Game: "Decap Attack"
System: Sega Genesis
Genre: Action
Published by: Sega
Reviewer: Dr. Boogie
Posted: 10/22/2008
Review: Games with mummies and werewolves and such tend to be geared more towards the horror side of the gaming spectrum. Well what about the fun side of horror? That’s where you’ll find Decap Attack.
The diabolical Max D. Cap has emerged from the underworld to conquer our world, a suspiciously skeleton-shaped world full of monsters and all sorts of horror-themed decorations. Has he already succeeded, or is this just a sign of how bad things have gotten? To find the answer, you’ll need to take control of headless mummy, Chuck D. Head.
That you control a headless mummy with a face in his chest is weird enough on its own, but the designers had further weirdness in mind. Rather than battering enemies with his ropey arms or inflicting the Mummy’s Curse on them, Chuck attacks by shooting his face out of his chest to deliver some kind of bizarre head/face/torsobutt. He gets surprisingly good reach with his face projection, but you run into some problems when you start facing enemies that take multiple hits.
You can pick up a skull every now and then to give yourself a ranged attack, but the skull only hangs out until you get hit. Speaking of getting hit, the game gives you the option to set how much health you start with at the beginning, but at the same time, the game likes to get you a occasional cheap hit. To get powerups, you need to break open statues with your face, but sometimes, those same statues will spawn an enemy. Fortunately, hitting a statue with your face will stop you if you’re running, but that doesn’t make getting hit by these surprise enemies any less irritating.
The powerups that you can get are unique in that none of them are used the moment you pick them up. Instead, you have a pause menu where you can pick which particular magic potion you’d like to unleash. The potions can do things like strengthen your “punch”, make you jump higher, and even kill all enemies on screen, but they do all these things in 10-second bursts. Also, you can’t use invulnerability during a boss fight, which is a bummer. The one potion they don’t have, and the one I probably would’ve used more than any other, is a health potion.
The health potion bit really comes into focus when you realize that your health isn’t refilled when you beat a stage, or ever for that matter. You can find little hearts (your health is shown by beating heart, and not the Valentine’s Day kind of hearts either), but they don’t show up that often, and each one only restores a single hitpoint.
Even so, the game is still plenty enjoyable. For me, the enjoyment is partly based on the bizarreness of Chuck, the enemies, and even the world. Sure, Chuck can kill enemies by hitting them with his face, but he can also kill most of them by jumping on their heads and pounding them into the ground until they explode in a shower of bones. It’s a kid’s game! Plus, Chuck has some kind of strange mummy hovering ability you can use while he’s in the air. Why? I don’t know, but it sure comes in handy. And the music is great, too!
Overall rating:
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)