Vice: Project Doom

I feel like whenever I see a blog announce the new games being added to the Switch Online service, there's a whole bunch of negative comments. Sure, it's been a slow drip. But over the past year we've gotten some fairly interesting games. Obviously stuff like your Marios and Zeldas and Metroids are going to be the most 'exciting' announcements. But Nintendo's given us some interesting surprises such as a few imports along with those various SP versions of games. But for me, it's been the weird and more overlooked titles that have made me happiest. Look, I thought Startropics was pretty bad when I finally got to play it, but the fact remains I got to play it BECAUSE it was part of this service that I had already paid a subscription for.

This brings me to Vice: Project Doom, a game I had never even heard out of outside the fact that it was featured on the cover of a 1991 issue of Nintendo Power. But sometimes going into a game with no preconceptions is the best way to do it. And in this case, yup. That's true.

Vice: Project Doom is a pleasantly interesting game. It's got some kind of crazy story played out in cut scenes that feel super early-90's. The bulk of the gameplay is that of a sort of Ninja Gaiden style platformer, except you can switch from using a sword, gun and bombs (the two latter have limited ammo that you can refill). This makes how you approach each level more interesting depending on which weapon you choose. The boss battles are surprisingly cool with some very big and unique bosses. And pattern recognition is the name of the game.

But what's really neat is that there are OTHER kinds of levels that mix things up. There are some driving levels that play out in the overhead sort of like Spy Hunter, and then culminate in boss battles reminiscent of a shmup. There's also some on-rails shooting levels that reminded me of playing Virtua Cop with a controller instead of lightgun. Actually, y'know what? The changes in gameplay actually sort of remind me of the variety of Snatcher.

Anyway, this is what I enjoy so much about the Switch Online library. It's very cool to dig into some forgotten NES game for a night or two. These kinds of experiences make for great pallet cleansers between bigger games. Now hopefully those rumors are true about SNES games coming in time for the first anniversary of the service...