Andreas SJ @Decept404

Marathon 2: Durandal (Windows)

A forgotten FPS classic (that actually works under windows xp today!)

The Good
The Mac has never been an incredible games platform, and back in '94, aside from the noteworthy Lucasarts productions, there was basically nothing to play. Then Bungie dropped Marathon on us. During the Marathon era of Mac gaming, ie from the time Marathon was released to its second sequel went gold, it was a good time to be a Macintosh gamer. Marathon was everything Doom was, with knobs on, and it started off with a chain of features that for the time were real innovations, ranging from dual firing modes for weapons and ammo clips/reloading through advanced enemy behaviors with multiple attacks to an incredibly elaborate storyline that's still being sifted through for secrets today. Marathon was also one of the most modded games of its time, with Bungie releasing community created mods way before the PC had heard of Halflife and CS. Marathon was, if not technically, a far better game than Doom ever was from a design point of view, and Marathon 2, though substantially less impressive than the first, continued this trend of innovation and limitpushing.

Marathon 2 introduced an updated graphics engine, serving players dynamic and exciting environments with such features as pseudo-dynamic lighting, moving water with currents, spritebased props rendered from 8 directions (wheras doom had one direction; this step toward real 3d was later put into great use in Ken Silverman's Build engine, used for Duke Nukem 3d, Blood and Shadow warrior), and an incredible story taking the player from planetside exploration and conquest to boarding and taking alien battleships. Marathon and its sequels had true objective based missions, one particularly memorable one tasking you with breaking safety valves in an underground installation, flooding the place with lava, thus forcing you to make a desperate run for it to avoid being cooked.

One severely overlooked element of Marathon 2s gameplay was the extremely visceral battles. In a foreshadowing of Bungie's Halo, combat followed a flow of enter and retreat, going in with guns blazing and retreating while reloading and reevaluating the situation. In Marathon 2's sometimes chaotic battles of bouncing grenades, charging staff wielding aliens, flying drones with rapid fire lasers and roaring sewer beasts, keeping a keen eye on your surroundings often meant the difference between life and death. Another element of gameplay accented in Marathon but downplayed in its contemporaries was strafing, with dedicated keys for left and right sidestepping, making Marathon one of the first true "circle strafers".

Marathon's weapons deserve special mention. The rapid fire assault rifle/grenade launcher is still one of the most versatile weapons ever balanced for an FPS, and the multitude of weapons and uses made picking the right tool for the job a game in itself.

If Marathon 2's single player wasnt a great experience, the multiplayer features were absolutely amazing. Marathon 2 pioneered King of the hill and Kill the guy with the ball (echoed in Halo) modes now popular, and packed an extremely robust cooperative mode, with automatically adjusting difficulty levels. In the company of good friends on a company/school LAN, Marathon was the king of kings for multiplayer action of any sort.

The Bad
The PC conversion is very accurate as far as the gameplay goes, but it features a host of incredibly annoying bugs, including crashes to desktop and a save system that often refuses to let you name your own games. Another problem is the jittery mouse support, making playing the game in the newschool fashion of mouse/keyboard a bit of a hassle, particularly as the camera autocenters. Playing M2 the oldschool way of keyboard only can be strange to some, but no issue for those used to playing first person shooters with console controllers.

The Bottom Line
For its time, strikingly original and groundbreaking, but painfully overlooked by a PC community hellbent on graphics-over-gameplay. Definitely worth checking out for any fan of Halo, and a great source of inspiration for game developers looking for seeds of originality.

By Andreas SJ on April 1, 2004

Loom (DOS)

Very innovative, yet overrated

The Good
----First of all a little disclaimer. I played the Macintosh version. It's common knowledge that Lucasfilm's Mac versions of its early adventure games looked and sounded better than their pc brethren. The pixel jaggies were smoothed out, the music used a better library of sounds, and in general the experience was smoother. I'm not sure which PC version the mac version compares best to, but from what i've seen, it looked and sounded even better than the CD rom version. In any case, i assume this review applies best to the CD rom version. ----

I'm a sucker for spellcasting, and i'm a sucker for adventure games. At the time Loom was released, you know, back when "Lucasarts" was synanimous with "quality", it pretty much blew me away with its originality. Here was a game with only one inventory item, your staff, and where all puzzle solution was done by knowing what spell to cast and how (casting "open" backwards equals "close" for example). The game also featured a truly compelling world that seemed properly fleshed out, it had shades of both fairytales and postapocalyptic nightmares, characters who all seemed to have their own agendas, and a player character who inspired a lot of sympathy, especially through his voice acting, where he always comes off as an innocent.

The first hour or so of the game is a real adventure. Learning how to wield your staff and your spells, seeing how many objects in the world you can alter to your liking can be a powertrip at times. From starting off with spells to alter colors and opening clams, to unravelling the fabric of reality itself. There's a lot of cool stuff to do here.

The graphics, for their time, were very very good. The game is essentially a showcase of pretty pictures, starting with the craggy outset island to the glass city, the iron city, the cathedral of the clerics.. Some very attractive pictures indeed. The character designs include some good if unoriginal concepts. Chaos, essentially a being of pure evil, looks purely malevolent, but also looks a lot like Maleficent from disney's Sleeping Beauty. This kind of derivative design is the norm for the game, sadly. But the craftsmanship is fantastic, and the end product is surprisingly adult.

The Bad
Spoilers

It's obvious a lot of heart went into Loom, but that gives more reason to be disappointed. The story, which starts off poetically and with a lot of emotional drive, jumps to conclusions. There's literally no time at all until you're confronted with the villain, and only one more encounter is what it takes for the ending sequence to begin. The game is, indeed, painfully short. This shortness is only emphasized by the linearity and simplicity for the gameplay. It is in essence a 2 hour session of simon says with dialogue, and there is rarely any opportunity for wonder, as the game's plot is spoonfed to the player. The story is also wildly inconclusive, with an ending i can only describe as "cop out". Actually a lot of the game gives me the feeling that the developers evaded a lot of problems and simply wanted to get the story over with. There are numerous plot nuances that are simply left behind after being introduced, and the ending isn't even a real ending. The bad guys won, yahoo. Obviously a sequel was planned, but we haven't seen any yet, and i doubt we will. This kind of ambiguous ending can really hurt a game, as seen in the recent Beyond Good & Evil.

A much touted aspect of Loom is its music, but i can't help but feel disappointed. The soundtrack is for the most part based off existing pieces by Tchaikovsky. Considering the extremely talented musicians Lucasarts employed at the time, just going for classics doesn't seem very inspired. Tchaikovsky is good, but not for a game, i'm sad to say.

Another problem is how the game flops into melodrama a bit too often, and the apparent depth of the storyline is betrayed by the developers' constant wish to move along. You're never given the opportunity to wonder.

Overall, i think what disappoints me the most now is how bad aging has been to the game. You can pick up Monkey island or Day of the tentacle today and they will still be incredibly entertaining games, while Loom is simply short and plain.

The Bottom Line
It's definitely a game worth checking out, particularly if you've been following Lucasarts' evolution, but i would never pay full price for this today. It's simply too short and unsatisfying, even for its time.

By Andreas SJ on March 4, 2004

Beyond Good & Evil (Windows)

An eclectic gem in the rough, marred by a few rather silly problems

The Good
In spite of the hype, I have little experience with the "Genius" of Michel Ancel. As far as i know, all he has done before BG&E is Rayman 1/2, and neither of the two struck me as wonders of the world. Regardless, Beyond Good & Evil comes with a great premise, has a number of original gameplay ideas that tie well into the storyline and setting without seeming gimmicky, and overall it comes across as a very well put together product by some obviously talented and creative minds.

The storyline is interesting right from the start, with a beautiful and harmonious world (the protagonist, Jade, is seen practising Chi-gong at the very beginning for example) fighting an infinitely alien enemy that seems like the direct opposite of anything else in the game. Even highwaymen are goofy and charmingly cartoony on the world of Hyllis, and i assume this is done to make the enemy even more shocking and horrifying when you do run into them.

The bad guys, oddly named the DomZ (sounds like a bad rap group), are a bunch of soul eating spider psychics who can't really decide wether they are in the movie Aliens or not, and they are backed up covertly on earth by the Hyllis-based Alpha Sector military unit (this isn't really a spoiler. It's obvious from the outset). Their ongoing attacks on the planet Hyllis has made certain groups of citizens weary of the Alpha Sector, who says they are in fact protecting Hyllis against the DomZ, whereas facts seem to say the contrary. Early on, Jade is approached by one such group, and is tasked to put her skills as a photographer to work revealing the true nature of the Alpha sector to the people of Hyllis.

In gameplay terms, this storyline mounts to a few distinct elements: Overworld shopping and adventuring along the lines of recent Zelda games. You walk around, explore, find dungeons, talk to characters and spend money, all to advance the plot. Racing and modding your Hovercraft, which is your main means of transportation around the overworld for about half the time, as Hyllis is a water planet. Dungeon crawling and puzzling with stealth as a strong element, where you're usually tasked with going some place you're not allowed and take pictures of critical events while remaining undetected. A sort of gotta catch'em'all game of animal photography where you try to collect pictures of every major species on Hyllis for cash. Crazy wacky completely insane action sequences and chases that defy description and always slap you right in the face when they occur. All in a good way of course. Wind Waker, Prince of persia: The sands of time and BG&E has made me aware of my favorite genre; The action rpg adventure. There are few genres that leave themselves as open to creativity as this, and BG&E is an excellent example. The gameplay constantly seems to be moving and flowing in different directions, and you'll almost never find yourself bored as the changes are so frequent. It's really rather pleasant to play games where the developers have obviously had fun.

BG&E has an art style that's quite brilliant, and uniquely French. Ever since Delphine were doing action adventures on the Amiga, the french have held the upper ante of fantasy design with an iron claw. These guys know fantastic. Half and half Don bluth & HR Giger, coupled with early Möbius and a slight tinge of early Disney, BG&E looks pretty fantastic throughout. Characters are brilliantly designed, and then in particular Jade, who is a proper poster girl for the modern era, army fatigues, fighting stick, bandana, camera and all. They animate wonderfully well, if slightly inappropriate at times (Jade's schoolgirl jog when in an alien dungeon is a bit unsettling to watch). Proper facial animation does a lot to convey a story, and BG&E even has a Pig looking sad. Kudos to Ubisoft for the effort. The world of Hyllis is otherwise rather beautiful, and viewed at high resolutions can make you think you're watching cartoon graphics at times. The water effects in particular are astonishing. The engine behind it all is surprising in how heavily it depends on point sprites, yet manages to pull it off. For instance, at the beginning, Jade is sitting under a large tree. The tree has hundreds of leaves that wave realistically, and it's almost amazing seeing that much motion in an era where trees are usually polygonal static objects. The tree is in fact made up of myriads of 2d images that look the same whatever angle you look at them, which dramatically lessens the impact on your graphics card. In short, the world of BG&E looks uniquely alive, but if scrutinized it has quite a few cheap graphical effects.

The audio work is for the most part rather mediocre. The english voice acting (which i assume to be inferior to the French. Why oh why wouldnt they let you use french audio with english subtitles like Evil twin did?) can be grating, but for the most part serves its purpose. The music however is astonishingly varied and well put together. I was very often surprised by the variation in genres. It can be seen as a kind of eclectic modern pop world music mashup, and it suits the living world of BG&E very well indeed.

A final specific note, i really enjoyed the camera mechanic. The idea of gathering this sort of information and putting it to use the way it is done in BG&E has simply not been done before, and the way the game portrays it is more than efficient. The camera rocks, it's that simple.

The Bad
Unfortunately, BG&E has some rather significant flaws. On my first way through the game i was so busy taking in the sights and enjoying the variety that i was blind to most of it. However, after playing it through and experiencing it's cataclysmically dissatisfying and ambiguous cliffhanger(!) ending, even though it is pretty obvious today that there won't be a sequel judging by the game's sales, the bad things just pop up all over the place. My biggest gripes are the following:

The storyline is shallow. There is no suspense as to who the bad guys are; you know it from the first moment you lay eyes on them. Characters are simple to the extent of being forgotten within moments. Jade looks after a house full of wartime orphans, each with distinct personalties. However, after the intro, these kids are quickly forgotten and play no real part in the gameplay after that. Each and every element of apparent depth eventually appears to have an almost mechanical function in driving the plot forward. You rarely see anyone do anything unexpected, and for a game which focusses so much on information versus disinformation, it can be viciously predictable. I was disappointed to see the hamfisted way the game tells it story, driving points and facts home with a sledgehammer, very little is left up to the player other than the inane ending, and the linearity of the game betrays the protagonist's early promise to get to the bottom of whatever it is that's going on. You have no choices, and you're led by the hand throughout. Whereas this also was true for Wind Waker (a comparison i'll stand by), Wind Waker filled in the linearity of the main story arc with a multitude of lesser story arcs to flesh out the world. BG&E does no such thing, despite having a well realised world to place such arcs in.

The controls go from bearable to atrocious, usually the latter. The mouse+keyboard setup of BG&E works well by default, despite having some odd quirks. Menu options are navigated with the mousewheel, the spacebar is used to confirm choices etc. One quirk i found particularly annoying is how obviously the game is designed for use with a gamepad. One minigame has you playing a strange form of Airhockey. To send the pucks in the direction you want, you must rotate the puck in the direction and send it off. Sounds easy, but it's all different when you realise that to turn it up/left, you must push your mouse up/left. Rotation is done by moving the mouse in circles. This radial motion is obviously designed for an analogue stick, and while it works okay when you input passwords and the like with letters and numbers spiralling out from the center, it really isn't very precise with a mouse. Most other problems with the controls include "imprecision", as the context functions occationally change when you least expect them to, wall hugging tends to simply not work, and a number of other strange little catches. One such catch is the hovercraft controls and how they deny you the possibility of circle strafing, even though there is no good reason it's not available. When stationary, the mouse moves the camera, when moving, the mouse turns the hovercraft. However, the wsad keys ALSO steer the hovercraft. Why make the camera/steering switch? In cases, this turns out to be simply broken, as a camera turned to the left versus a press of A to move left will result in the camera locking into an incredibly awkward position, resetting once the hovercraft is stationary.

The camera is horrible. I reckon by now that camera programming is every game developer's nightmare. I don't think there's any fun connected to making a third person camera work, and most games today are evidence of that fact. BG&E has a vicious and mean spirited camera that will do such things as get stuck in walls, flicker back and forth between front/rear views during combat (effectively reversing your controls back and forth), disappearing into the floor, letting you look through walls etc. It is strictly mouse controlled, though the game switches to stationary cameras that mostly do the job. The mouse controls are enormous offenders, as their rules seem to change based on the room you're in. It can be frustrating beyond belief to be simply denied the view you need because the camera refuses to be anywhere other than inside the floor or inside the ceiling.

2 dungeons and the case is closed? If my memory serves, there is a total of 4 "cases" you must solve with your camera. For instance, a case would involve taking pictures of an object on a trolley, and then two people handling said object. Once this evidence is assembled, it can be transmitted to the rest of the world electronically. It's a great idea but the game never makes anything big out of it. Four cases during 2 dungeons is all it takes to convince the world of the Alpha section's nogoody nature. For a game of 17hours in length, 2 dungeons is a little disappointing. No wonder people find the game short when the majority of game time is just filler and transit.

The Bottom Line
It's great fun the first time through, and you're viable to ignore the flaws and just take in the spectacle. However, i don't see a lot of replay value, mostly because you'll be so disappointed with the ending you won't want to experience it again. It is really quite extraordinarily bad in spite of its buildup.

In any case, a recommended rental, if only to see the fantastic visuals. Definitely one to show your friends.

By Andreas SJ on February 8, 2004

Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy (Windows)

The best simulation of awesome power yet on a PC

The Good
I'll just start this one off with my base opinion on the issue of whether this game is a sequel to Jedi Outcast or not. Yes it is. No matter how similar the technology is, or how many of the sound effects are reused, or how many textures there are that have carried over, Jedi Academy still fits the sequel brand perfectly. The lightsaber fighting system has been reworked to fit a ton of new moves, two new lightsaber styles, reworkings of force powers central to the gameplay, a semi-nonlinear storyline taking place in pretty much nothing but showcase levels, new multiplayer modes, new enemy characters and in a nod to the original Jedi Knight; character development (albeit extremely simpleminded character development). To top it off, J.A's plot is a direct continuation of J.O's storyline. In the end however, what does it matter? Jedi Academy is exactly what i expected from a sequel. It's more, it's bigger, it is (in true Hollywood fashion) more action packed, and I loved every second of it

Jedi Academy is hampered by two issues that pretty much every review i've read has brought up. It recycles a lot of content from the previous Jedi Knight game, and the character development gimmick the game is sold by is tentative to say the least, although my girlfriend kicked off on simply being allowed a choice of gender. I've seen reviews base almost every other opinion of the game on criticism derivative of these two comparatively major points. However, to me, neither of these two problems really made a difference when the core gameplay is as good as it is. It is common knowledge that Jedi Outcast had a nasty habit of turning people off during the first few levels; The Star Wars setting simply wasn't enough to carry a generic first person shooter. Although i thought the beginning was quite good for its genre, there's no denying that, upon acquisition of the light saber, the gameplay simply shifted into a league of its own. The light saber combat of Jedi Outcast was immensely satisfying, if a tad random, and near the end of the game you ended up being basically immensely powerful, taking on armies at a time. Academy picks up the thread where Outcast left it, and this time you begin the game with your lightsaber in hand. In fact, while Outcast brought you up to consider the Lightsaber a supplement to your regular artillery, Academy never ever downplays the significance it has on the gameplay. The guns, which were pretty generic to begin with, take a far more suitable part. In Outcast, after you got the lightsaber, you didn't really need any of your other weapons. Academy lets you choose, and there are parts where the lightsaber simply feels unwieldy, particularly against certain heavily armored foes in the second half of the game. Raven made a worthy attempt of getting rid of the Lightsaberiitis of Outcast and put the lightsaber and guns side by side. Well done.

The storyline is shallow and simple, but since the game is like one of those Simpson's episodes where they have flashbacks to other episodes constantly throughout, thus not ever having real continuity, that isn't really a problem. Basically, enemies from Jedi Outcast are at it again, and while Luke Skywalker and Kyle Katarn are doing all kinds of flipping out to find out what's going on, you the player are doing a bunch of missions as part of your Jedi education, occasionally playing a part in Luke and Kyle's schemes, and finally becoming the hero that saves the day. Considering how tired the Star Wars universe is story-wise, I was grateful that the move be made to stop being so god damn pretentious and simply provide the larger-than-life entertainment. I didn't watch Episode 1 and 2 for the wonderful art of George Lucas' storytelling. I wanted to see adventure! We haven't had a good and proper adventure movie since the last Indiana Jones film, and the void is becoming more and more apparent. Jedi Academy treats the source material with dignity and recreates what might be some of the coolest set piece battles in a Star Wars game ever, and that's almost all I want from a Star Wars game.

The lightsaber combat of Jedi Academy, though superficially similar to that of Outcast, carries a lot more weight this time around. You still strafe around enemies and hammer the trigger until everything quiets down, but in saber vs saber combat, timing and force powers play a much stronger part than it used to. Specifically, powers previously useless almost always have a significant impact on a fight between light/dark side Jedi. There is a rock/paper/scissors aspect to it that, while existent in Outcast, simply plays a bigger part. In Outcast, force push would cancel a force grip, force absorb would invalidate force lightning etc. In Academy, there's the issue of force push in light saber lock battles, which are occurrances where two opposing Jedi lock sabers during battle. The ensuing struggle is played out by hammering the trigger as fast as possible until one overtakes the other, who is momentarily open for attack. In Academy, a sufficiently powerful force push can end the battle easily. In addition, battles used to end with the loser going prone. In Academy, going prone can be avoided by quick reflexes; hitting back or forward before hitting the ground will cause you to flip out of danger or attempt retaliation with a kick. If you do go prone, you can now roll sideways out of danger, Tekken-style, should your opponent try one of the new finishing moves; A rather violent stab to the chest of a prone opponent. This is just an example of how the combat system has been elaborated upon. There is far more room for improvisation, and some fights can play out downright impressive, with combatants hopping from wall to wall, shielding themselves from concentrated attack by releasing flurries of saber blows, shooting across the room with the new force leap move before bouncing off to other walls, all while still dueling. Upon completing Jedi Outcast, I wrote Raven a quick email saying how impressed i was with their impersonation of the Hong Kong flying sword movie. I got a reply stating that chinese cinema was a real influence for them. If it wasn't apparent then, it sure is now. Jedi Academy is one of the finest video game executions of the flying sword film i have ever seen. Enter the Matrix eat your heart out.

Saber combat, comedy and acrobatics aside, the basic gameplay hasn't changed much. The game is playable from both a third person and first person perspective, and uses the good ol' wsad/mouse control setup, which works admirably. You still get missions that require you to navigate a complex area filled with enemies, and they basically all end with you hitting a button, defeating an opponent or vacating an area. Where Academy gets it all right though is the pacing. Jedi Academy is played across three tiers of missions, linked by a set of storyline missions. You are given the choice of 6 missions at a time for you to complete in any order you choose. For every mission you complete you get a new force point to spend buying force powers. This basically means that if you encounter a mission you have problems with, you can always play others, then return later with new force powers. I'm very impressed with how Raven executed this. It's basically the Megaman approach to character development, but the game would have been thoroughly dull hadn't it been for the incredible imagination that has gone into each individual mission. They are rarely long, rambling affairs like certain missions of Outcast, they have no connection whatsoever other than the types of enemy you fight, but they all look fantastic and play beautifully. In essence, Jedi Academy is like one of those UFC greatest hits tapes. A bunch of really great and spectacular fights in equally great and spectacular settings. My favorites include a brilliant tribute to that stupidly great horror comedy Tremors; The player crash lands on a desert planet crawling with sound and vibration sensitive sand worms, and must guide his character across a plain strewn with wreckage, hopping from rock to rock to avoid the worms. At one point i thought the reference to Tremors was so clear i wanted to try the Tremors' heroes' approach to the worm problem; throwing grenades at the sand and trick the worms into eating them, and what do you know, it worked. A really really good level. Another superb level is a 1 on 1 fight with none other than Boba Fett in the ruins of a dead city. Whoever did his AI, you have my respect. He really acts like the hunter he is supposed to be. Graphical centerpieces include the level where you are chased across a factory by an utterly enormous mutated rancor (you know, those drooling things Jabba feeds his slaves to for no reason). Trying to fight dozens of Jedi while being chased by a two story tall monster on steroids, trying to figure out a way of killing it is some of the coolest stuff i've done in a game. Most of all though, what impresses me is the pacing. Every level puts you right in the thick of it. There are no dubious gameplay elements that don't fit in or halt the flow. It's just straight ahead, full steam, and it's all great fun.

Soundwise you pretty much know what to expect, though it is brilliantly executed as always. There's the dynamic John Williams score (which gives me the willies now. God damnit get some new music guys), the British officers and the American troopers, bleeps and boings and humming sabres, and lots and lots of explosions. If you've played a star wars game, you know what to expect, because in the end they all sound exactly the same. The voice work needs a little brushing up however. I ended up playing a female character simply because the female voice actor did a job that was easier on the ears. The male voice actor for the player character delivers his lines with the dynamic flair of a vacuum cleaner, which is odd considering the high quality of pretty much all the other voices.

Graphically, Jedi Academy is basically gorgeous. It's a Quake 3 Arena engine game, and you can tell, but Raven are just so damn good at putting it to use. Those level designers deserve a raise. One of the levels take place on a runaway tram, with rain in your face and buildings flashing by in the fog in a blur while you hop from car to car. The sense of speed is tangible. Another level taking place on Coruscant gets something right that Outcast somehow didn't; it got my fear of heights going. Jedi Knight was well known for its huge environments, and Academy is no slacker in the huge environments department. There are few new graphical tricks however. There are some neat new warp effects when using force push or pull, but aside from that there is little to wow you. However, character models look superb, and in what may be a Raven first ever, they actually got mouth animations right. The Ghoul rendering system has produced something that actually doesn't look like ghouls! Remarkable! In addition, the female twi'lek player model is actually attractive, something i never thought i'd see in a Raven game. An attractive female that is. Character animations are mostly excellent, although the retarded walk cycle Raven has been using since Outcast and Soldier of fortune 2 is still in place. God damnit, get rid of that! Normal people aren't perpetually constipated!

The Bad
There are some gripes I have, but their single player impact is quite minor. First and foremost; Force grip is way too powerful. It didn't take me long to fully upgrade my force grip, having loved it in Jedi Outcast. The big problem is that most of the fights in Jedi Academy take place on high mountains or bridges above lava or something of the sort. Any Jedi will resist your force grip with a quick force push, which is all good, but in the split second you have until they do, a quick flick of the wrist will toss any enemy helplessly to their death. This includes boss battles. One central boss battle was over literally within the first second simply by tossing the fool into a hole. It's really quite sad how simple some really challenging fights can be, especially when the stage is set dramatically. Example. You open the door. There's a giant radar dish in front of you on a platform hovering miles above a sea of molten lava. An enemy Jedi turns to face you, saying "Do you fear me?". He draws his double edged light saber and draws a half circle in front of him, gesturing me forwards. I toss him into the lava without even activating my sabre. Whee! There are parts where the drama vs the anticlimax of using force grip simply cracked me up. The atmosphere goes from tangibly thick to slapstick comedy in an instant. In fact, in the aforementioned boss battle, i simply reloaded my save game to fight the boss properly. It just felt too cheap.

The second gripe is one i had in Jedi Outcast as well, and an even bigger source of comedy. Level 3 force pull and level 3 force jump is probably the funniest way ever to kill off armies of enemies at the time. On its own, force pull is nasty enough in that it disarms enemies, but jumping high up in the air and force pulling enemies up toward you will send them all comically flying miles into the air, dying when they land. It's truly funny the distances you can send some people. Some set piece battles in Outcast were made ridiculously easy by this technique as it works equally well on Jedi.

These two techniques can make the game both ridiculously easy and involuntarily comedic. I'm not sure how force grip has been tweaked for multiplayer yet, but i hope dearly that the throwing bit has been toned down. It was annoying enough to be tossed off bridges in Outcast deathmatches, but i can see some major griefing done by players overusing grip if it plays out in any way similar to the single player game.

The Bottom Line
Overall, i'm very surprised. It's easy to be cynical in these days of cheap crap being pushed on the market for every discernible franchise, and particularly during the mad dash Lucasarts has done with Star Wars games. There was a time when the word Lucasarts was synonymous with quality, but that is so long ago i can't even remember. I honestly thought Jedi Academy was going to be an utter cash-in, and i was more than prepared for disappointment. However Raven have proved me wrong in every possible way. Jedi Academy is enjoyable throughout, and is a superb example of how to execute a Star wars game. Now how about a proper kung fu flying sword game you bastards =) You obviously know how to do it

By Andreas SJ on October 12, 2003

UFO: Aftermath (Windows)

Slightly disappointing, but a good start

The Good
Cool premise, and some nice video work, though the only graphical aspect i felt was executed really well was soldier animations. The animations are smooth and blend well, leaving you with some very lifelike characters.

The Bad
I bought the game about a week ago, and i'm having really mixed feelings. On one side, i was deeply in love with UFO: Enemy unknown on the amiga, but i also sucked at it, horribly. It still kept me coming back though, even though the micromanagement and many in-depth aspects went way over my head at the time. It's very hard for me to see Aftermath as anything other than a spiritual sequel. It may not share the same lingo, but the gameplay is incredibly similar. Where it doesn't match up is in the way it handles base building (bases are established as rewards for certain completed missions) and in the pseudo-realtime combat system. Being so deeply affectionate about the "forefather" makes it tough to accept the shortcomings, but i've given it an honest, truthful attempt. I still come off disappointed.

The biggest problem in my opinion is the premise. Where UFO charged you with figuring out the increasing frequency of UFO sightings and abductions, leading up to full scale invasion, Aftermath starts off with the attack well underway. The strange thing here is that wow, almost all humans have been destroyed, yet it takes little to no effort to regain control of most of the american continents within the first couple of weeks. There's a leap of faith required on the player's part that i had severe issues with.

In addition, the research is delegated strangely. When you have 12 research bases you'd think you could run several projects at once, but you are forced to take them one at a time. Same with developing new technologies. you have x number of engineering bases, but they all cooperate to produce a single suit of armor? Eh?

A final lapse of logic is that while you protect the whole world from alien attacks, you have one squad of soldiers and one chopper with which to fly them to their destinations. So all in all the "strategic game" as the manual calls it is an overly simplified and broken down version of the XCOM global view game dynamic with no resource management whatsoever, contrary to the box blurb.

The tactical game is equally simple. You guide your troops around the battlefield in a jilted on/off fashion as the game auto-pauses for you on a bazillion different occasions. Often you have to unpause the game up to 7 times in a row to get back in control of things. The interface sorely lacks basic features, like telling a soldier to guard an area. Instead the game will auto-pause for you whenever a targeted enemy enters or leaves line of sight. Very very annoying. "No you damn idiots, you don't need to do some spectacularly intelligent thing, all you need to do is keep your gun pointed in the same general direction and fire again when he pops back out!"

Another strange function is the "manipulate" button. There are no objects in the game to use other than doors, and doors are opened with a right click regardless. Why there is a "use" function at all is mind boggling.

In addition, there is no way of moving while crouching or going prone, making crouching pretty a pretty worthless maneuver. The game world itself is randomly generated, and it shows. Missions are all markedly similar, and buildings cannot be entered, making the game bound to street level. There are levels where you enter crashed UFOs and alien bases, and the interiors leave a lot to be desired.

The sound work is also lackluster. The music is about as scary as your average episode of MASK, although you can sense it really tried, rock ballads during aerial dogfights and all. The voice work moves between atrocious and good. For some reason the game attempts comedy at odd times. Some characters are stereotyped so bad it aches, including the ditzy blonde and the ahhnold german. It really doesn't fit the game's post-apocalyptic setting or overall graphical execution.

A final blow is the uninterested and matter-of-factly way the game addresses itself. Missions aren't presented as a game world element, but rather as "tasks for you to finish before the game can proceed". Objectives are given in a simple, to the point way that is overtly generic and undescriptive, making what could have been a "The laboratory ship downed over Poland has crash landed in central Krakow. Investigate the crash site and secure it for our science team" a case of the "You must eliminate a certain number of enemies to complete this mission". Very sad, and a total atmosphere killer.

The Bottom Line
All in all, Aftermath gets certain things dead on, but they are all minor. The gameplay remains too simple and random to be truly satisfying, and the lapses of logic make the storyline a bit hard to swallow. I'm pleased to be playing a new UFO game, and i hope they do a sequel to this one, but it feels like a work in progress solution.

By Andreas SJ on October 12, 2003

Clive Barker's Undying (Windows)

Why oh why did EA cancel the sequel =( why oh whyy!!?

The Good
This is the hardest part, figuring out where to start. Undying had me by the balls within moments of starting it up, and didnt really let up until way later near the ending during a rare dull stretch. The storyline, crafted in part by Clive i've-quit-doing-horror Barker, centers on a family decimated by a curse unwittingly unleashed on them by one of the children, and its subsequent demise. The player joins the last surviving member of the family, Jeremiah Covenant, as he attempts to gather up the threads of his ruined family and make sense of it all, and finally to put a stop to the curse. Jeremiah is sickly and dying, and the player, taking the part of an old war buddy who has had more than a slight run-in with the occult, offers to repay a wartime favor by searching the Covenant estate for clues. Shortly after his arrival however, he learns that a rival from his youth is also present at the manor, and seriously messed up stuff start happening.

The plot basically takes you chasing down the spirits of Jeremiahs siblings as they go after his life. You learn the way the family unravelled and you trace the evil that has tainted their blood back to the very source. During the game you visit some truly interesting locales; EA must have paid their level designers way too much for this one. The Covenant estate, complete with lighthouses, pirate caves, cathedrals and underground tombs is amazingly detailed, and the other two dimensions you visit truly feel.. different. It's hard to explain, but whoever came up with these ideas, EA best not fire them. The gameplay however is fairly basic. The plot can be seen as a simple reason for the player to shoot his various guns and things at a varied list of monsters in lots of different locales, as well as use some spells to blow up stuff and solve some puzzles while looking for the occational switch or key. Mind you, i'm not complaining. Hell no.

Some feel the gameplay was overly simplistic for the subject matter, or rather, that that quality of the subject matter was too good for a shooter. To me however, Undying represents what any action fps should strive for; total game world immersion that doesnt catch onto annoying quirks of game logic, lets you simply play the game and poses you with a storyline that doesn't make you feel like an idiot. Undying is relentless, frightening, intriguing, moving and at times, astonishingly impressive.

Impressive. Undying was the first game in a very long time to make my jaw drop. There are certain key moments to the game that really made my day. To this date i still have saves right before these points so i can show my friends. Some moments are technically impressive, others are just impressive in their brilliance. Here are some highlights:

A well filled with water. When an incantation is invoked an Abyss-style water tentacle forms a bridge between two platforms. I have never seen water behave like this in any other game.

Invisible floors. In the demon dimension of Oneiros, certain parts of the game force you to take leaps of faith over yawning chasms to segments of floor that materialise out of thin air. This needs to be seen.

A certain spell you'll use quite heavily is the Scrye spell, a spell letting you take a glimpse beyond time and space, or rather at what is, what was, and what can be. The game uses this spell to show you some truly grisly things. At the very beginning, scrying at a lamp post will show you a man hung, rats drinking from the pool of blood gathering at his feet. Other places paintings on the walls will take on a demonic quality: A man in a chair appears surrounded by hungry demons, a horse on green hills becomes a horse on dying burning fields in twilight. A moment that really struck out for me was scrying a statue, having the statue tear his chest open and display his beating heart, begging you to kill it. Savage stuff.

The moon door. Seeing the reflection of a run down cathedral in a pool of water change to its image hundreds of years earlier, in full splendor. Again this needs to be seen. I couldnt believeit.

One of the siblings is a mad painter. Upon uncovering his barnyard studio, he gives you a demonstration of his skills. He paints an image on a wall in front of you. Slowly you realise its a picture of you - with a huge tentacled demon behind you. You turn around, and there it is. The game sets you up in ways that can be truly chilling.

The tomb. As you crawl through cramped dusty fogged corridors, with the rattling of bones all around you, visibility is near none. And somewhere in far distance you hear deranged singing, coming closer and closer. This is one of the defining moments of the game for me.

The design team behind Undying have every ounce of my respect. What they have done with the setting is truly amazing. Clive Barker needs proper credit for the aspect of the game he really touched on, and that's character and monster design. This guy should be on EA's permanent payroll. What he's done here is magic. The many creatures you encounter in the game are truly menacing. Not one of them made me laugh, which is rare for a horror game. Blood drinking cloaked and tentacled sorcerors, horned head eating half-men, waving squid faced cthulhu-style assassins that literally come out of shadows.. This is gold. Another thing well worth noting is the death sequences. Every time you die the camera pulls back to give you a full view of the offending monster giving you the coup de grace. Some of these animations are truly gruesome and often i found myself deliberately dying just to see them all.

I think one of the truly crowning aspects of the game is the sound. There isn't much else to say than point out the fact that next to the Thief and System shock games, no other game i've played has even nearly touched on the brilliance of Undying. The voice acting is bearable to brilliant, the music is always fantastic (Bill Brown working his magic), and the creature effects are mindboggling. Apparently the sound of a certain creature slithering was a mixture of a vacuum cleaner and a banana being peeled or something. Another cue on the ingenuity of these people.

The Bad
Sadly, there are problems, although i never thought they were PROBLEMS in the first place, merely issues that could have been adressed to enhance the experience. The story loses its drive at times, particularly when the player leaves the manor and the previous wealth of visual cues and hints at the family demise give way to weird alien constructions and landscapes. Oneiros and Eternal autumn, both realms featuring heavily near the end of the game, are fairly straightforward shooting segments, and its been noted that these segments lifts the veil from the players eyes somewhat and belie the actual simplicty of the gameplay. A while after this revelation, the gameplay can seem rather samey, although, i must say, i truly enjoyed just drinking in the atmosphere of it all.

Another issue, strangely enough for a single player game, is related to game balance. At a certain point in the game you acquire a melee weapon known as the scythe of the celts, and from there on there is little reason to use any other weapon. This is a weapon that kills most things in one or two strikes, and actually heals you. The pure strength of the thing is pretty depressive, considering the varied and interesting weaponry you can get your hands on.

A third niggle has to to with the final boss fight of the game. Suffice to say, i thought the game could have been a little cleverer here rather than just pit you against a huge monster that takes a ton of damage. The other boss fights had been superb events, and the last fight simply came off as slightly... Lame. The ending however, chillingly, left room for a sequel. However, now we know there will be none. I'm going to lament this fact for a very long time, as Undying represents some of the best horror FPS action i have ever seen, and probably ever will.

The Bottom Line
A fast paced, deeply disturbing trek through the true heart of hard core horror fiction. Dreadfully impressive, and downright intimidating in it's amount of polish.

By Andreas SJ on July 1, 2003