Citizens and Brainwalker from Strider

For me, part of the fun of playing any Strider video game has been the character designs.

In this case, even the local background residents who are conditioned to put their hands over their heads and cower at the slightest sign of trouble have clothing designs that are the very fashion statement of Oppressed Citizen. Their clothing has a simple, unadorned, practical, futuristic, deliberately ugly, mass-produced look about it. It's probably the only style of clothing available in all the stores there, too. Even in the concept drawings, these pitiable folks had this look about them that says, "I go to work seven days a week to build the weapons which keep me from escaping."

The residents of Kazakh probably get through the day by silently reminding themselves that someday they will be able to finally end their existence when they grow old and die of natural causes. They're wrong about that, too.

The enemy model on the right is one of Schlange's 2nd iteration of Brainwalkers. To correct the lackluster decision-making performance of the city's four-legged guards, the government decided to install the brains of residents into each Brainwalker. The result is that nobody gets to leave, and those who remain have even less chance than before at sneaking out alive.

In actual gameplay, the Brainwalkers are one of those kinds of enemy characters which are too powerful to be mere one-hit-and-it's-dead basic foes, yet Brainwalkers are too numerous to be a boss. They're unnamed as individuals, yet while encountering them, it requires so many hits to defeat each Brainwalker that I STILL keep glancing up to look for its health bar in the upper right corner. (Surprise, John! It's not a boss, but it sure feels like one! While you were looking for its health bar, it's been lowering yours.)

Brainwalkers are an enemy which counters the player's patterns. Even when a player finally (via trial and error) finds a technique which seems to work well against a Brainwalker, this enemy isn't interested in letting you just pound on its weak point over and over.

Slash at its front, and you're directly in front of all its weaponry. Jump on top of it, and it will buck you off. Crouch underneath it, and it will quickly lower its body to crush you beneath it. Try and get behind it, and it will swiftly turn around to face you directly. Charge up your cypher to rush at it, and it will charge at you so hard it can knock you off the screen. Throw kunai at it and it will aim four barrels of various projectiles at you from the other side of the screen. They're not unbeatable, but they're a wonderfully tough challenge whenever they appear in a stage.

Brainwalkers remind me of the two-stage hoppers/Grenadier Moon Probes/"Robot Frongs" from the 1989 NES Strider game, because they're deceptively dangerous, fast, and challenging even when encountered one-at-a-time.

I could be wrong in my prediction here, but I suspect that every beginning player strides in towards a Brainwalker and nearly loses his/her entire health bar fighting just one of these cybernetic horrors, while experienced players get this small twinge in their guts whenever they see a Brainwalker up ahead.

There's another nostalgic feature to Brainwalkers that I appreciated, but that's a spoiler.