Disney's Hercules

This was the first console game I ever played, thankfully the library from Id software were the first games I played period otherwise this mediocre Disney tie in game would've been my introduction to gaming in general which I'm not sure I would've been OK with had that been the case.

Now many people will tell you that the film this is based on is the worst Disney film of the 90s (for me, Pocahontas takes that prize, and I don't even hate that film as much as Twitter tells us all to.) I love the film thanks to its humour as well as art direction, however only the art has been recaptured in this game as the humour is close to non-existent as we have a pretty standard 2d platformer similar to what was available on the Sega genesis. The problem is that this is a ps1 game that was released after crash bandicoot and tomb raider, and let's just say it's puzzle style platforming isn't going to keep Oddworld awake at night due to how simplistic they are. One thing that's way more complicated here than in that game are the bosses, specifically how confusing some of them are as I doubt anyone can figure out how to defeat the Jim Cummings centaur without looking it up or by complete accident (basically you have to ride him like Hercules does in the film which is easier said than done.) A large reason for how brutal these fights is due to the shoddy hit detection, the controls are pretty food for the most part, however it's really annoying having our hero clip through enemies and environments only to lose health to the former despite him otherwise killing them with his attacks. Said attacks are rather slow, which makes dealing with the bird enemies a huge pain particularly when they overwhelm you in large numbers which happens in a lot in the stages. There's a total of three running stages where Hercules runs towards the screen with the only gameplay consisting of moving him from the left to the right and vice versa to avoid obstacles, you can also jump in these stages, however it's very hard to determine where you'll land and is best avoided unless absolutely necessary.

I said the art style is retained in this game and it does look really good here even if the character models are hideous to look at, the music is also retained and used throughout each of the levels even if they're too short to justify how long each of the levels are. Aside from that, there's not much to recommend here, the levels are all really long and have uninspired level design despite the gorgeous art direction. It's basically to justify hiding the collectibles which are fairly standard for Disney games, we have letters that spell out our hero's name, coins which don't serve as currency in any way, Greek urns that either save as a 1 up or reveal a password at the end of each level if they're all collected (yes this post-crash bandicoot game has a password feature) and powerups for our hero that usually don't work. It's not the worst Disney tie in, however it's not a good game and is a bad representation for an over hated film.

This is another game I had as a kid but the funny story is for the longest time I was stuck on the first boss. You actually had to punch him after he stuns himself but I never knew that so it took a while for me to finally figure out. The game feels like some older SNES games, which is funny because this is a PS1 game. Its mostly a basic action game where you go down a linear path and fight basic enemies. The boss fights aren't anything special, although it is kind of cool fighting the main bosses from the movie. Either way this game isn't too memorable, but it isn't horrible either, its sort of just there. I mean if you aren't a huge fan of Hercules it will just be a mediocre 2D action game. On the other hand, it wasn't one of my least favorite games as a kid, but I didn't really like it that much either.