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Ah . . . the wonders of the role-playing game . . . fat, sweaty, bearded men, warty old boilers mixing crap in large cauldrons, balloon chested maidens with flaxen curls flowing . . . flowing . . . uhh . . . where was I . . . ah, yes ! Anyway, RPGs are an esoteric bunch of misfits that everybody seems to hate unless: A- You are a fat and sweaty man-beard, B- The words "Final" and "Fantasy" have at least a small connection to do with the game, or, C- You are a guy like me (verging on becoming said fat and sweaty man-beard). Then again I could be very wrong, but from a man-beard's point of view, the world is against me and I must consolidate into my smelly little bedroom which also doubles up as a mystical land of slugs in hats and pigs with monocles (this is not so far from the truth as you might want to believe), fighting against lumbering Orcs with reckless abandon for my now deceased sofa (this was at the battle of the gnome's eyebrow, a very bloody battle indeed, it also saw He Man quit smoking, and Michael Jackson grow that hideous beard of his).

Good times were these where I would spend a few hours lost in the world of Soleil, or smash my head against the nearest wall out of frustration at Final Fantasy Four (don't you just love alliteration) in all of their musty and smelly cartridge glory. In 1994 at the tender age of fourteen (damn this alliteration !) I won one of the first ever built Saturns a couple of months before the official launch. As I excitedly ripped open the newly arrived packaging (which is, at the moment, festering away in the boot of my car of all places) I hurriedly grabbed straight for the games; Virtua Fighter, Daytona USA, Clockwork Knight, and lastly Virtual Hydlide. "Next generation games !" I croaked in my breaking voice, "but which to play ! ? Which to play dammit ! ?", and out of love for my RPG collection I thought I'd grab the game that looked the most like an AA meeting on steroids - this left me with Virtua Fighter and Virtual Hydlide though, but then I remembered the way I was going to pick the game, and went for the RPG.

Looking at the screenshots, I was reasonably impressed by the graphics, I assured myself that the game would look far better when I saw it for real, and I decided to get to the description. I was told that this game had "amazing randomly-generated 3D landscapes never before seen in an RPG", and the rush of excitement the went through my lonely little teenage heart claimed that Virtual Hydlide was the second coming.

After playing Virtual Hydlide for five minutes, I never put it into my Saturn ever again - UNTIL NOW ! Actually I will be honest with you by saying that I have owned this game EIGHT TIMES over these past years, selling it on, but like some sort of voodoo artichoke it just reappears in my hands, and money seems to vanish out of my pocket just like that. Yes. Like that. Indeed.

Virtual Hydlide is one of those adventure games where you are in the role of the gallant adventurer that must rescue the Princess from the great big fat nasty daemon who's the new boss of the land while slaying millions of hordes of his minions. Why then, am I faced with a green blob which seems to be the only enemy roaming about outside ? The instruction manual does a convincing job of giving you some really thick-skinned lies, rubbing them all across your face, but in actuality this game, if it was human, would probably be setting your car on fire behind your back while pretending to be your buddy. Or something.

Here's the lowdown (marked on a scale of "1 - 5", or "avoid as if it were plague - as essential as your internal organs", if you're that sort of person that is and do not understand numbers and only stupid metaphors for the same things) on Virtual Hydlide, God forbid:

Visuals: 1 / 5

YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGH ! ! ! What the hell is this crap ! ? ! ? ! ? This is the most rank looking game I have EVER seen, and that's even after playing Super Hydlide (although that is only marginally better, but then again that was a 16-bit Megadrive game . . .) for an hour. The playing field may be huge, the landscape may have lots of intricate details, but the fact of the matter is, the draw distance of the graphics is right up to your nose, and these "intricate details" I tell you about are nothing more than a load of really dull and crappy looking pixels shoved together in no logical pattern what-so-ever (this makes the game very hard to traverse since that is how all of the elements are composed). Your character is a fat, balding guy who walks almost as if he has had a duck surgically implanted in his backside, and to make matters worse, he runs like the six-million dollar man of all people (or at least trys to, Virtual hero just LOVES old 1980s Universal Studio shows, especially The A-Team). The enemies are only recognisable because of their "imaginative" names such as "blob" and "hard blob". Nothing is as it seems in Virtual Hydlide, but not because of the excitement and mystery of the game, but because of the fact that you don't know what the hell is going on in front of you since you spend most of the time with your Saturn turned OFF and your head under a very cold shower trying to forget what you have just seen. Words can not describe how absolutely vile this game looks, but what really adds insult to injury is the fact that this must be the jerkiest (yes, jerkier than the PSOne Hexen) game I have ever played, and the frame rate is so low it's sleeping with all of those unsold copies of E.T that got buried in some remote desert somewhere. Oh, I almost forgot - the "movie" at the start. Barely any animation, the Princess is very poorly rendered onto the scenery, and as for the daemon . . . well, the less said about that guy, the better for all of our health.

The menu screens at the start of the game are rather pretty, if a little dull. No, just kidding, it all sucks.

Sound: 1 / 5

And you thought it LOOKED bad. Don't even get me started about the audio in this game. "But daddy I want to listen to the story ! ! !". Okay Jimmy . . . calm down . . . no . . . don't put mommy's birth control pills down the sink . . . back to what I was typing before then. The music for the most part is very sub-par, thrown together on some really old synthesiser that one of the work experience kids at SEGA probably stole from his audio-visual club at school. On the first level (imaginatively entitled "Graveyard") the music is supposed to sound eerie, but to be honest it resembles the sort of music on that kids show Postman Pat. The actual scary music comes when you pick up the crucifix (I'm not explaining, you'll have to go see) and the "you got tool" music starts playing. That scares the crap out of me every time. The field music is good in the way that it slightly averts your attention from the poor graphics, and to tell the truth it isn't such a bad set of randomly assigned notes at all really. I like the Vampire Mansion music, but it plays OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER until - nahhh . . . to be truthful that music just scared me (yes, even more than the "you got tool" ditty) until I decided to turn the volume down and start painting pentagrams across the front of my house. In fact all of the tracks last around about thirty seconds each and are continually looped to get on your nerves. Thanks SEGA ! To summarise the music - it will either make you laugh hysterically until you need a heart replacement (such as when your Saturn gallantly tries to reproduce the sound of an electric guitar but sounds more like a gerbil in a blender) or it will make you cry tears of blood because it is so hideously bad that you truly believe you are going mad. No wait ! You - I mean, I am mad ! Bwuahahahahhaahahhahahahahaahahhahahah ! ! ! You see ? Even just thinking about this game will send you into bouts of insanity. In terms of the effects then . . . well . . . they certainly are . . . "interesting" to say the least. You have your every day "swoosh" or "splat" (you won't really be able to tell which is which you see) effects, but there's something special about THESE particular sound effects. Special because of the fact that the cacophony (I can NOT describe it any other way, and cacophony really is putting it lightly, it really is) your television will be throwing at you will be nothing you have ever heard, or will ever want to hear again for that matter. I don't know what it is, but the sounds of this game have never been heard ANYWHERE. For example, when a treeant (just another one of the "spectacularly designed" and "imaginative" beasts you encounter along your travels) uproots itself from the ground and attacks, it makes an absolutely horrendous "brooooop !" noise, and I have no idea why. Listen very carefully as your traverse the field (not only for the fact you can't recognise a bridge from a punji-pit in this game, or tell whether you are being attacked by a small lizard thing, or is it just that the game is crashing) because the amount of "rowrahhhhh" and "bluff" and even "BROWWWWWM" noises is at such a magnitude that I'm not even sure what is supposed to be making these noises. There is one merit that I can pin on the audio aspect of this game - the voice samples. It's not that these voice samples are actually of a very good quality (they aren't even audible), but I find that there's just something so enchanting about a Vampire that welcomes you into his chamber with a friendly "roffa row ! Mahwah rooooo mwaaababab boron rwohr !" followed by a customary *brooooop !* . . . in short these voice samples are absolutely HILAROUS. You may find this sad, but I have a confession - many hours have I and my friends spent wondering just what the hell that Vampire utters to you. Come to think of it . . . I don't think it was even a vampire . . . more of a grandfather clock really . . . the grandfather clock sound effect is actually a very good example of surround sound, fading in and out as your move away from it and depending and what direction your approach it from. Isn't it just a damn shame nothing else in this game is as good ? It's not even really THAT spectacular . . .

Gameplay: 1 / 5

The true meat and drink of the game. If this thing had even been remotely playable, only then could I have forgiven it for the terrible visual and audio it has made me suffer with. VIRTUAL HYDLIDE, I HATE YOU ! But at the same time I love you so much my dear . . . but in all seriousness this game is about as much fun as using a cheese grater on your genitals just to prove how dangerous it is to other people - much like the people who play this game try and stop others from buying it, and damn, it works. It's your usual set up with your potions, magical artefacts and your weapons. Pretty much the only thing you do in this game is follow your compass to each location plotted on your very poorly realised trash heap of a map. The levels themselves are a predictable mess, with repetitive fighting, sometimes making your backtrack for such a long time because your damn compass leads you off in the wrong direction. The bosses are a rather strange bunch, much like their smaller counterparts - The "Vampire" is pretty straight forward to kill with the butter knife you start out with, but later on in the game you'll be put up against enemies (such as the "Mad Mage") that you just can not hit with anything whatsoever and will have your arse continuously kicked until you go on a violent rampage through your house proclaiming "I am Pac Man ! Feel my wrath, mortals !" until you go blue in the face or your girlfriend clubs you over the head and makes you go clothes shopping with her (which is a lot more fun than Virtual Hydlide will EVER be). The fighting is such a shoddy mess ! I mean, sure you can circle your foe while facing it so that you can defend and attack while on the move, and you get different types of attack (well, you get three anyway) to use in different situations, but you have to be touching your foe to even begin to hurt it, and it's normally started hitting you first (it doesn't stop until you are dead, and by the way, you can not defend youself after an enemy starts to hit you) and they will (well the knights will) gang up on you - this may sound good because a challenge is needed, but not when you can't see what you are doing, and the action is getting so jerky it makes Tomb Raider look as smooth as a baby's bottom. After each level you are gifted with a new special item. This is indicated by a special "you got tool" message that isn't at all useful (it's not even special dammit) since it automatically equips itself, makes your guy walk slower than a dead person's bowel movement and is at times completely random; BEHOLD ! I HAVE THE GROOVY RED SUN-GLASSES OF DEATH ! FEAR MY STUDLY GAZE ! EXCELSIOR ! Sometimes your "Lamp" will be upgraded to "Super Lamp" which makes no difference really, and . . . oh I'm sick of bitching about this game. Go play it or something. NO WAIT ! WAIT ! DON'T PLAY THIS GAME ! ! !

Overall: 1 / 5

This is the absolutely most putrid, disgusting lazy piece of trash of a game I have ever seen, heard or played since E.T on Atari or Hook on the NES. This is the WORST GAME EVER. I can't really even give this came a conclusion. Virtual Hydlide really does try (well, okay, it doesn't try, it just expects you to love it because its for a new console), and there are actually quite a few good ideas in there, but they were just so poorly executed that they will never ever been seen as revolutionary or even really good. What is very strange though is that I absolutely ADORE THIS GAME. I don't know why but this game is just so damn charming that I can't bear to part from it ever again. As for everybody else, well Vampire has just one last thing to say before he goes back into the "obscure Saturn games" drawer, "mrrrrrooooowwwwwwwww !", which I think translates into something like "Don't take drugs !", or was it "Don't play this game ! I'm too damn embarrassed to have to be seen on it ever again !". I think I'm going to go play on it right now, but I advise you all for your sanity NEVER EVER to even THINK about playing this game AT ALL. NOT ONE BIT YOU HEAR ME ! ? You have been warned.

"Brooooop !"