Claw – Monolith Productions - 1997 - First time playing?: Yes!

Monolith Productions is a developer I've long been familiar with but have played very little from. My experience with them is through Blood, the utterly sublime FPS gothic gorefest that is quite possibly my favourite FPS ever made, even above Doom. So I've known they are very capable of making games of quality for a long time, but their other games remained uncharted territory for me. Looking around retro PC gaming scenes however, it's clear that Monolith have kept up a high track record, putting out cult classic after cult classic. Blood, Shogo, No One Lives Forever, F.E.A.R., Condemned, all critical darlings among retro gaming enthusiasts. But then there's that other one, somewhat off-brand for Monolith, not first person and not a shooter, with a cartoony art style and kid-friendly content. That game was, of course, called Gruntz.

Oh right and before that they also made a platformer about a pirate kitty.

Claw is another beloved cult classic I've heard a lot of praise for in the past, and as the next game Monolith released immediately after Blood, it's a good jumping point for me to dive into the rest of their library. Having played it now, I can happily say that I was immediately charmed by Claw and found it a joy to play through, some frustrating segments aside.

Infamous pirate captain and public enemy number one of the Cocker Spaniard Kingdom, not only for crimes but also for generally not holding any respect for the monarchy, Captain Claw is captured and thrown into prison with a rapidly approaching execution inbound. Searching his cell for an escape route, he comes across a hidden note left by the cell’s last inhabitant, Edward Tobin, a treasure hunter much like Claw. Tobin, in his last moments before death, wrote of his discoveries regarding the Amulet of Nine Lives, a legendary artefact said to grant its wearer the ability to cheat death, believed by many to be nothing more than a myth. With a scrap of a treasure map and a clue of the location of one of the nine gems that make up the amulet, Claw fights his way out of prison in search of near immortality.

Right off the bat this game is filled with charm, opening with a 2D animated cutscene drawn frame-by-frame to add to the Saturday morning cartoon vibe. Claw is voiced by Stephan Weyte, the same voice actor who voiced Caleb in Blood, and it’s surreal hearing the voice I’ve come to associate with an undead pyromaniac cowboy instead coming out of a cartoon kitty, but he’s a superb actor who brings tons of personality to Claw throughout the entire game and really sells the character. Cute as the cartoon animal world may be, Claw is portrayed as powerful, ruthless and dangerous, quick on the draw with a pistol and lightning-fast sword slashes and not above using intimidation to get his way. There’s definitely a somewhat darker tone than most kids games here, what with the executions and piracy and thievery and violence and all, but all portrayed in a brighter more slapstick cartoon world with plenty of swashbuckling adventure.

Claw is simple to control in terms of platforming, simply your standard running left and right with jumping, crouching and climbing ladders for manoeuvrability. If you keep running in the same direction for a long enough distance you also get a small speed boost, and there’s situational mechanics such as ropes you can swing from, but other than that movement is pretty simple. It controls well though, Claw is very responsive and precise, reminding me a bit of Rayman 1, another favourite of mine. In fact, the whole game gives me Rayman vibes, from the controls to the sprite size and level design to the difficulty. Oh yes, we’ll get to the difficulty later. Claw is also extremely fluidly animated and while some of his animations seem a bit exaggerated like his idle animation which has his whole body wiggling with every breath he takes, repeatedly puffing out his chest as he inhales and then looking as if he’s melting as he exhales, it’s still a very good looking game with a ton of character, somewhat akin to Earthworm Jim’s sprites. Much like Earthworm Jim however this does bring its own issues with hitboxes being harder to judge as a result of the fluid animation. For instance, what part of Claw’s body needs to hit the end of a swinging rope in order for him to grab it? If you don’t hit that specific spot the game wants you to, you'll just phase through the rope entirely, a major issue during do-or-die platforming sequences. It can be tricky to judge the edge of a platform too due to the slight isometric angle that much of the game’s platforms use, but you’ll get a feel for it with enough practice.

The real highlight of Claw’s moveset is his weaponry, which isn’t something I often say about platforming games so colour me surprised when this game comes along and actually makes the combat mechanics some of the most engaging elements of the game. It’s almost like a beat-em-up in a way, the enemies take multiple hits and are capable of parrying your attacks and dodging, making fighting them more involved than the usual single-hit enemies of other 2D platformers. This risks becoming a pace breaker in platformers, halting your progress through the level to fight large amounts of tanky enemies has killed the flow of many platformers before, but Claw successfully manages to make the combat a major aspect of the game while also keeping those combat encounters fast paced and brief enough that they end up being a fun rush in themselves between all the jumping around. The sound effects definitely help, lots of loud cartoonish thwacks and ridiculous exaggerated death cries as they go flying off the screen with the finishing blow. Furthermore, you get the joy of hearing Claw talking more throughout it, crying out "landlubber!" and "scallywag!" directed at his opponents.

Your standard melee attacks are your cutlass and your fists. These both use the same button, which of the two Claw uses depends on the distance between him and his target. The cutlass has better range than his fists, but if he's within punching range of his target when you press the attack button he'll give them a surprisingly even more damaging knuckle sandwich instead, ranging from direct hits to uppercuts. Your melee attacks are very fast on the draw, but they of course require getting close to enemies who will fight back and will parry your attacks and strike back if they get a chance. Something they can't block however is your grab, allowing you to lift up your opponent and throw them to the ground. It's quite a bit slower so it leaves you open if you're fighting more than one enemy, but it's a great way to break up a rapid exchange of parried blows that aren't going anywhere, while also allowing you to throw enemies into hazards or pits. Your grab can also be used to lift up and throw TNT barrels too.

In addition to that base moveset you also have a flintlock pistol, sticks of dynamite and your magic claw. The pistol has fantastic range, good speed and can be fired when either standing, crouching or jumping. This allows you to more safely hit enemies who are prone to parrying or countering your melee attacks, and in addition they’re better at catching enemies off-guard. Regardless, the pistol shots can still be parried, even if not as frequently, so in that case you may want to consider the magic claw. Not only one-shotting enemies, but also piercing through them, negating their parries entirely and also hitting any enemies that happen to be behind them too, the magic claw is by far the most powerful ability in your arsenal, but as you may have expected, ammo for it is extremely limited, making the pistol more viable for regular usage while the magic claw should be primarily saved for more annoying and tankier enemies.

By contrast to the quick and reliable nature of the pistol and the magic claw, the dynamite may seem like the weakest option in your arsenal, with it having an awkward throwing arc that makes it difficult to aim precisely and the hassle of having to wait for the fuse to detonate after throwing it before it can do any actual damage. However, the dynamite is powerful and also very versatile. All of your other attacks only hit enemies horizontally, leaving you ill equipped for dealing with enemies above or below you, and this is where the dynamite comes in. Whether you’re dropping the dynamite on an enemy below a cliff you’re standing at the edge of, or throwing it up onto a crowded platform that has no safe entry point due to how guarded with enemies it is, dynamite helps you immensely in hitting all of those awkwardly placed enemies that would rip you to shreds if you attempted a direct attack. Not only that, but you can also use it to break crates and treasure chests out of reach, then allowing you to grab the gold that rains down from above.

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Not only are these weapons a ton of fun to use, offering plenty of options and versatility in how you choose to approach every enemy encounter, but they’re incorporated in a way that serves the platformer level design as well. Enemies are obstacles frequently on small platforms in the way of your platforming routes, and as such, part of the challenge is figuring out how to position yourself to get some hits in from a safe spot before proceeding with the precision jumping. The level design is designed around your moveset brilliantly to ensure that every option at your disposal is useful throughout the whole game, rather than being limited to just a couple of situational usages. I genuinely thought when I started playing the first level that the only weapons I’d end up using much would be the cutlass and the pistol, but as I experimented more I was very pleasantly surprised. Monolith’s experience with weapon balancing and designing the levels around those weapons from Blood clearly carried over to Claw’s 2D platforming design in a way that feels incredibly seamless.

So, great level design, great combat, great character, great game right? Overall, yes, but there’s absolutely one major caveat that has to be addressed that could be a deal breaker depending on your preferences. Claw is utterly brutal difficulty-wise. I mentioned Rayman 1 earlier and the difficulty curve very much reminds me of that game. Like Rayman, the game starts out not necessarily easy but gentle enough for you to get your bearings as you progress, with a smooth difficulty curve that doesn’t feel like it’s suddenly throwing you in the deep end. It’s only once that difficulty curve gradually slides up into your breaking point that you realise just how cruel the game has gotten once you’re already tangled deep in its web of sadism.

To start off this discussion of Claw’s difficulty, the enemies. As mentioned before, your weapons are well suited to dealing with them in general, but this is assuming you have the ammo for them in the first place. I was fortunate enough to never run out of ammo for any of my weapons, right until the very end where I used up all of my magic claws right before the final boss. These weapons start to feel like a necessity once you get to the second half of the game, once enemies are effortlessly blocking every single one of your attacks, dodge rolling all over the place much faster than Claw can keep up with and utterly decimating you the second you lose track of them. A single enemy on their a-game with blocking and dodging and countering can easily destroy you even if you approach them with 100% health, they get that aggressive and unfazed by any attack you throw at them. Now, if you’ve got the ammo and you spot them from a distance, you’ll be fine, but sometimes this isn’t an option when the level design has enemies placed at the end of a timed do-or-die platforming sequence, forcing a direct attack and almost unavoidable damage. After all, if you’re jumping across crumbling platforms above a bed of insta-death spikes and the one single solid platform at the end of the sequence has a bear on it, well you’re going to just have to test your luck with the bear because possibly getting stunlocked by his bear hug attack still gives you a better chance of survival than the spikes.

The most annoying among these enemies however? The bloody birds, as Claw calls them. Remember how I said that the only way you can attack above yourself is by throwing dynamite? Well, that is the case assuming that the enemies above you are standing on solid ground that the dynamite can be thrown onto while you wait for it to detonate. That’s not the case for the seagulls who circle around you just out of reach and swoop in erratically to peck you to death, frequently in large numbers too. This necessitates jumping to attack them in mid-air but their constant untelegraphed dive bomb attacks make that a bitch to actually time right. Especially when they show up during tight platforming sequences…

So, if any of my readers have played Mega Man, you know those disappearing and reappearing blocks in Ice Man’s stage that you have to figure out the pattern of and jump across? Claw absolutely loves those parts of Mega Man and the majority of the platforming in the later levels consists of jumping across disappearing and reappearing platforms with perfect timing. It’s not as hard here as it is in Mega Man due to the spots where the platforms appear being marked in the level’s background, not requiring you to remember where every platforms appears from, but it makes up for that with the sheer volume of them giving the game plenty of chances to drop you to your death before you reach the next save point. As the game progresses the timing on these sequences gets more and more strict, and the routes become more and more complex. The game also likes to have a lot of stuff come out of nowhere to hit you while hopping across these platforms, such as having stalactites rain down on you while you’re jumping your way up a tall vertical series of platforms. If you know when and where they are coming from in advance due to repeated playthroughs then you can position yourself safely in advance, but otherwise you just need to hope you’re in the right position before they fall, because the second they’re on screen, it’s already too late.

There’s plenty of other irritating aspects to platforming like the aforementioned hitbox on the swinging rope being hard to judge or the mazes through crumbling platforms that only give you one chance to try and find a safe route before you’ll be thrown into the abyss, or the plentiful amount of secret areas that can only be reached by using catnip, a timed power-up that allows you to move faster and jump higher for a limited amount of time, often only just enough time to get to the secret you’re meant to use it for with very little room for error. On one hand, that’s secret stuff, completely optional and all, but on the other hand you’re going to be wanting to get as many of those secrets as possible to try and stock up on extra lives.

Lives are given very sparingly in this game, even in the official updated version I played which increases the amount of lives you get. They're never just out in the open, you really have to go out of your way for them and frequently risk your life to try and get another life. Other than that, you can also get extra lives every 500,000 points in the updated version, or every 1 million points in the original version. Every life you are able to get in this is precious and needs to be conserved as best as possible, as much like Rayman, the game saves how many lives you have. Reach a save point with only one life left? Any time you continue from that point after a game over you still still only have one life left. Thankfully the game makes alternate autosaves at every checkpoint so you can go back to earlier points in the game where you had more lives and try again from there. Alternatively, if you select New Game from the menu instead of Load Game, you can start a new game at the start of any level you've previously reached, meaning that you start the level with six lives, zero points and next to no ammo. The lack of ammo is likely to make your life even harder even with the reset lives counter, so it's a case of picking your poison. I always loaded my saved games as opposed to starting a new game, partially because I wanted the extra lives I found to actually hold some value, but I suspect I'd actually have a harder time if I used the new game option due to my reliance on the weapons.

Now this might all sound like a massive deal breaker, but honestly I never stopped having fun. Again, Rayman 1 is one of my favourite games of all time, plus I've also played a few Mario World rom hacks, so my tolerance for hard platformers is up there, and I found Claw genuinely very satisfying to master. Not everyone is a masochist like this doll is, however, so I wouldn't blame anyone for feeling that this kills the game. Personally though, Claw is definitely a new PC platformer fave for me. Back in the 90s and early 2000s, choices for PC exclusives in this genre were few and far between and often failed to compare to the quality of console games, with rare exceptions such as Jazz Jackrabbit 2. Claw manages to stand out as worth a look due to its uniqueness, the way it designs its levels around your varied weaponry and focus on combat that manages to not detract from the platforming action. If that sounds like your bag, it's definitely worth a look.

If you're interested in trying the game and want help getting it running on modern Windows, check out The Claw Recluse, an excellent fan site that has plenty of information and resources related to the game.

- Page written by MSX_POCKY, 6th May 2023