Tester’s Corner: Dengeki Stryker Ed. Vol 2

4. Dengeki StrykerToday we bring you the second Tester’s Corner for Dengeki Stryker, from Nurio!

Disclaimer: Lots of fangasming and use of the word “awesome”.

Howdy. It’s Nurio again, and this time I’m here to bring you a Tester’s Corner for Dengeki Stryker. Yes, that’s right. I got to test a second Overdrive game! I’d do the madman screaming dance again, but I don’t want to sound too much like a broken record.

Overdrive has always taken concepts or themes that don’t interest me in particular, and made them awesome. Rock bands? Pfft! KiraKira? Heck yeah! Tour guides? Nah. Go Go Nippon? Yes, please! And Dengeki Stryker is no exception. I’m not a huge fan of superheroes (read: I hardly know who Superman and Batman are), but Dengeki Stryker is made of crystallized awesome juice.

Just booting up the game had me blown away. The menus are animated! They move and everything! Stuff was happening on screen, and pieces of metal were shifting into each other and, Oh my God, it was an incredibly awesome experience on its own. Yes, I’m easy to please. (Ladies read: I’m low-maintenance; please be interested. ;.;)

But not only the menus were animated. This game has fully animated cutscenes. (Awesome!) The first time I saw it, my mom could mop molten Nurio from the floor. I think it took about three days to turn solid again. The cutscenes of course covered the most awesome moments in this game. And if you’re not awed by the awesome cutscenes, then… then… then you have your right to your own opinion. Just know that your opinion is false and you should be ashamed.

And I never have to fear the music might be bad in an Overdrive game. Once again, their games have some nice and awesome tunes. But other than that, there’s not much to say, other than that I love it. Background music is an important part of a game or show and the music in Dengeki Stryker does the job perfectly. It does such a good job that I’d take the music out on a romantic date if that were physically possible. (Science fails on making this possible, sadly.)

Did you know everyone in this game is voiced, including the main character? Well, it’s true and it’s awesome! It’s not unique to this game, but you can turn off particular voices. Don’t like the voice of this guy or that girl? Just turn it off in the options menu. There’s even an option to turn off the voice of the main character during sex scenes. But know that every time you turn off someone’s voice, you make the voice actor cry. (And that’s not awesome.) Think about it if that’s what you really want. It’s interesting, though, that the actual names of the voices stay hidden until they’re actually revealed. It’s so you don’t get spoiled, and I’m all for that. I’m allergic to spoilers and they give me the worst rash ever. Hidden names, such an awesome idea.

image01

Spoiler-free! ^^

And last, but not least: We seem to have support for special characters.

Look! It's a music note! Awesome!

Look! It’s a music note! Awesome!

So, the story. This game is about awesome superheroes, in case you hadn’t noticed yet. I’m not a fan of mecha anime or that weird bat dude in western comics/animation, yet I’m a fan of Dengeki Stryker. You play the role of Yuuki Yamato, a small boy who loves the Dengeki Stryker manga (Yes, it’s an awesome manga in-universe) and wants to be a superhero himself.

image03Without trying to spoil anything: Stuff happens (oh noes!) and Yamato is in a slight state of anguish. A mysterious man approaches him and offers him a wish in exchange for his memories. And from that moment forth, Yuuki Yamato is Dengeki Stryker. Cue awesome intro video and a story more complex than I would’ve thought initially.

It’s now several years later, and Yamato lives by himself in a rotten, not-awesome apartment. Also, Japan is being attacked by an evil empire called Balbora. What Yamato doesn’t know is that the soldiers of this empire live next door to him, in a similar rotten apartment. It’s okay, though. The soldiers themselves don’t know either that Yamato is Dengeki Stryker. And so, hilarity ensues. They actually become best neighbors, and seeing them interact makes me all warm and fuzzy… and awesome.

image04As I said, the characters are all great and awesome with extraordinary personalities, especially the bad guys. For example, most of them have strange speech patterns. Not uncommon in VNs, but it really clicked in this one. Though sometimes, some behavior can be a bit repetitive (I am looking at you, Hilko!), but it’s still funny nonetheless.

image05Dengeki Stryker has wonderfully awesome characters, and too many to list here. So, I won’t go through all characters here. There’s the product page for that. Anyway, there’s Haruna, who apparently has sniffed underwear before and likes to see your warm, steaming body stepping out of the bath. I’m not making this up!

image06Then there’s Sayaka, who complains about everything you do. In other words, typical female behavior.

image07And then there’s Jack. He’s a Ninja from Texas and he’s the best character in this whole game. He seriously almost made me gay. Almost… Almost, I say! He’s just that awesome…

See? Jack is an awesome Ninja.

See? Jack is an awesome Ninja.

And lastly, there’s a dog.

And he floats, and nobody thinks it's weird.

And he floats, and nobody thinks it’s weird.

Yes, that’s probably his cock-a-doodle-doo between his legs. But I honestly do not know. What I do know, however, is that the people in this game can say cock freely without the audio being censored. Yay for uncensored goodness! …Except that the word cock is still censored in sex scenes. (Don’t worry; the actual cock image isn’t censored.) Not sure how that works, but alas, the laws in Japan don’t always make sense.

Speaking of things that don’t make sense: Daniel doesn’t make sense. (But he’s still awesome.) When you increase the gravity on an object, you don’t increase the mass. In fact, an object with higher gravity but equal mass is easier to stop due to relative friction with the ground. (You’ll see what I mean when you play the game. And if you don’t, you should’ve studied Physics.)

So, why am I going through the characters so quickly? Honestly, describing them does them no good. They’re too awesome for that. You need to experience them. See them. Feel them. Sniff them. Let them touch every part of your soul in a non-obscene manner. Accept them and don’t resist. (But seriously, this is a case of see, don’t tell.)

I’ll say it once more: Dengeki Stryker is an awesome game. It has three Sagas. You start with the Zero Saga, then you get the Heaven Saga, and lastly there’s the Sky Saga. Yes, it’s in that order. It’s linear, which means that you don’t have to worry with pesky choices in the game and walkthroughs to get to a certain branch. First I thought that complex choices and branches were the bomb (I must’ve killed thousands of youngsters with that expression), but this awesome game and Higurashi made me realize the beauty of linear stories.

Yes, I said beauty. Dengeki Stryker is a beauty of a story. Despite the linearity, there’s still some complexity to the story. There’s so many awesome moments in there that I lost count halfway through. The game had me enthralled all throughout and in the end, I was like this:

image10

*sniff*

Yes, it turned me into a bear! And it’s awesome! My mom doesn’t recognize me anymore, and I am free to do what I want now. Typing with claws is a bitch, though.

This incoherent train wreck of a Tester’s Corner was brought to you by Nurio. I hope that it helped you realize how awesome Dengeki Stryker is.

“Awesome” word count: 33. Awesome!

Bookmark the permalink.

7 Comments

  1. I see Nurio is as crazy as ever. 😛 Interesting read, though.

    Oh, and yay for music notes! o/`

  2. ♪ go nurio, go ♪

  3. Nintendo Maniac 64

    I believe you are GAR for Jack, not gay.

  4. I’m not sure about what you guys think but I believe Jack is a girl. Why the hint is when Yuuki and Jack were in the public bath house and Jack took a bath in a corner and not with Yuuki.

  5. This review suggests that Jack never actually appears in the game, because he’s just that good a ninja.

    I propose that Jack is the most prolific character in all of VNs. Any time there’s not a character sprite on the screen, it’s really Jack, standing there, keeping watch.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.