Re-loaded is a now somewhat obscure shoot em' up game for the Sony PlayStation. It's one of those games that resonates strongly with my personal tastes, in terms of presentation - Featuring wacky over-the-top characters and equally over-the-top violence.
It's got quite a variety of environments and enemies, some of which felt too bright and cartoony for the games tone, in my opinion - but the last two levels are very creepy, gross and bloody, which felt like a welcoming return to the style I saw in the first game. The soundtracks consists of electronic and drum & bass music - some of it's catchy, some of it's generic, but it's not distracting or unpleasant and provides nice background ambience. Each character gets a cut scene intro, though unfortunately I felt like most of these were more lackluster as well. They have some really neat set dressings, such as The Consumers blood-soaked kitchen full of human corpses. But the camera work and animation is very crude in them, and the sound often feels like it doesn't fit the visuals. That being said - Fwank's intro is very different from the others and a real treat. I would have preferred everyone else get something like his, but I realize the point of Fwanks intro is that he has a very child-like mind. It seems that if Mama has the mind of a toddler, Fwank might have the mind of a 5 year old or something.
Most of these criticisms thus far are subjective, of course, and may vary from person to person.
Unfortunately, there are some frustrating issues that are more "concrete".
The controls felt quite clunky and awkward to me. You can strafe, but you need to let go of the fire button, reposition yourself, and then hit the fire button again to shoot in a different direction. Compare this to Smash TV, which also got a release on the PSX, which allowed you to independently move around and shoot in any direction. In addition, some of the characters have awkward weapons that shoot off-center, such as Mama.
The camera is also a problem, as it is zoomed in close enough that enemies can shoot you multiple times before you even knew they were there. There's no way to "look ahead" for danger. An example of a camera done well in these sorts of games can be seen in the PS3 version of the Hotline Miami titles, where in addition to the smooth Smash-TV like movement and shooting, you can also scroll the camera away from your character to look for danger ahead before leaping out from your cover.
While obviously not meant to be part of the game's intended experience, it does contain cheat codes which can help whenever the combat is being too much of a pain to be fun. The game may have an "easy" difficulty setting, but I consider the cheat codes to be your *true* "easy" mode on this one.
Lastly I do want to address few things that I do find troubling in how some of the game's characters are handled in things like the manual or advertisements. I know some of you reading this might be the kind of dismissive little child to say that I can't be offended by something in a game that marketed itself on violence and shock value. And that would probably be because you're one of those entitled dismissive assholes who wants to shut down every conversion about sexism or lgbt-phobia in video games and keep gaming a shitty little "boys club". Piss off. Games are for everyone, and nothing is above criticism.
The first one
is pretty simple in that is an unfortunately common cliche in video game
marketing, the game's one female human character looks very different
on the cover and some of the ads than she does in-game. Wouldn't
normally be an issue to me but it's pretty obvious they gave her huge
boobs sticking out of her shirt as a marketing ploy, and she doesn't
look like this in-game. She's a lot thinner, smaller chested and her
outfit is quite different (and covers her chest). So, yeah, it's pretty
obvious that The Consumer was used as an attempt to attract horny young
males to buy the game, which I think does a discredit to her fun
character design. In-game she appears more like a wacky "tank girl"
esque character, and expresses a not-so-subtle desire to consume human
flesh in large quantities.
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*This next section is going to be pretty lengthy, because Butch is a character of special interest to me. Up until recently, games almost never touched on the topic of even things like cross-dressing, let alone lgbt people - and often when they did, it was handled very poorly. Because of this, I like to analyze quite a bit whenever a character within these categories comes up. I guess you could say that it brings out the Matt Baume in me, if Matt Baume was a nerdy woman in her 30s with a love for toilet humor and violent video games.
( If you don't know who Matt Baume is, check him out on YouTube! He's a real cool guy :) )
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I
like Butch's design quite a bit. He also appears in the first game and
can be seen here expressing his desires to combine his dress-up doll
fetish play with killing someone he isn't terribly fond of
http://agremlinintheworks.co.uk/archive/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/img_scan_551.jpg
While in-game, Butch simply appears to either be gender-non conforming,
or a cross-dresser. I like that unlike some other games, he isn't
portrayed as a wimp for this but is shown to kick ass just as well as
the other characters.
The manuals for both games go into some more detail about his character. The manual of the first game has stated that his choice of attire is coincidental as he just always happen to end up stealing a woman's outfit when breaking out of prison. This gives me pause already - he has the opportunity to procure other articles of clothing throughout the game as he is gunning down hundreds of foes but doesn't. Transgender people and cross-dressers were even more misunderstood and mistreated in the 90s than they are now, so I strongly suspect this was may have been an "excuse" that Butch used to wear the clothes he likes in a world that may be tainted by anti-LGBT nonsense.
Unfortunately, this is followed by a rather stupid remark from the writer: "if he ever crosses your path, try to swallow that snigger or lose your laugh, because if he hears you, you will not be capable of doing it for much much longer". Good on Butch for not putting up with assholes, but it's also pretty shitty that the writer just assumes anyone reading this manual thinks that people who don't conform to traditional gender roles are something to laugh at. This unfortunately goes back to the previously mentioned issue of Interplay/Gremlin trying to market the game to a stereotypical demographic of boob-obsessed (and apparently trans-phobic) young males.
The second game's manual also has bios' for all the characters, Butch included. In this game, Butch is sporting a one piece bikini that he stole from a lifeguard, but in his intro cut scene, you can also see that he is some sort of padded bra made out of big medal dumbbells. This further drives home the point that isn't circumstantial so much as this just how Butch likes to dress. I highly doubt the the lifeguard he robbed was wearing a giant metal battle bikini top under her swimsuit...the manual bio also makes an odd remark about how Butch's curves "may make your lunch rise". I still can't tell if this is supposed to be an insult to the bulge he probably has under his swimsuit or just a remark about his muscular, scarred body, but either way I think this manual writer should lay off the body shaming before Butch pays them a visit, huh?
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So
long story, Butch is either a cross-dresser, an enby, or a really
badass trans gal who's still figuring things out. I hope the manual
writer, wherever they are, has matured beyond laughing at "man in a
dress" jokes, too. Loaded has a lot of fun, colorful characters, I just
didn't have as much to say about the others. Cap N Hands is the one I
beat the game with, so I have a fondness for him. Sister Magpie is a
pretty awesome character, too - one that my wife is quite fond of as
well.
It is hard for me to recommend this game on it's game-play because it is so frustrating and often feels unfair, but if you're willing to trudge through all the cheap hits you'll take making your way to CHEBs lair, the game definitely has charm in its dark wacky aesthetics and very cool final levels. I'm still happy to have it in my collection despite its many flaws.
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