This is another one of those games I used to play as a kid... I got it with my Sega Master Sysytem many, many moons ago.
I used to spend hours playing this, partially because I enjoyed it, partially because it was so difficult and I wanted to advance further into the game.
I recently replayed it and I honestly can't believe just how difficult it is compared to modern games... I'm a bloody good gamer, but when I played this last, I could barely get halfway through the second level.
I have only finished this game once I might add... I was 7 or 8 at the time, how I did it, I don't know. But I did!
Anyway, lets have a look at the scoring shall we.
Graphics 7
The graphics are one of this game's stronger suits. The graphics and characters are all interesting and colourful. The enemies look cute, yet unusual. The backgrounds, while repetitive, are filled with enough detail to keep you interested as you play.
The characters are all large and cute. Each character has a unique look to them that you can tell immediately who they are. The characters range from a dog in a sombrero to a cat in Robin Hood-like attire. Those are just a few of the characters. The characters are all nicely designed.
The backgrounds are also colourful and detailed.
You can see waves in the water, and exotic plants and bushes in the rain forest. All the levels have their own unique terrain and style. However, the backgrounds do get repetitive.
The background may be detailed, but it repeats every screen. If you saw this flower there, you'll see it here, and there again. The backgrounds suffer from a lack of variation.
Overall, the graphics are well done. Nothing too simplistic, but not too colourful and distracting. Other than repetition, the graphics were better than most games at the time.
Gameplay 6
One of the game's few stronger points. The mechanics are simple. One button attacks, one button uses an item you choose. Pushing up and the attack button makes you toss money at the enemies. Mechanics are simple and effective if you could pull off anything quick enough to be of any use.
Like mentioned above, you can toss money at select enemies. The enemies you can toss them to are the cats, dogs, and birds dressed in human clothes and holding swords and walking around. You aim, and toss your money at them and they will join you. Each creature that can be converted into an ally has a specific fee that you must ''throw'' at them first. The more expensive they are to bribe, the better and more hits they can take. This is probably the game's most unique feature and the only one worth mentioning.
While the ally aspect is interesting, it also turns out to be useless as the CPU AI is stupid. Your ally will often be walking blindly into enemies and being trapped in walls. What makes it worse is that if you happen to leave the screen, your ally is gone for good. This happens way too often because the CPU's path detection is horrible and couldn't follow where you go to save your life. If there was a option for a second player to take over for CPU, then the ally idea would've helped a lot for this game.
The worst offending area of the game, as well as the area that is the most important, is controls. The controls in this game are extremely slow and unresponsive. This makes the game a slow, torturous chore to endure.
Walking in this game is difficult. You're often walking too slow to dodge or avoid anything most of the time. You end up taking cheap hits from enemies that attack much quicker than you can. This gets very, very infuriating as you see your character die over and over to unavoidable hits. Everything you try to do comes off painfully sluggishly and often too late.
To make matters worse, there's slowdown. Yes, a game that already moves this slow can move even slower. Talk about innovation. When there's around 4-5 moving objects on the screen at once, the game chugs along even more slowly than it already does. This only adds to more frustration, as you see your character helplessly move around and taking hits as he moves along. Absolutely terrible.
On top of this, you'll be navigating the maze-like levels over and over and enemies tend to re-spawn.
There are hardly any energy replenishments, so you have to be really careful. The bosses have their own patterns and get progressively harder than the last. I can guarantee you'll be frustrated by the end of the first level
sound 4
The music and sounds in this game are cute and uninspired. Typical cartoon-like effects and chirpy music round out this package. While they aren't bad, they are far from memorable. Each level comes with their own theme, usually fitting for the terrain. For example, the beach and ocean-front stage gets a light, airy theme while the Aztec Paradise gets a dark, foreboding tune. The music overall is fine, but not outstanding.
The sounds are tolerable. Typical cartoonish "bleeps" and "poofs" are what you can expect here. There aren't many sound effects, but the ones this game does have are effective enough and convey the point clearly.
In general the music and sounds is mediocre at best. The music is nothing to shout about, and certainly won't be stuck in your head for good reasons. The sounds are all typical 8-bit sound effects..nothing much more to say than that.
Story 4
you play as El Nino, an Aztec Adventurer out to reach the Aztec Paradise, where tokens of wealth and happiness await. You embark on 6 huge levels ranging from deserts, to ocean sides, and even the "Aztec Paradise" itself... As you can imagine, the story isn't deep. In fact, it's really boring and cliché. Yet another one of this game's list of problems. But then again, what can you really expect from an 8-Bit game?
Overall 5.5
Aztec Adventure is a good example of a bad game. It tries hard to be a fun and challenging adventure game but fails miserably in the end due to poor execution. Numerous problems plague this game, ranging from level design and most of all, walking speed. Those 2 factors made what would've been a decent if not good game, into a bad and painfully slow and repetitive one.
The shining point of this game for all the wrong reasons is the difficulty. While this game looks cute and chirpy, it's really bloody fucking hard! You have to be really careful whilst playing as it's real easy to fuck up .To add to the difficulty, the levels are big and each takes a good while to beat.
On the other hand, the game is hard due to the lack of controls. Had the controls been more responsive, the game wouldn't be so hard with it's cheap hits all the time. Either way, the game is challenging for beginner and seasoned players alike, and with no save feature and limited continues, you'll be playing for a while.
Overall this game isn't all that terrible but slow walking, lots of slowdown, and unresponsive controls all team up to give you one of the most jarringly difficult experiences you can imagine with this system. If you see this game, I'd recommend you stay away, it's a nice little ride, but ultimately not worth it in the end.
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