Almost 2 weeks without publishing, without a doubt December is a month of greater procrastination and a lot of laziness on my part. I had a lot of this Review done a few weeks ago, but between the time I started watching a new series and the influence of the Christmas season, I postponed it. This will be the last post of this year, a year that has been quite regular in many ways, but at least there are some good things. As I wanted to close the year with a simple game, I set out to play one developed by Neo Geo, which I knew I would not be disappointed despite its simple mechanics and graphics, but in the end like most Neo Geo games, are highly entertaining.
Cyber-Lip presents us with a dystopian future, specifically in the year 2030, in which many years in the past, humanity created an artificial intelligence which is capable of creating humanoid robots, in order to stop the next alien invasion. However, this artificial intelligence, as expected, manages to create its own consciousness and is now manufacturing robots which have been programmed to be controlled only by this AI, called "Cyber-Lip". Using a large number of robots, many cities have been destroyed and the chaos on the planet makes its own in every corner, however, that is not the only thing that is happening, since also, the aliens by which the robots were created to protect the planet, are also causing all kinds of destruction. That is why, as the last hope of humanity, they have sent only two soldiers: Rick and Brook, to destroy Cyber-Lip, regain control of the humanoid robots and put an end to the alien threat. It seems that we learned nothing from the Terminator, besides, why only send two soldiers to save humanity? Didn't the government have more resources? These are questions that will never be answered. However, this is basically the story of this game, simple, direct but effective, like many games from some years ago.
In spite of having a graphic aspect, which can be catalogued as "simple", Cyber-Lip, with its few resources, manages to create an atmosphere of destruction and chaos, in the same way that its argument is presented, so that throughout our mission for the salvation of humanity, we will travel through scenarios that are very destroyed, desolate and depressing in most cases. However, there is a great variety of scenarios so the action will not always be centered in cities, we can even go to deserts, subway bases, and with a futuristic theme, since this game is set in the year 2030.
The design of the main characters: Rick and Brook are quite small, they don't have many details, but they can be differentiated between them very easily, in the same way with certain enemies, that being humanoid robots, they present simple designs, that are repeated a lot along the game. On the other hand, the designs of some aliens, are very good, original, large and even grotesque.
The music of Cyber-Lip is, unfortunately, very repetitive, and when it is being played for a long time, we can get bored of so many times that we will listen to certain tunes, besides that in terms of quality they do not stand out much either. They are very basic, although some if they are better, since in a certain way it fits very well with the whole aspect of "action" that has the game, in general terms, is quite regular. On the other hand, something that surprised me quite a lot, is that this game has a fairly decent set of voices, from time to time we will be told certain things that we must do or simply narrate events that are happening in the game, and the addition of using voices to explain such things, is certainly a good enough aspect. The voices, along with the sound effects of weapons, explosions and any other sound effects, are the sound aspects that stand out the most.
Cyber-Lip is a clear example of a retro game, basically is a run and gun with certain elements of the platform genre, with a gameplay very similar to Contra, Cyber-Lip is a game which will not cost us anything to learn to play it, is very intuitive and arcade.
The use of different types of weapons is key to advance through the scenarios and go defeating enemies. As we advance we will be able to accumulate the weapons that we will be obtaining, this way we will be able to save ammunition of some type of weapon that is useful to us for a final boss. Unlike Contra, which was always something I didn't like, in Cyber-Lip we won't lose the weapon we have once we have obtained another one, as we will keep it and can choose the one we like best to attack or the weapon that suits us best depending on the situation. You could say that Cyber-Lip is a good "clone" of Contra, with certain improvements in terms of mechanical aspects.
And well, the last Retro Review of 2020, which was undoubtedly a pretty rough year, full of changes and difficult situations. For the next year I'm thinking to diversify a little more my blog and resume the review/my impressions of series or movies I've seen, too, since I'm thinking to see again some animes I have in a list, I'll take advantage of the new anime community that there is so that, as with the posts of movies/series, to make some post about anime or manga, I think it would be interesting, although I have to think very well how I'm going to approach it. And without more anything to say, have a good Happy New Year.
