Viewpoint

Review

by Christopher Michael Baker

As I sat down to play Viewpoint today, my roommate -- we'll call him Chollo -- walked in and watched. "Whoa!" he said. "You're playing Zaxxon!"

"No," I said, "I'm playing Viewpoint." But I could see the reason for his confusion. Like Zaxxon, Viewpoint is a shooter in which you must travel in an upwardly diagonal manner as you blast away at anything that moves.

Unfortunately, this upward-diagonal movement of your Byupo Fighter makes things much more difficult to shoot. While Zaxxon was guilty of this as well, it got away with it due to the game's groundbreaking new look. However, Viewpoint's look isn't nearly as impressive in 1994 as Zaxxon's was in 1982. I suppose the game's developers just felt as though the look needed to be revamped after 12 years. Well, American Sammy, you were wrong.

Another thing going against Viewpoint is its high degree of difficulty. One of my all-time pet peeves in video games is when the screen sets the pace that you must follow. If you can't keep up, you'll often get pinned between the back of the screen and an obstacle of some sort. This happens quite a bit in Viewpoint, and it will frustrate you to no end. Also, there are often way too many bullets and such moving at incredibly slow speeds that appear to stay on the screen forever. In a nutshell, after playing for a couple hours I wasn't able to pass Stage Two. It's hard.

As Chollo watched me play the game, I asked if he wanted to join in with the two-player mode. He said sure, as long as the two-player action was simultaneous. It wasn't. He never played Viewpoint. Chollo's such a smart guy.