Game Review: VISCO Collection

10/29/2023

By Al

Players: 1-2 (Local & Online)
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, XBox, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5

There are several retro arcade collections out there today, and QUByte have a new one for everyone to check out: VISCO Collection! VISCO Corporation is a game developer that is best known for their titles released on Neo Geo systems, and their arcade collaborations with a pre-Sega Sammy. This collection brings together seven of their games, and they are quite the spread in terms of genre and origin. Seeing as rating this as a single game might be a bit difficult (Though we will do that later!), we're going to tackle each game one at a time. Since there's seven of these, let's just do away with the rest of the intro and get right into it!

Andro Dunos

This is a horizontal shooter that features gameplay that not only has you facing enemies directly ahead of you, but also some that come from behind you. This is one of the game's core mechanics and I at first thought I could simply avoid the enemies that spawned from the left by dodging around them, and then I found that several late game bosses would park themselves on that side of the screen for most of their encounters. How are you supposed to shoot behind you? Well, this leads me to the second of the game's core mechanics: its weapon system. You're able to freely change between several weapon configurations at any time, and two of the weapon configurations allow to shoot behind you with the others offering more of a spread attack. I never was really able to get around this mechanic, but thankfully there are unlimited continues. Speaking of which, you return from a continue with a random weapon selected and a random amount of power-ups acquired. Kind of strange, but an interesting mechanic nonetheless.

This was probably one of my favorite games in the collection, and one of the few I completed all the way through. It's also a two player co-op game that you can play locally or online. There are a few negatives though. First of all, I'm not sure why the game is so quiet, but I could not hear anything when I started it up, and was only able to slightly hear things once I maxed out the in-game settings. This is unfortunate as I did like what little I was able to hear. Second, and most important, is the difficulty. This game is near impossible to beat without this collection's infinite credits. I was amazed by how unfair some things felt, as you could die by simply touching the walls and several paths are very narrow. It is one of the better games though, and has more than its share of fun moments, so this one gets a high plus from me.

Rating: B+

Bang Bead

I feel that this game catfished me. I read the press releases prior to playing this game and it was described as an "arcade-style fighting game", and that's not really what it is. When you hear "fighting game" you think of something akin to Street Fighter, but Bang Bead is more like Pong with a goalie. You pick a character, who do have different stats and special skill, and you hit a ball back and forth trying to clear all the barriers on your opponent's side. They're doing their best to do this to you too, so you have to play both offensively and defensively as needed. Each successful hit adds to a meter that allows you to perform your special, and you can also taunt to get the bar up faster. I never once managed to connect my special as they seemed weirdly delayed, and you have to time them so that the ball is in the right spot when you pull it off. Actually, it took me about ten tries to even beat the first character, and then I promptly lost against the second. I guess I could've save stated my way through rounds, since it is a best out of two set-up, but I didn't want to do that.

The sound does seem a bit louder here, but I can't be sure if I was just getting used to it by this point. The characters are a mixed bunch that look like they're straight out of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, with some that I guess are unlockable, but I never figured out how to do that in my time with the game. Even though the characters look quite different from each other I never really noticed any great differences with how they played. There are individual skills of course, but I already mentioned that I could never connect a special skill even once. This game is more frustrating than fun, and the only saving grace is that you can play this one via local or online multiplayer and that evens up the difficulty a bit. I'd give a more final note on this, but we're going to be coming back to this game in a bit...

Rating: D+

Captain Tomaday

This is a horizontal shooter that puts you into the role of a... super tomato? This one is all sorts of wacky and left me speechless more than once. There's always a lot going on the screen, and there are times I'm not even sure how I managed to survive certain enemy barrages. This one is also multiplayer, so you can just imagine how crazy things can get when you factor that in. There's all sorts of things here that seem to go against what you'd expect in a shooter, like you can actually shoot power-ups away from you which is just weird. I say "shoot", but this game has more of a punching mechanic. You press the A button for the left hand, and the B button for the right. If you hit several times with one hand, you power up a special attack with the other. The trick eventually is that you have to hit weaker with one hand, charge the other hands fully powered move, unleash it, and then repeat. Power-ups also change the way your character looks and moves, though don't seem to affect your attacks much besides maybe making you harder to hit. There's a twin-shooter mechanic if you get the right power-up, but I had it so briefly each time it popped up that I have almost nothing to say about it. Basically think of this as a far wackier version of Andro Dunos.

I did like that it started you in a horror themed level that felt perfect for Halloween. The music felt just as quiet as Andro Dunos, but what little I heard wasn't as charming as that game's music. The biggest issue, and one that's present in all the games but most notable here, is the way the VISCO Collection maps the buttons. Most of these games were meant to have 2-4 buttons in a left-to-right order, but they're mapped to the Switch’s "backwards" button layout. That means that Captain Tomaday's hands are switched in the controls and trying to judge left and right is a matter of just making sure you switch from one to the other as needed, as there's no way to adjust the buttons in-game as far as I was able to figure out. Admittedly this may be a Nintendo Switch issue, but I imagine similar things will pop up on other console releases too. This isn't the worst shooter in the world, but the wackiness only carries it so far.

Rating: C

FlipShot

Okay, where do I begin with this one? The press release for this game reference pinball a lot, and don't mention Bang Bead even once, but this is clearly a sequel or remake to that game. Actually, after looking more into it, Bang Bead is the sequel to this. That's just weird to me as while this game does feature a much smaller roster, it feels far tighter and balanced gameplay-wise. The only big difference here is that the game ends once you completely clear someone's barrier. (Previously you had to score a final hit into their goal line.) It's a scenario where neither of the games is exactly perfect, but since it plays so much better than Bang Bead it makes one wonder why they bothered putting both in the same collection. With all this said I did find that while I was able to clear the board far more fairly in this version of the game, I was never able to win as the opponent always would defend their last barrier piece with their lives. I actually reached "Draw" in several rounds before I eventually was forced to give up. I even did try the save state thing I mentioned earlier, but I could never get better than a Draw. There's definitely a good game here, but neither of these are really it. With that said, if you're going to play either of them, might as well be this one.

Rating: C+

Ganryu

Side scrolling arcade action platformers are something of a rare breed. Only Shinobi really comes to mind and that fits as this game has similar mechanics. You play as Miyamoto Musashi, or his female... apprentice (?) Suzume. Suzume is not mentioned at all in the game's intro cutscene, so her presence was a surprise once I started. She is much faster than Musashi though, so I mainly played as her. Either way your task is to defeat Musashi's arch nemesis, Sasaki Kojiro, who now has an army of evil ninja at his beck and call and has been kidnapping people left and right. You run, slash, rescue the aforementioned captured maidens, and sometimes perform a special attack that also works somewhat like the bionic arm from Bionic Commando. There's a lot of fun to be had here, and there's several paths and secrets to find. It also features co-op multiplayer that is very fun, with the two characters feeling different enough from each other that it never feels like one or the other isn't needed. This was also the only game in the entire collection that I felt like the music wasn't only a step or two above silent. I don't want to make it sound like everything was particularly loud, but I didn't have to strain to hear the music for once.

I was ready to say that this was going to be my pick of the entire collection, but then I noticed the game's biggest flaw: The way lives work. You're actually given a generous amount of lives per credit, but you can see them go by fast from both enemies and stage hazards. The issue is that you don't respawn where you died, you go back to the last (unmarked) checkpoint. This can reset your progress quite a bit in some sections, and eventually made me have to give up on trying to clear the game. The same respawn mechanic works in boss battles too, so that means that you have to take them out in one go, or try again from scratch. Multiplayer makes this somewhat easier, but not by much. A near perfect arcade game was ruined by a mechanic that I'm sure was create to get more money out of players. It really feels unplayable after a point, even though everything else in the game is great.

Rating: B-

Goal! Goal! Goal!

I've never played a soccer arcade game, but I remember seeing many do so in my youth on Neo Geo arcade cabinets. I think the game I saw the most was called Neo Turfmasters, and I'm not sure how much this game is and isn't a rip-off of it (since it does look similar), but I found myself enjoying this game the most in the collection. I know nothing about soccer, and I know nothing about sports games, but the fast paced gameplay and difficult but fair computer-controlled opponents made this one extremely fun. There's several national teams to choose from, and I'm not sure how accurate their stats are, nor how much they affect the gameplay, but Goal! Goal! Goal! has variety for sure. The sound is just as muted here as in other games, but I don't think this game has music during the main gameplay section anyway, so it doesn't matter as much. I don't know what else to say to be honest, as it's soccer and there's nothing really surprising here except that it's played in a much faster, truncated way. I never thought I'd find the single sports game as my favorite in any game collection, but here we are.

Rating: A

Neo DriftOut

This is a rally car racer, which means you're doing time trials of sorts through several difficult courses. This game is hard, plain and simple. I passed several of the earliest courses, but besides the very first one that is sort of a tutorial, I never managed to clear any of them on my first or second try. The game's physics are all over the place so it takes quite a bit of getting used to until you're able to take each courses many sharp turns. This is the only game where I felt that the in-game stats actually mattered, but even choosing the car with the best handling had me swerving all over the place, just slightly less than the others. It also has the distinction of being the only single player game in the entire collection. I don't recommend this game at all, it never felt rewarding, was too hard for its own good, and it had the worst sound volume issue along with Andro Dunos. The only good thing I have to say about it is that each track ends rather quickly, and you're able to get right back into it if you have to give them a second try. I don't know if you'd really want to though; I know I barely did.

Rating: C-

So, I guess there are three issues that all the games have that I should mention here at closing, even though I touched upon them all above. First off, all the games are weirdly quiet. I played the entire collection on the Nintendo Switch, so it could just be the platform, but it was a big issue in general. I know it's just the games themselves though, as the menu sounds and the like were much louder than everything else. Second is the button mapping. Even though I'm sure that the Switch has the worst of it this time due to where its "main" buttons are placed, but I assume that all consoles will have issues since they're just meant to be played in a button layout that modern controllers don't have. Lastly, I found the lack of customization options extremely shocking. Funny enough the only you can adjust within each game is the volume, though even cranked up I didn't notice much difference. You can remap buttons, adjust difficulty, or other things like that. I'd be a lot more lenient on this game if these options were present, but hopefully that can be fixed in a later update.

I have strong mixed feelings on the VISCO Collection. These Neo Geo-esque games are very hit and miss, with Bang Bead just feeling overall pointless in general. I'd be lying to say if some of these games weren't fun though. Even games like Ganryu and Captain Tomaday have their charm, despite their many flaws. Goal! Goal! Goal!, Andro Dunos, and maybe FlipShot are worth picking this one up though. The collection currently is priced at $19.99, and I'm glad that they went for such a reasonably low price point as it makes it easier to suggest taking a good look at the trailer below to see if you'll find this collection as occasionally charming as I did. If so, maybe go online with FlipShot so I can finally join a random lobby!

Check Out VISCO Collection on The Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/visco-collection-switch/

Overall Rating: C+

Pros:
+ Games like Andro Dunos and Goal! Goal! Goal! are pretty good and worth checking out.
+ While the game doesn't offer many customization options, the overall presentation is pretty well done.
+ Online multiplayer for the games that support it is a nice touch.
+ While I am not familiar with any of these titles, I'm sure this collection would be quite nostalgic for those that are.
+ Priced perfectly for the amount of content.

Cons:
- Half the games feel like they might have been better left in the past, or included in a collection with more "good" games.
- Including Bang Bead along with FlipShot seems like a total waste of a game slot as the latter is the superior version of the game in my opinion.
- Every game has sound issues of some sort, with sound effects and music barely being audible even on the highest settings.
- There are practically no customization options for any of the games.
- Would've loved to see a few more games added, maybe an even ten, to make the "bad" games here hurt less.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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