In Werewolf you experience the transformation into a werewolf. Werewolf – The Last Warrior appeared as a platformer for the NES.
The artwork in Werewolf
The artwork looks fantastic and gives an impression of the game. It also came with a comic showing that Data East put some effort into the storyline. dr Faryan is the main villain in the game and he uses his evil powers to create mutants to conquer Earth. The last warrior left to save the world is Werewolf. Playing as a werewolf is a good concept.
playing style
You start out as a man capable of transforming into a werewolf. In normal human form, you can fire projectiles. You can also hit and jump. You can also super jump by pressing B + Up, which allows you to jump a little higher. As a werewolf, you lose the ability to fire projectiles and are forced to use your punch, but at the tradeoff of more power and the ability to jump higher.
werewolf
You transform into a werewolf by collecting any red “W” in the level. The first one you find shows a cutscene where the transformation occurs with thunder and lightning background objects takes place. It's pretty epic. As a werewolf, you cannot fire projectiles. There is a power-up that gives you a bullet, once you use it you fight with your claws again.
Backflip
You also have the ability to perform a double backflip, making you immune to damage for a short time. Finally, there's your rage meter, which is triggered by collecting bubbles. If you collect enough, you can transform from a normal werewolf into a "super" werewolf. Your attacks become much stronger and you jump higher. The transformation only takes a few minutes, and you'll revert to being a normal werewolf once your rage bar runs out.
steering
However, despite the cool capabilities, there are some flaws in the controls, graphics, and difficulty. The controls are broken. Unfortunately, Werewolf: The Last Warrior does not have convenient controls. Use B to jump and A to run. The climbing walls are cool but flawed. It allows you to access certain areas that you can't reach as a human form, but your werewolf doesn't have the ability to climb ledges, meaning you'll have to make an awkward leap onto platforms if you reach the top. You can also cling to any object, which slows down gameplay and leaves you hanging on walls.
Obstacles
With your super jump you can overcome obstacles that you normally can't and you get a pretty cool flip animation. However, as a super werewolf, you jump way too high and you can't control your size either. Most platformers let you control your jump height by tapping the jump button instead of holding it, but there's no such thing in Werewolf.
The double backflip
With your double backflip you can take no damage if necessary. Sometimes when there is too much going on you can do a double backflip to avoid death. However, the biggest flaw with it is that it locks the screen while it is running. This means the screen isn't properly aligned with your character. This can be used to skip large chunks of some stages. For example, in phase 2 you can dodge any projectile when your character is near the right side of the screen because the game thinks you are in the middle. The double backflip trick can be abused a lot in this game.
Graphic
The graphics add a decent amount of variety to the game. You walk across a stage where you are on top of a building, in front of a waterfall, in a downtown area and several stages where it is night time. Some of the rocky steps look very well done and the waterfall is well animated. Your character looks good in werewolf form. In Werewolf: The Last Warrior, the crouch position doesn't look right. The jumping sprite for Werewolf: The Last Warrior looks extremely undetailed. A little more work could have gone into the actual werewolf animation.
The cutscenes
Outside of the werewolf transformation, the cutscenes are very limited and don't look special. Many of the cutscene images are reused multiple times throughout the game. The text and colors used in most of the cutscenes are very washed out and difficult to see. Despite the poorly animated werewolf sprite and lazy cutscenes, the graphics show a decent performance from Data East and add some variety to the game.
Difficulty
The game is extremely difficult for mostly the wrong reasons. Instead of challenging, the difficulty pops up due to poor level design and poor controls mentioned above. The game features a few areas with different deaths. Stage 3-2, the Mad Base, has a fork in the road where you can make a 50/50 decision. Either you advance to the next stage or you fall into the spikes and die. Since you'll be unintentionally climbing walls, jumping higher than necessary, and cabling backwards into areas out of your field of view, it's much easier to take damage from projectiles and enemies.
Water
Any player who has played Werewolf: The Last Warrior knows how difficult level 4, the forest or the waterfall level is. In the cutscene, you are warned that the werewolf's greatest enemy is water. You immediately lose a life if you fall into the water. Data East added too many enemies and projectiles. Each hit throws you straight into the water. Of all the stages, this is definitely the hardest.
The bosses
Although there are difficult stages, the bosses are very easy. This makes the game unbalanced in relation to the levels. The boss's patterns are usually easy to understand and can be exploited. The final boss hardly offers any resistance either.
music and sound
The game has good music, but there isn't enough variety of music in this game. As with the cutscenes, Data East took the lazy route and recycled the same two pieces of music for each phase. There are two different pieces of music depending on whether you are in human or werewolf form. There is also other music for the bosses. The music played during the werewolf form is great for the early stages of the game, but it would be nice if there were more tracks that better suited the later stages. There's also no music exclusive to Super Werewolf form, which would have been really great. Instead, it plays the normal werewolf music. Nothing special is in the sound department. The same sound will be played every time you hit an enemy with your claws, whether it's the boss or a normal enemy. When you do a super jump, you'll hear the sound of your character doing somersaults, which actually sounds pretty good. The music sounds great overall, but more effort could have been put into making a different track for each stage and making a separate track for Super Werewolf.
Game Over
In Werewolf you have 3-4 continues and zero lives. If you lose a life, you will be greeted with a screen that says "GAME OVER" where you can select "CONTINUE" or "END". Normally, the "Continue" option is selected by default. However, if you run out of continues, the cursor selects Continue for a split second, and then immediately End again. The game will automatically reselect the ending and will not allow you to choose further after that.
Conclusion
Werewolf: The Last Warrior is a fun concept but poorly executed. It had good graphics and a lot of cool abilities, but the bad cutscenes, poor controls and difficulty lower the quality of the game. While the graphics added some variety to the game and the werewolf's climbing and backflip are cool, the game could have been improved, e.g. B. Climbing easier, the backflip not so broken and jumping made better - along with a not so cheap level design. If those things had been improved this would have made a great beat 'em up sidescroller, otherwise it's mediocre.