The Dreamcast Diaries - Heavy Metal Geomatrix

Guns and Carnage

I love the Sega Dreamcast. I play it all the time, to me, it’s as present in my daily gaming life as any of the modern consoles. I realised though, that there is a lot of the library I have never really played, never really dug into. That is changing, with my new series, ‘The Dreamcast Diaries’. Join me as I play through a game, and then I tell you all about it. Novel concept isn’t it?

In this inaugural entry, we are looking at Heavy Metal Geomatrix. And yes, that is probably one of the best video game titles of all time. Firstly, I don’t know what Geomatrix means, but it certainly sounds cool. And combining that with Heavy Metal? Unreal. What a title. Heavy Metal is apt, because this game features a lot of hard rock and metal music. Whether or not it actually matches what’s happening on screen is up for debate, but it is certainly present, and it is certainly loud.

Of course, this game is licensed from the Heavy Metal magazine, a comic series which I have never read, so I don’t know if any of the characters in this game appear in that magazine, or they are original characters for this game. I could probably do some research around it, but, that would require me to do at least a couple of clicks on Google, and that is just too much to expect these days.

The game kicks off with with a great intro cinematic introducing all the characters, and the teams that they are part of. This game is similar to early king of the fighters titles, in which characters are grouped up into various teams, although you only play with them one at a time. There’s quite the eclectic mix of futuristic cyberpunk types, weird ogre creatures, metal bikers, knights, and all sorts. This game was developed by Capcom, and I don’t think they felt constrained in any way with this, it seems like they sort of just let loose.

You’ve got a few modes to pick from, Arcade, Chaosmatrix, and Versus. I started with Arcade mode, and decided to pick Kassey. Normally in fighting games I prefer the faster characters to the bigger ones, and usually that means picking the girls. In this game though, I don’t think character selection matters too much, you’ll understand why in a bit.

You’re dropped right into the first fight, and the game begins. Fights are set up in little arenas, where you have free movement to run around. You can punch and kick your opponent up close, jump, dash, and shoot your weapon. Kassey’s initial pistol is a bit weak, but luckily, this is one of those games in which items spawn in. There are quite a few different weapons that can spawn, including swords, rocket launchers, mines, flamethrowers, and more. You can hold some weapons single handed meaning you can combine a sword and a better gun, which is pretty cool. You can also occasionally get a few attachments, like jetpacks, which let you dash around and move quicker.

The actual matches themselves are just alright. The game sort of forces you into fighting with one particular strategy, and that is due to one specific mechanic. When you hit an opponent enough, they become invulnerable for a short amount of time and can’t be hit. That is common in action games, but for a fighting game, that is a problem, because it essentially means you cannot focus too much on melee combos. If you do, you will inevitably get hit straight back whilst the opponent is invincible and you are not. Therefore the only real strategy is to find a good weapon, shoot from afar, zip around avoiding attacks and occasionally zoom in for a punch up before dashing back to safety, rinse and repeat.

The game is pretty easy for the first few matches following this strategy, until you reach a match in which you have to fight two enemies, whilst being on your own. This creates a massive difficulty curve out of nowhere - none of the one on one matches come close. You can only lock on to one enemy at a time, and the games camera can sometimes be rather narrow, remember on the Dreamcast you don’t have a second analogue stick for camera control. Therefore, it’s very easy for the enemies to gang up on you by one of them coming in close drawing your attention whilst the other zips around shooting you from afar. It makes these battles way harder. You have to focus on one of them at a time. It took me longer than I’d care to admit, but I finally beat these two. And then my game crashed.

I’m playing this on my original Dreamcast, all captured from original hardware. The disc is in perfect condition, but the drive itself seems to be starting to fail. Since I recorded this, I’ve gone all in and got a GDEMU so I don’t have to deal with this anymore. It’s a shame because I like using physical media, but if it’s broke, it’s broke. This is the dark side of physical media, the problem is often not the media itself, but the thing used to play it, and they are way less durable than the physical medium itself.

I wasn’t going to give up there though. I turned off the Dreamcast, turned it back on, and played all the way back through. Luckily, this time it loaded the next fight. As expected, the following fight being a 1 on 1 was pretty straightforward. I must say though I really hate a particular satellite weapon. When you go to use it, you switch to a birds eye view and have to attack your enemy from the sky. It’s slow, and does nothing but set you up to get hit and you can rarely actually hit the enemy.

One interesting thing about this game is that you retain the items you picked up between rounds. They only have limited amounts of ammo, but it means if you get a really good one right towards the end of round 1, you go into round 2 with a big advantage.

After this, there’s three more fights, all of which are one on two. I’m more well versed now than I was before at fighting two opponents, so with a little perseverance, I got through them. They were difficult, but actually ended up being pretty fun. It was just the right amount of challenge in the end. It’s artificial challenge sure, the 1 on 1 fights are too easy because of how the game mechanics work, but still, it’s a challenge. There’s no special final boss, when you beat the last stage you get your characters ending.

This amounts to just a couple of photos with some static text. Pretty disappointing for a 2001 3D fighting game, where animated ending cutscenes had started to become commonplace.

The other mode present in the game is called Chaosmatrix, and unfortunately, it’s not as good as that name makes it sound. Essentially, it’s a mission based mode. Each mission you have a specific objective, such as collecting a key, beating some enemies, things like that. There’s nothing particularly inventive or interesting about these missions, and they all take place in this virtual map that reminds me of the VR missions in Metal Gear.

There’s not much to say here, and it’s disappointing there’s nothing a bit more meaty. Overall, I think Heavy Metal Geomatrix is an alright game. It’s nothing special, and there are better arena fighters on the Dreamcast. It’s not a dud either, and it does provide some genuine enjoyment. I can’t say it particularly holds up well, but it is certainly a product of its time. It feels very 2001.