Hard Hitting Action
Plot is sort of similar to "The Terminator" where a computer intelegence along with it's army of cyborgs has taken over the earth and enslaved humanity. You are a half human half cyborg who has a cyborgnetic arm (may'be even legs with it since you can jump high) that can destroy any cyborg and has superstrength sort of like the Steve Austin character on "The Six Million Dollar Man" tv show. You are basically humanities last hope in destroying the evil robots.
That's basically it, basic plot nothing special but platform actioneers weren't known for their plot most of the time. The format of this game I'll admit is also not entirely speical it's similar to the Mega Man games where you have to pick 6 different areas (3 more as you beat them) in any order you wish.
And each and every boss stationed in those areas has different attack methods. It's all stuff that is not new but it's all done perfect.
What I like about the game are three things, from the graphics for an NES game I'll admit the detail is really good from the background to some of the forground. The music which is actually great I mean the soundtrack really just give this game a great feel making it seem dark but also exciting like any game with action should have.
But the real joy is in the gameplay which is similar to Ninja Gaiden but that's beside the point. The hit detection is flawless the sound of your punches whenever you hit robots or anything else is great to hear it really sounds like your doing damage to them, and what I really love about it is it solves that fundamental problem with bullets. Whenever bullets come at you in the game you would usual have to dodge them, but in this game you have a second option you can actually punch them which gives you an advantage, that way if you ever run into a place where there is little space or if you're too late to dodge you can simply deflect the bullets coming your way.
And it has the unique feature of a combination system where you combine different robots each with different symbols you can combine them all with the same symbol or one different one with the combo which will create a different kind of robot pal with different abilities. My favorate was always the blaster where you can fire blasts from different directions but chararged up and you can do some serious damage. You can also use your robot pal as a rocket pack to latch onto get over certain opsticales which is also helpful.
The game is rather chalangeing due to length of levels and the opsticales with them but it's beatable which means it will take some considerable practice to beat the levels, once you know the patterns and everything you can get though smoothly. The whole game really depends on your skill to win, and I'll admit when I got though one of the levels it was a great feeling from that knowledge which I don't really get often these days.
Shaterhand is hard hitting action that packs a punch.