When your king is chained up in a tall tower...
Who you gonna call?
Ivanhoe!
In this potentially short but highly challenging game you take on the role of the namesake protagonist of the game in a mission to rescue your king.
Welcome. This is 'Nostalgic Game Design Focus' a series where I get to think back and comment upon games that I had played when I was much younger - mostly from a game-design perspective.
Title: Ivanhoe
Publishers: Ocean
Developer: Ocean
Released: 1990
'Ivanhoe' was a rather temperamental game. The unfortunate truth is that it had a tendency of not fully loading. Something was not quite right with my copy - with a tendency to crash at certain junctures.
Even so, whenever I was up for a challenge, this game could very well pose such - and I never quite beat it - only (occasionally) getting as far as the final level.
And it was somewhat different from other games. A plus.
Story and Objective
'Ivanhoe' sees you take on the role of the titular hero in a quest to save King Richard. To do so you will need to fight your way across five levels packed with enemies and challenges.
This is a lot harder than it sounds and you will be defeated. Often.
Game Controls
The character's controls are not bad - but they could have been better (and this could well have made a difference for as far as effective difficulty of the game is concerned).
But to be fair this game features at least three control modes, each with their own nuances.
As such I think that any shortfall in execution may have been due to pressures from Ocean upon its dev team to finish up an ambitious control schema.
In general controls are as follows:
Left and right for movement
Jump (usually directly upward)
Strike with sword
Defend with shield
Collect power-ups
This applies to a majority of the game - but not all.
Source
Bonus/ Boss Battle Stages:
No shield but ability to jump over and sideways
Level 3
An intense level ridden upon a horse kind of merits its own controls - and the devs did deliver.
Jumping
Hanging low upon the ride
Firing a crossbow
Pointing a lance
That pretty much covers controls. But while we're at it I just have to comment about my favourite mechanic in the game.
Shields
'Ivanhoe' can be downright brutal with the difficulty level.
Fortunately this game provides pretty good shield controls - and you 'have' a shield!
For some reason that just excited me.
Shields are great for blocking damage from regular melee and ranged attacks (but forget about blocking boulders - understandably) - and it can be pointed in 5 directions (7 if one counts kneeling).
Being able to block attacks with a shield - that was awesome - even if it did break eventually.
Medieval Much?
This side-scroller may not be a superstar in the controls department - but it 'does' cover the medieval atmosphere pretty well.
And while saying this, I would like to comment that the graphics are pretty spot-on. Its about as medieval as one could expect a game of this sort to look.
That and the variety of levels is also to be commended:
a forest level
a pirate ship level
an open plains level
a feudal town level
a castle level
I can hardly think of a better lineup to cover the medieval atmosphere in just 5 levels.
Furthermore the levels were pretty smooth on the scroll.
The one thing that could have been improved here was that certain obstacles were finicky to jump over (in part due to the lack of sideways jumping ability during most levels).
Of Animations
It is also to be said that while the animations were quite in-sync with the bulky sprites - conveying a sometimes brutish clumsiness in motion - the same was not true of Ivanhoe himself.
That animation was fast. Very fast. Perhaps even 'too' fast.
The thing is that the game did have an issue with collision detection. You would swing your sword and 'think' that you've connected - but perhaps half of the time the swing wouldn't register.
Its just as well that the player not only has several lives and regular enough means of replacing lives lost - and not only had a pretty good 'continuation' mechanism where players who died didn't have to start from the beginning of the level, but the player had an energy bar. You could take a fair few hits before losing a life - and this reduced the frustration of missing a strike that you should have hit.
Power Ups
Extra Lives - Does what it says on the tin (or strapped decanter bottle in this case).
Sword - Extra power in sword strikes 'and' the player may choose to power up the sword for a single more powerful strike (which depletes this power up fast).
Shield - A larger, more resilient shield? Yes please. This pretty much eliminates the need to choose between standing and ducking when deflecting attacks - as its large enough to cover both.
Potion - You know those control, collision detection and difficulty levels issues mentioned earlier? This helps with that, allowing Ivanhoe not only to strike in one direction but all 'three' directions - front, back 'and' up.
I'll not mention the lance and crossbow "power-ups" as they are basically meant to introduce the phase of level 3's stages.
Between these power-ups, the game becomes a lot less improbable, and I must admit that I even had fun.
Had there 'not' also been a count-down timer restricting how much time I could spend in any given level before a 'game over' then I might even have beaten this game.
But I didn't. It kicked my young butt. :cP
Of Atmosphere and Conclusion
Its actually a shame that Ivanhoe wasn't a little more polished. It had a good amount of content crammed in - not least being the thematically accurate music and artwork assets.
Ultimately though it had a number of shortfalls and just perhaps less could have translated to more. Perhaps the bonus boss battles could have been ditched (and to be clear - I enjoyed them) for the sake of focusing upon perfecting collision detection - and maybe even transfer the whole 'leap over' mechanic to the regular levels' controls.
Perhaps having attacks be more powerful when held two-handed (once the shield has been busted).
Perhaps having a more fluid degree of motion making it less necessary to soak inevitable damage due to imperfect game mechanics.
Well... that is not the game that was made.
In spite of its weaknesses - it did nail the theme and while the premise may have been nothing to write home about - the progression of levels itself conveys a story (even if I'm still not sure where a carpet-riding dude from India fits in... 'shrugs').
Its another game that players looking for a quick and difficult game 'or' a game about classic medieval times might enjoy - and that has to count for something.
For today's video I think I'll let you all hear the exasperated huffs and puffs of Gears of Games. :c)
Nothing like a bit of classic medieval times to bring back the nostalgia.
Yeah... the "good old times"... 'cough' ;c)
Do you have any comments or feedback? I look forward to hearing any comments that you have in the discussion down below!
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Sincerely,
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