Swamp Thing
Review Version - Nintendo Entertainment System
Developer -
Publisher -
Before I start this review I should make it very clear that my knowledge of Swamp Thing is limited. I know he is a DC comic hero, I know he lives in a swamp and he is a thing. Two of those facts came from the name alone so they might actually be wrong, Batman isn’t actually a hybrid Bat/Man so Swamp Thing might just be a cool nickname for Billy Bob Jo, a man who lives in a swamp.
According to the manual I am “Dr. Alec Holland, a brilliant bio-chemist” who is working on making a chemical formula that can transform barren wastelands into fertile land. I’m sorry but brilliant, that is the best they can do. What the hell gets you genius level in Chemistry?
Nobel Judge: Here is a bio-chemist who has ended world hunger.
Nobel Judge 2: Genius!
Nobel Judge 1: No, merely brilliant.
He has apparently kept his mission a secret from the world. Which raises the question, who is paying for this research? Or are we just supposed to assume that some university or government body just gave him the funding and said, see what you can do? The world doesn’t work that way!
Anyway, he hasn’t done that good a job because although the entire world, including the funding body of his research, doesn’t know what he is doing, a mad scientist does know and he wants to steal the formula, which he does and then blows up the lab, which seems a tad overboard but hey, I’m not a mad scientist.
Apparently when the blast happened Dr Holland just happened to be holding the formula and he was set on fire as opposed to everyone else who would be blown up. So he jumps into the swamp still holding the formula. So this lab is built next to a swamp or on a swamp? Is it a common place to build tech labs in America? Once again, who is paying for this madness?
When you threw yourself into the swamp, somehow the formula altered your DNA and turned you into a Swamp Thing! So this formula that turns barren land into fertile actually changes the very DNA of the substance it comes into contact with, this is GM crops on another level, folks!
Your job as Swamp Thing is to find a way to deal with the trauma of having had your DNA altered and the complications this has caused, starting with the mental health issues. No wait, silly me, it’s to collect vials of the formula that apparently have been launched all over the swamp. Amazingly, they are all upright and not broken, I know, amazing.
Actual Game Play
And so starts a pretty basic platform game. You can punch but only when standing and only forward or back, not up or down, which is annoying because the way the levels are designed this would be a useful tactic. You can of course jump and if you hold down the jump button when you land, you move faster. This will be something you do all the time because Swamp Thing is no Usain Bolt.
Apparently you can also turn into a tree, a flower and a tyre. I get the first two but a tyre? Sure, they are made of rubber which comes from trees but so does a pencil if you think about it, why can’t he turn into a pencil?
The bad guys are the evil scientist robot inventions. How he managed to mobilise such a huge army of robot animals I don’t know, but he did.
The Enemies
The very first enemy is a sort of claw thing that shoots a brain in the air. I swear it’s a brain, it might be on fire as well. Perhaps it’s a visual representation of logic being burnt by this game? Anyway, touching the claw thing or the flaming brain will hurt.
The next enemy is… an open can of tuna! Cripes, I don’t think I am ready for this level of horror in a game. Is the tuna radioactive, is it electric, is it dolphin safe, who knows, but touch it and it hurts you.
The flying robot dragonfly is next. If I punch it, it just vanishes and what I have since learned is a battery appears. If I collect enough batteries it gives me an energy boost. How exactly does a battery give the thing made of vegetables an energy boost? Does he stick his tongue between the two terminals like I did as a kid? Also, if a can of empty tuna hurts him, because of some half-arsed attempt at environmentalism, wouldn't a battery be worse? Aren't they full of acid and stuff?
The next enemy is a mouse on wheels. Possibly a rat, or a dog perhaps. Maybe it's an armadillo, it does look more like an armadillo than anything else. Do they live in swamps, or is it a case of it’s what the artist could draw?
Green fish are next, they apparently jump out of the water in swamps, perhaps the lack of oxygen in the water causes them to constantly jump in the air to breathe. Except they are fish and so don’t breathe the oxygen directly from the atmosphere… I am really starting to think the makers of this game didn’t think things through very well at all.
Next is falling tuna cans. They are the same tins as before but they fall from the sky for no real reason at all. Could they not have stretched to acid rain or something, that falls from the sky, tuna cans tend to stay put.
A random floating knife is next. Jesus, I thought I was lazy but even I wouldn’t introduce a random floating knife. Unless there is something I am missing from Swamp Thing lore. Does he get attacked regularly by an invisible man? Perhaps he is magnetic, I would imagine then floating knives would be a consideration.
I also came across a crocodile but it was so boring I don’t have the energy to even be sarcastic about it.
The Gameplay
You see, this game is neither exciting nor is it fun.
The controls are sluggish and Swamp Thing is slow. The whole thing comes down to timing: time this jump, then this jump, maybe punch something. I might be playing it wrong but the armadillos and the dragonflies appear to be the only thing you can actually destroy.
On the subject of controls. It says in the manual that I can turn into a tree. I have not managed to do this despite trying a lot. I have to assume it is not as easy as the manual suggests. I have seen videos of it happening so it’s not like they talked about it in the manual but forgot to actually include it in the game.
The vial collection feels thrown in at the last minute as does the battery collection. They don’t really make sense and aren’t actually needed.
The enemies are Sonic-level predictable, which isn’t a bad thing, but they regenerate in this game. You kill the dragonfly thinking it will give you a few seconds to think and another one comes along.
The graphics are actually pretty good, you can tell what things are supposed to be and the animation is fluid enough. It’s just a shame it’s all let down by really crap, boring gameplay.
Swamp Thing
A slow and boring platform game featuring a vegetable man, robot animals, tuna cans and a random floating knife.
Really crap, boring gameplay. The tuna cans, however, remain inexplicable.