 |
Release Date: May 15, 2003
Publisher: Atari Games
Developer: Shiny Entertainment
Genre: Action
ESRB: (T) Teen
  |
Visitor Score
Overall 8.3 |
Story: | 8.7 |
| Graphics: | 7.9 | |
| Sound: | 8.6 | |
| GamePlay: | 8.0 |
| 79 Ratings |
Game Box
Cheat/Hint Count: 6 Visitor Reviews: 45 Press Releases: 3 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
No Title
Written By: Erik
5/16/2003
Story
The story seems potentially interesting though I haven't gone too far through it yet. However, to enjoy a story one must enjoy the game, which isn't possible.
Graphics
Horrible. They look great, and the action sequences are cool, but the performance is garbage. An Athlon 2000 with a Radeon 9700 Pro should not drop to 10fps during a fight. It's laggy everywhere, making it nearly unplayable. A patch released on May 16 did not help anything. All it seemed to do is change the Autorun screen without adding anything useful, and added a crosshair in 3rd person mode.
I'm running on a *patched* system - mobo drivers, graphic drivers, Windows Update, BIOS, it's all up to date - and it runs like hell.
I'm running on a *patched* system - mobo drivers, graphic drivers, Windows Update, BIOS, it's all up to date - and it runs like hell.
Music / Sound
Good.
GamePlay
Horrible. First, the interface before starting the game doesn't work right with the mouse. If you click a menu item, the next screen loads, and because you haven't raised the mouse button yet, it thinks you want to press the next thing highlighted, so it jumps several screens ahead. Horrible.
The character cannot hit anything with the guns unless in Focus mode. You carry enough ammo to take out a few people, and then you have to pick up more, usually in the middle of a firefight.
The scripted action moves are cool but mostly useless - running along a wall or doing a backflip on it is mostly a time waster that will get you killed. The action animations tend to lock themselves in, making it difficult to abort them midway. This is a running theme - whatever your character is doing, plan on doing that for the next second or so, because stopping isn't an option. The advantage is you get a flowing effect like a movie, more realism, but at the price of control.
She puts her guns away when opening doors. Huh? Try to draw your guns while performing a punch will result in nothing at all, and you'll think you're shooting while you're actually just locking yourself into more scripted punch animation sequences - while being shot at. You might suggest "Why don't you wait until your guns are out?" Well, if the punch animation is going, they'll never come out, and you won't know until you've finished the punch animation sequence. Everything takes at least a second or two to run through completely, at which point control is put back into the hands of the player.
You can't move in first person mode. At all. Huh?
The graphics problems mentioned above are so unacceptable that the gameplay is hurt because of it. This could be a cool game, and I might be willing to figure out the intracisies of the controls and muddle through it if it were happening at more than 50fps.
The character cannot hit anything with the guns unless in Focus mode. You carry enough ammo to take out a few people, and then you have to pick up more, usually in the middle of a firefight.
The scripted action moves are cool but mostly useless - running along a wall or doing a backflip on it is mostly a time waster that will get you killed. The action animations tend to lock themselves in, making it difficult to abort them midway. This is a running theme - whatever your character is doing, plan on doing that for the next second or so, because stopping isn't an option. The advantage is you get a flowing effect like a movie, more realism, but at the price of control.
She puts her guns away when opening doors. Huh? Try to draw your guns while performing a punch will result in nothing at all, and you'll think you're shooting while you're actually just locking yourself into more scripted punch animation sequences - while being shot at. You might suggest "Why don't you wait until your guns are out?" Well, if the punch animation is going, they'll never come out, and you won't know until you've finished the punch animation sequence. Everything takes at least a second or two to run through completely, at which point control is put back into the hands of the player.
You can't move in first person mode. At all. Huh?
The graphics problems mentioned above are so unacceptable that the gameplay is hurt because of it. This could be a cool game, and I might be willing to figure out the intracisies of the controls and muddle through it if it were happening at more than 50fps.