Virtuoso

Virtuoso its a third-person shooter game developed by Elite Systems, and published by Data East in 1994 for the MS-DOS and 3DO. An Atari Jaguar CD port was planned but canceled.

Plot
The story of the game deals with a rockstar, tired of his usual life, that decides to escape to a virtual reality world and starts fighting everything that is in it.

Why It's a Virtual Nightmare

 * 1) The story of the game barely exists at all, unless you read the manual.
 * 2) The graphics look absolutely bad, as the digitalized sprite looks poorly pasted in the stage, the attacks look cheap and the rendered levels look unfinished and have extremely unappealing color palettes, the character models and enemies look like melted cheese to the pot, especially the spiders.
 * 3) *The enemies are stupid or cliché, they range from spiders, bats, aliens and robots to an evil snowman.
 * 4) *The designs are also awful, some look like they were drawn (bats for example), others made with CGI (robots for example), others with claymation (spiders for example), and overall they don't even look like they belong in the same game.
 * 5) The controls are notably terrible, especially in the 3DO version:
 * 6) *The left and right directions are way too sensitive, this results in the character turning way more than you want him too do, the only way to go to the direction you want is by using the shooting mode that allows you to turn more slowly.
 * 7) *The shoulder buttons that are used to strafe barely make you move.
 * 8) *You cannot shoot while walking as once you press the shoot button, the character gets stuck in place and you can only rotate to hit enemies which makes the gameplay really slow and tedious, especially since there are many enemies in the game.
 * 9) *The character moves extremely slow and there is no way to move faster, which makes the game tedious to the point of frustration.
 * 10) *The worst part is that if the character touches a wall, he tries to use it as cover, in this position you cannot shoot and you move slower, this is maddening as there are a lot of really narrow hallways, and with the terrible turning controls, you will get constantly magnetized to the walls until you reach a larger room, and as an extra, it's completely useless in terms of gameplay.
 * 11) While the MS-DOS version has acceptable music, the 3DO has some really cheesy songs, and for some reason there are many times when the 3DO version outright stops playing music.
 * 12) The gameplay is poor, as the entire game is just searching for keys and finding the exit to the level, while killing enemies, but this simple concept is ruined by:
 * 13) * The game has a draw distance comparable to Superman 64, you can barely see anything and enemies suddenly vanish into thin air, and obviously this makes searching for anything a chore.
 * 14) *As said previously, the character walks slow as a snail, which can lead to you being unable to dodge traps or enemy fire.
 * 15) *There is a map to find in the levels and without it you will not know where the hell to go, and the places of the levels look very similar.
 * 16) *The concept of the gameplay is extremely repetitive and lacks any sort of depth, there aren't any puzzles, special enemies, or even bosses.
 * 17) *You only have one weapon in the entire game, and while you can get power ups, your weapon does not feel any stronger.
 * 18) *Enemies constantly respawn, and this can lead to them attacking you from behind in an extremely cheap way.
 * 19) *Despite your life bar looking large, in reality you die really quickly. Also if an enemy touches you, a small swarm of 4 bats can kill you immediately.
 * 20) *You can destroy power ups by mistake, and sometimes they appear when you are fighting enemies.
 * 21) *While there are many enemies in the game, they all do the same exact thing, either shoot or try to touch you, the latter are a cake wall only being a treat when they respawn behind you, and the first, are just annoying as they shoot small bullets that are hard to see, and they can hit you without you even being able to see what hit you, worst yet, the second set of levels has fog that makes things even harder to see.
 * 22) *No invincibility after hit at all, which means you can get killed in a second.
 * 23) *The camera is awful, and the character covers way too much of the screen, many times this obstructs your view of smaller enemies, bullets or power ups.
 * 24) *When you lose a life, you are thrown back to the beginning of the level (however you at least get to keep the key if you got it).
 * 25) The levels are due to the following reasons:
 * 26) *The navigation is annyong, levels are enormous, and it's really easy to get lost and not know what direction you are going even with the map and it doesn't help that everything looks so similar.
 * 27) *The levels are filled with really cheap traps, which includes fire coming from the ground in a place that doesn't look any different than the rest of the levels, giant snowballs that come at you from two directions at the same time, instant kill black goo, doors that open and close at the speed of light and that you need to cross to continue the level with no clue on how to do it without receiving damage, and more, these traps can take your lives in seconds or instantly.
 * 28) *The tight corridors cause your character to get magnetized to the walls constantly.
 * 29) *The key can be everywhere in the level even in places so hidden that you will stumble by them by accident.
 * 30) *The level exit looks different in all the levels and you have no clue how it looks, so you never know where you must go to finish the level.
 * 31) Due to the terrible design of the game, the difficulty is really frustrating, even in the easier settings.
 * 32) Weak ending, it's literally just a "You Are Winner" screen that tells you to play in a harder setting.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The MS-DOS version has decent music.
 * 2) Your gun has infinite ammo, so you don't have to struggle with constantly searching the level for ammo.
 * 3) Unlike other titles like The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki, the automap does at least help with navigating the levels.

Reception
Virtuoso received generally negative reviews from critics. Next Generation gave the game a 2/5 and the reviewer stated that the game was like Doom without the FPS perspective or any of the fun. The notorious reviewer Seanbaby placed this game on number 5 of his top 20 worst games of all time. The Angry Game Nerd reviewed the 3DO version of the game for his episode on the 3DO, and said that "If you ever find a copy of Virtuoso, throw it in the old trashuoso."

Source
http://www.defunctgames.com/review/657/virtuoso

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