the invincible Anti Claus for about 20 seconds.
Mostly you have shoot at enemies and presents. Sometimes
under the gift wrapping in those boxes are elves, sometimes
they are enemies, sometimes they are bombs. Shoot at them to
open them though. If you kill any enemies you get presents
and during the bonus sequences Santa can throw them out of
the sleigh to the city below.
Graphics and Sound - Very colorful game. Graphics are very
good in this game. Areas are all well drawn. All the over
the city sequences take place at night of course and the
cities below all look pretty good. The Statue of Liberty can
be seen in the USA stage for example. The sound is Christmas
themed music. One sounds very similiar to Jingle Bells for
example. The effects are just usual hitting and jumping
sounds.
Gameplay - This is a very short game, but it's a little
different. I have played a lot of platform games in my life,
but I had never played as Santa Claus before. Maybe this
idea isn't as original as I think it is, but it's different
to me. Just the concept of playing as Santa Claus on a
mission through the icy caves and buildings of the North
Pole was enough to get me interested in the game. There
really isn't much to control in this game. Santa Claus
jumps, he throws ice and fire, and sometimes he climbs
around on ropes, or up chimneys. Controls are easy in this
game. To me it was a fun game, but not very challenging at all.
Replay Value - I said earlier that this is a short game. A
total of 24 stages and most of them only take a minute or
two to get through. Also none of them present any sort of
real challenge. There are three difficulty settings - easy,
normal, and hard. There is a password feature and unlimited
continues. I finished the game in about an hour. I can say
that most likely I will play this game again. This game
isn't very deep, but it is fun.
Overall - Short, easy, but overall a very good platform
game. I really liked this game. If you like platform games
and want to play as Santa Claus, then this might be a game
worth playing for you. I think it was only released in
Eurpope though, but I'm sure it can be found quite easily in
other ways.
Graphics and Sound - 9/10
Gameplay - 9/10
Replay Value - 7/10
Overall - 9/10
OR
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