ESWAT: City Under Siege (Genesis/Mega Drive)
ESWAT: City Under Siege has a bit of an odd start. Despite promising the ability to play as a technologically enhanced policeman of the future, the game starts you off with two levels where you don’t wear the armor at all, your rookie police officer only having a gun he can aim left, right, and upward, the ability to crouch, and a jump that can go higher if you hold up or will let you jump between the foreground and background in these levels only. Perhaps this is meant to introduce the player to the game’s style of play, but almost immediately you can glean that it’s an action platformer about jumping around and shooting enemies, and all its unique mechanics can only be learned once you get the cybernetic combat suit in level 3… even though it will remove the jet boosters for level 4 shortly after you just got your first taste of them.
If I had to guess why the game has such an odd start despite being a game with only 8 levels total, it might have something to do with the game’s strong level identity. Despite being somewhat short themselves, each stage in the game manages to stand out from the others, even if that comes at putting odd limiters on the player. Almost every stage can be described in one sentence that will set it apart in purpose and design from the others, such as the sewer level that is absolutely teeming with enemies to the point the challenge is trying to slip through alive, or the maze-like interior of Dark Base where you must expertly manage your aerial movement. Even when ESWAT: City Under Siege is keeping something from you, it seems to be doing so to try and give a more unique feel to the area you are entering, although the first stage of the game and the first with the cybernetic enhancements are essentially more showcases of the game’s somewhat simple mechanics rather than something offering a totally unique form of challenge. It is fairly easy to lose any idea of the plot in this though, the game just setting you up to take down a generic evil group called E.Y.E. who aims to take over the world and not really bringing it up much after that set-up.
When it comes to stage design, ESWAT: City Under Siege is pretty creative and keeps things fresh conceptually. Your interaction with these levels is where the game loses some of its steam. As mentioned before, in the first two levels your capabilities are incredibly basic. Your gun can kill most everything in one shot and even the ones that do take a few more hits are easily ignored or dispatched from a distance if they’re difficult. Even the bosses of those stages rely on waiting and repetition to overcome rather than strategy, especially level 2’s pair of robot gunners who you just need to bait into jumping back and forth between the foreground and background, slowly firing as you do so to whittle them down to death. Getting the power armor does give you a few new skills, the biggest one being the new weapon types you can acquire. Immediately your basic shot is outclassed by a three-shot variant, but you also get a rocket weapon that sends missiles sliding across the ground, a charge weapon that can deal heavy damage so long as it has the time to power-up, and a one-use Flamer ability that freezes time and deal massive damage to anything on screen. These weapons do have their uses, the rocket for hitting enemies on different elevations, the power shot for bosses, and the triple shot for regular enemy clearing, but for the most part your foes are fairly brainless and can be killed the moment they appear on screen. Bosses have more staying power, but the power shot tears through them pretty quickly once you figure out their single dangerous attack you need to actively dodge. You can lose these extra weapons if you die while wielding one, but this can be easily avoided by switching to your default or one you won’t miss when you’re low on health, although some harsh checkpointing in stages means levels like the sewer or Dark Base maze will be quite a climb back to the later portions regardless of whether you kept your good weapons or not.
Your last skill gained from the armor is a jet booster that will let you fly for a bit so long as you don’t overuse the burner. This feature can be a bit of a mixed bag, sometimes making bosses or enemies too easy to overcome since you can easily outmaneuver them and other times being a drag as you need to wait for the booster to cool off to use it again. The jetpack maze uses it to excellent effect though, having platforms and pick-ups that will immediately refill it but still requiring expert navigation with limited fuel reserves. Most other stages though will just slowly let it refill, which can be an issue at points that do actually require it for forward movement, leading to just standing in place and waiting out the slow build. The limitations are surely meant to prevent it being such an effective tool against bosses and a way to worm out of tough situations, but the moments where it’s not full are often the moments it is actually needed rather than the cases where it can just help the player cheese through a challenge.
ESWAT: City Under Siege tends to make you too powerful except at the moments it would be useful to be. Unique platforming challenges like the four-way elevator in the prison level and dark ooze in the lab that threatens to instantly kill you unless you can outrace it or push it back are good additions, but the enemies are only really obstacles when they’re packed in too tight or you haven’t learned how they function yet. Bosses tend to be slow to strike with the attacks they have that might do some damage, so they can’t really supplement the stages too well either. The final boss does pack a mostly unavoidable final attack that will kill you if you took too much damage fighting them as a sort of bitter bit of false difficulty, and difficulty does seem to be ESWAT: City Under Siege’s stumbling point. Challenging level segments are in short supply due to the ways your skill set cracks them open intentionally or otherwise, but thankfully the game is still solid enough that it doesn’t become totally boring or frustrating when it tips too far towards being easy or hard, mostly because nothing sticks around long enough to overstay its welcome, also meaning it rarely has the time to impress either.
THE VERDICT: ESWAT: City Under Siege is an action platformer where most of its good ideas are undercut by the execution of its less thought out ideas. Levels manage to have unique identities that throw new hazards and challenges at the player, but our policeman protagonist just isn’t that interesting to play as. Enemies rarely put up a good fight, especially once your arsenal is expanded by the cybernetic suit, and that suit’s boosters can make breezing past the few remaining challenges too easy or too slow depending on how the game decides to limit you in that moment. Some glimmers of inspiration like the levels with clearly expressed concepts refuse to be dimmed though, such as the maze that tests your booster maneuverability and the sewer that crams in so many enemies you can’t afford to be careless. The brief flickers of interesting design keeps ESWAT: City Under Siege from going under, but they don’t entirely save it either.
And so, I give ESWAT: City Under Siege for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive…
An OKAY rating. ESWAT: City Under Siege seems like it would benefit from some rebalancing. The stages have the layouts and concepts needed to stand out, they are just too often packed with enemies who fold too easily to the player. The cybernetic suit does succeed in making the player feel powerful once they acquire it, but the enemies should still put up a good fight after, something the game needed to work on in order to support its decent level design. More dangerous enemies could be coupled well with more limited player abilities, making proper weapon usage more interesting and the moment to moment gameplay more involved. It could be tricky to execute, as ESWAT: City Under Siege already shows with its odd handling of the booster jets, but the current game state requires more moments of proper balance to match those moments where it does succeed.
ESWAT: City Under Siege’s small offerings means everything is felt more. Two levels as the under-equipped officer, boss fights that can be overcome easily with the hover, and weapon types that tear through challenges too easily all take up too much of the game experience to let some well executed moments come through, especially since those won’t last very long either. ESWAT: City Under Siege should have spent more time exploring its ideas and learning how to better challenge them instead of quickly moving you on to the next one, but it at least doesn’t let you linger on the more shallow moments as long either.