I know what you’re probably thinking. Deadly Alliance on the GBA? Puh-lease. Don’t criticize the game just yet. Deadly Alliance for GBA is a solid fighter with a trick 3D fighting system that is simplified from the console versions. The game features a full Krypt, mini-games, and a new survival mode. The graphics are surprisingly good, and the sound quality is excellent.
Unlike past Mortal Kombat handheld ports, this game is actually good. The fighting system is a mix of 2D and 3D with each character’s two main martial arts stances (the weapon stance was taken out). The fighting system may seem dumbed down or too simple because the GBA only has two face buttons. Using a combo of the D-pad and face buttons, you can pull off some great combos with ease. The whole transition feels natural and hand-tailored to the console. My main disappointment is the lack of characters. Only about 10 made it into the GBA version, but a new character, Sareena, made it into the game from Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. I am also disappointed that each character only has one fatality (like in the console version), but they are different and quite detailed for a GBA game.
The sound quality is excellent, with the announcer’s voice intact. The graphics are pretty decent, with full 3D backgrounds, but they are very muddy and lack any detail. The graphics are a love-hate type of thing. The Test-You-Might and Sight are fully intact here, which is nice, but the Konquest mode is obviously missing. Instead, there is a Survival mode that was stuck in here. There is a full Krypt with alternative costumes and other things. So this is a huge MK experience on the GBA, and probably the best one.
If you loved Deadly Alliance or just want a solid fighter on your GBA, then pick this up. There is a lot of content in here, and the fighting system is solid and fluid. The graphics look pretty, and the sound quality is excellent, so you have no reason not to play this!
BioWare is a company that revolutionized the action RPG genre for the western era. In a time where Japanese RPGs dominated the market, BioWare was sitting in a little studio, churning out one of the best RPGs of all time. I remember when I was younger how much of a big hoopla this game was. For someone who didn’t own an Xbox or a PC that could run the game, it still slipped under my radar. I eventually got a chance to rent the game years later on 360 and quickly got bored due to its age. I finally picked it up again on the PC, and I am glad I did. The game may feel very dated and old (an entire decade), but there’s no denying the excellent story and well-crafted atmosphere that truly feel genuine in the Star Wars universe.
You play a custom character that has to defeat the evil Sith Lord Darth Malak. He has found some sort of Star Forge to use against the Republic, so you are shadowing his footsteps to find the star maps to this star forge. This takes you across several planets, such as Tatooine, Dantooine, Kashyyyk, Korriban, Kevin, and even Taris. You acquire companions of all types along the way and endure some pretty tough battles and story choices. You have to constantly choose between the light and dark side during choices, and there are plenty of ways to go about the story.
Firstly, you can choose any world in any order. Each one is roughly laid out the same, with a larger hub area than an area beyond where your main quest and some side quests lie. I got rather annoyed with the constant similar layouts and wished for variety. Each world has the Star Map area blocked off until you fix some global catastrophe on the planet. Some are so serious that your decision will determine if you are allowed back on later. Besides running around and talking to people to get quests and buy stuff, the combat and customization are fathoms deep; fans will be pleased.
You can customize your character with a plethora of items, such as implants, shields, different weapons from lightsabers, blasters, vibroblades, belts, armor, robes, and headgear, and I haven’t even started on leveling up. You should pick your character based on how you’re going to fight. I chose to use melee weapons because you eventually go through Jedi training and get your first lightsaber. I have to say that this brought a smile to my face when I inserted my crystals and watched my character whip around those sabers with the classic lightsaber sounds. Nothing can top that.
The game allows you to customize all your items by inserting upgrades that you find or buy. This is mandatory because there really isn’t a “most powerful weapon in the game.” You just get a powerful weapon, and you have to upgrade it, or it won’t do you much good. Other than this, there is the deep leveling system. You can choose an attribute, feat, power, and skill. Feats affect what you use physically in combat and what combat attacks you can use. Powers are forceful powers, and there are plenty of them. All the light and dark powers you can possibly think of are here. I had a lot of fun using them in combat and getting an edge over certain enemies. The level cap is at 20, but most people probably won’t even hit that by the end. I finished at level 18 and didn’t have too much trouble finishing it. You can even choose how your companions level up because you can control them too! This is great for people who like variety and can’t have every skill available for their character.
Combat is turn-based, with dice rolling behind the scenes. I really would have liked real-time combat, but what’s here is exciting and fun on its own. There are tons of different enemies to fight on each planet, and some are harder than others. I found the game really hard at first, but after a while, you will level up and find the game very balanced. There are some issues in combat that just really annoyed me. There seems to be a targeting problem in small areas. When you click the action you want, the characters will get stuck in an endlessly looping animation if there is someone in their way. This can cause you a battle because you have to disengage and restart the attack or move around the obstruction. This happened quite a lot, but you will learn to just live with it.
While the story is interesting and choosing how dialog will change it is fun, there are some issues here. Instead of your choice being final, some dialog trees will allow you to go back and change your answer, or no matter how you persuade or force persuade, neither will work and you can’t continue the dialog. This is usually on side missions, but I have never seen the persuade option fail so much in a BioWare game. No matter how much I leveled up my persuasion attribute, I failed an awful lot. Other than this, though, my other issue is that some dialog just drags on way too long. I found myself skipping a lot of it or just reading ahead of the voices. These, again, are just minor issues that can be overlooked.
The graphics in the game look old and terrible these days, but back in the day, they looked amazing. I can see why it looked so good then, but you can still feel the Star Wars atmosphere, and that’s what counts the most. The character models and animations are stiff, blocky, and repeat a lot, but overall they work. Even some of the voice acting is spotty at best, but overall it is pretty good.
KotOR is an amazing Star Wars experience, but the age may turn a lot of people off. My biggest issue of all is that the game doesn’t give any clues on where to go. You get no hints and are left on your own to just figure out what to do. I had to use a walkthrough through most of the game because I had no idea where to go, or some quests were very cryptic. This is a huge no-no for me and really hurts the score the most. Overall, this is an amazing Star Wars game, and any Star Wars fan will love this game.
First-person shooters have come a long way, but People Can Fly showed the world that sometimes it’s better to go back than to move forward. You play Daniel, who dies in a car accident along with his wife. While she went to heaven, he got stuck in Purgatory and ended up getting involved in a religious war between Lucifer and the heavens. Lucifer wants to take over, so Daniel is sent to stop him. While the story is semi-interesting, it doesn’t really go anywhere except for a few terribly made, low-resolution CG cutscenes (I mean, pre-PSX bad).
The game is all about shooting, and it does it well. You get five different weapons through the game (I know the very low variety), and you just blast hordes of enemies coming at you from all angles. Each weapon has a secondary fire, like when the mini-gun launches rockets, the shotgun freezes shells, the stake launcher has a grenade launcher, etc. Using both in tandem is important because certain enemies and situations will require different weapons. Even the area you’re in will affect this as well. The shooting is solid and fast-paced, and ammo pickups are a top priority. You can pick up coins that are used to equip tarot cards that act as perks. These are also essential to staying alive, especially during boss fights.
The game is really just shooting hordes (the AI just runs at you), but you can easily die due to sheer numbers. There’s no cover, no special powers, just you and your gun. Every environment in Painkiller is very different, so it’s nice to always look forward to the next level. Not one is alike, and even the boss fights are massive, tough, and rewarding to bring down. When you kill every enemy in an area, the next area will unlock, and you can move on. This proves a problem sometimes when there’s one straggler left behind and you can’t find him to move on. The little bit of platforming is floaty and badly done as well and should have been left out or tested a little more. While the environments look nice, navigating some of these levels can be a pain due to the terrible compass cursor and maze-like hallways.
Another thing I like is the huge variety of enemy types. Some of the designs are crazy, gross, creepy, and downright weird. A lot of the time, the enemies go along with the level, so it kind of feels like playing a pop-up book. The physics engine was highly regarded when the game came out but seems dated compared to today. Over the years, the game got visual upgrades, so I highly recommend one of the new versions, which actually looks pretty nice for such an old game. The multiplayer is what kept people coming back, but you will rarely find anyone playing these days. Overall, Painkiller is a great shooter, just to kill things and shoot bullets. It’s solid and smooth, and you can adjust the difficulty for every type of gamer.
While the Oddworld series may have been dead for years now, the last creation from Lorne Lanning is a great opus. While the series hasn’t been perfect gameplay-wise, it instills great characters, humor, and a unique art style that can be recognized from the series. Stranger’s Wrath was a cult classic Xbox hit but saw poor sales (as did most of the Oddworld games) due to its quirky style. You play as a bounty hunter named Stranger, trying to collect enough Mulah (money) to get a mysterious surgery performed. The story doesn’t get interesting at all until the end, but there are two key plot twists that really throw you for a loop and make the story worthwhile.
The game is split up into two parts. The first half of the game has you finding 12 different wanted bad buys and wandering around the linear world to find them. The thing that made Stranger’s Wrath so unique was its shooting mechanic. Unlike most shooters, Wrath has you shooting critters as your ammo, and you even have to gather them in the wild. A few ranges from Zap Flies have unlimited ammo and can be charged. Boombats are explosive, Thud Slugs are like shotgun shells, and so on. Each critter will eventually be upgraded in the game, but this is a unique approach to shooters that has never been done since.
Most of the time, you can try to sneak your way around and bounty up bad guys, but the stealth mechanics are pretty broken. You can hide in tall grass and lure the bad guys to you, then wrap them up to get them alive (for more bounty), or just run and gun and kill them all, but you get less bounty. While the shooting may be unique, it doesn’t really know what it wants to do. There’s ammo for stealth, but it’s not good enough for run-and-gun action. Finding ammo in crates helps, but you will constantly try to decide which ammo type is best suited for the situation. You can equip any two at the same time for combos, but you can’t shoot them at the same time. I would have liked to see some sort of combo element implemented with that.
The second part of the game lets you have more powerful melee attacks and is all about running and shooting, really. You get the upgraded ammo types, so this is possible, but the game’s difficulty is ruthless, and you will die a lot. Thankfully, the game has a quick save feature, so this alleviates it a little bit. I just felt that this game should have stuck to either a platformer or a shooter because switching from first to third constantly can be a bit disjointing, and even jumping around and climbing is difficult because it feels like all the physics in the game are very floaty.
The second part of the game lets you have more powerful melee attacks and is all about running and shooting, really. You get the upgraded ammo types, so this is possible, but the game’s difficulty is ruthless, and you will die a lot. Thankfully, the game has a quick save feature, so this alleviates it a little bit. I just felt that this game should have stuck to either a platformer or a shooter because switching from first to third constantly can be a bit disjointing, and even jumping around and climbing is difficult because it feels like all the physics in the game are very floaty.
Overall, the shooting mechanic is very unique but works against itself, and the game doesn’t know if it’s a third-person platformer, stealth game, or run-and-gun first-person shooter. If it stuck to just one, the game would be better, but it is a cult classic and shouldn’t be missed if you never owned an Xbox.
Mortal Kombat is one of those series that is loved by all but then pitied. Mortal Kombat has grown over the years but hasn’t quite matured yet, especially in terms of visuals. Armageddon is kind of a potluck stew of every MK character ever dreamed up. This, being the goodbye game to the beloved series, has over 50 fighters and lots of different modes and is bursting at the seams with content. Most people will immediately dive into the arcade kombat mode. You will notice there is every fighter imaginable in the MK universe, and this includes bosses. Once you pick your character, you will see the classic Kombat Ladder, and the fight begins.
Once you start fighting, players of Deadly Alliance and especially Deception will become familiar with the controls. Mortal Kombat is not really a button-mashing fighter, and this is why a lot of people hate the series. Because they have to think before they start throwing punches. You can view a full move list in the pause menu, but when you get your favorite combos and the special moves memorized, you can start kicking ass. Each character has their own real-life martial arts style plus a weapon style. Deception and Deadly Alliance had two fighting styles and a weapon, but one had to be cut for balance issues.
The controls are extremely responsive, and the characters are animated very nicely. While they look a bit like plastic dolls and kind of fight like them, the animations are smooth, and there is no slowdown. New to Deception were arena traps, and this has been transitioned over to Armageddon. You will see either yellow or red lines around certain areas or objects. Yellow means that it’s just a dangerous trap that won’t instantly kill you but will deal some hefty damage. This can be an air duct that will shoot you through a fan, get knocked into a bell, or even into a giant egg and have acid spewed on you. Red lines mean instant kills, and you need to stay away from them. These can be grinders, deadly pits, or anything that can crush. A lot of the arenas are multi-tiered, and these will be marked with yellow lines as well. This really makes fighting intense, not to mention that the areas look awesome.
Fatalities are still here, as always, but with a twist. The MK team decided to do a Kreate-A-Fatality setup in which you don’t have to press any codes to see a staged fatality. The whole system is pretty complicated since there are transition moves and finishers, and each set goes into the other. You can do up to 11 moves, but you have to end with a finisher move for it to register as a fatality. With each move, your timer bar depletes faster and faster, so precision and fast input speed are a must. You can do a few forward chains, such as ripping out a heart, brain, or maybe a punch or two, then decide to go either into a face-down, behind-back, or on-the-knees transition. If you have to put that code in, then decide if you want to finish or continue from a behind-the-back transition set, on the knees, and so on. It becomes very complicated, and a lot of people don’t like this feature, calling it “generic fatalities,” but doing two fatalities for 50+ characters was too daunting, so they needed to figure something out.
Besides your core fighting in here, Konquest mode is back and better than ever. Forget the irritating, ugly, and boring deception. The team used the Shaolin Monks engine, so you get to fight in real-time via grabs, kicks, and heavy and light punches. You acquire power-ups throughout the game as well as perform fatalities by just pressing a button once the enemy is dazed. You can go around collecting relics to unlock hidden stuff in the Krypt, as well as alternate costumes, music, and koins. Sometimes you will run across weapons to hack and slash enemies, as well as do actual kombat with characters you run across.
The story is more interesting than any other MK side story that has a lot of mystery wrapped around it. New characters Taven and Daegon awaken from slumber by the call of Blaze (yeah, that hidden character in Deadly Alliance). Daegon is trying to find his father while discovering why he needs to fight his brother and how to become the new Emperor of Edenia. Overall, the Konquest mode is very entertaining and a welcome treat.
Another questionable mini-game is Motor Kombat, which is a cart racing game. This could have been greatly improved, but it’s entertaining for a while. You pick your favorite MK character (or a select few) and run across a star that will allow you to use your weapon or a lightning bolt, which is a burst of speed. You can bump people left or right into death traps (marked by red lines). There are jumps and the tracks are laid out differently, but there could have been more power-ups instead of just one set for the character, and I would have liked the levels to be more alive. Motor Kombat is fun at best with more players, but other than that, you’ll forget about it after you play all the stages.
I finally came to Kreate-A-Fighter mode, and this has been a huge request by fans since Deadly Alliance. You get a lot of customization options, and you can buy more accessories with the coins you collect from all modes of the game. You can set moves, fighting style, finishing stance, and even write out a bio (pull out that dusty PS2 keyboard!) You can do pretty much anything you want with the character, and there are so many items that no one will look the same. There are even some conspicuous items that look like superheroes or real-life heroes as well. You can take your character online and hone your skills against other people’s characters. As of this review, Xbox LIVE has been shut off, so local play is only possible. Besides, even before, no one was playing online anymore. This feature is greatly welcomed and is a blast to use.
The Krypt returns for a third time, but simpler. Instead of different kinds of colored koins, there’s just one type, and you can unlock tons of stuff. Anything from concept art, videos, sketches, alternate costumes, and music. Armageddon is chock-full of content, but it does have its flaws.
For instance, the visuals. While they look nice, they don’t really push the systems to their limits. The voice acting is terrible in Konquest mode, and like I said before, the characters look a bit like plastic dolls, and the animations are a bit canned. The Kreate-A-Fatality mode is not well received, and I would like to have seen set fatalities for each character. Motor Kombat is pretty lackluster, and it’s obvious the game needs a reboot. I also would have liked to see Chess Kombat and Puzzle Kombat from Deception included here as well, but they are sadly absent. Until then, Armageddon should keep fans and newcomers entertained for hours on end.
I’m not really a traditional sports fan, but when something as outrageous as the Outlaw series passes under my radar, I have no choice but to pick it up. Outlaw Golf 2 is very mature, outrageous, and fun. What makes the series so outrageous are the characters, who range from mentally insane to sexually charged (such as Summer and Autumn). The game has a lot of modes, such as tour, exhibition, driving range, and a couple of mini-games.
The gameplay is pretty simple and plays like most other golf games, but with some twists. When driving down the green, you can switch camera angles to see where your ball is going to fly. You can change the power, and this is also adjusted upon swinging. The game has a swing stick setup, so swinging the analog stick is pretty accurate and not too finicky. If you time the swing right, you can go over 100% and do a power shot, but watch out because you overshoot where you want the ball to land. There are hazards to look out for, so you really need to watch out. If you start doing poorly, your composure meter will drop and bring it back up, and you can play one of two mini-games. These are golf cart games to get a perfect shot, or you can beat up your caddy. They are fun at first, but after a few tries, you get tired of them. One feature I like is that while you get three tries at a guideline, Hit square once, and you’ll see a line to the hole. One feature I love is the Gimme feature, which allows you to just press square during a putting replay to let you go ahead and sink the ball for an extra shot. This is only if your ball is almost in the cup and you didn’t quite make it.
I love the game’s mature commentary and smart alack remarks to the players. The intros and small animations of the characters are either funny or sexy. The best part about the game is that the mature content didn’t get in the way of the game being good. However, the game is very hard to beat, especially in tour mode. Even after trying over 10 times, I still couldn’t beat the first tournament against Killer Miller. You have to get ahead on the first hole, or you’re never going to win. Even if you factor in all the golf aspects like wind, elevation, etc., you still have a hard time winning.
The game looks pretty good, even for today. The courses look great, and the characters look great, so you have something nice to look at. The only issues I saw were some slowdowns due to the PS2’s limitations, but they didn’t hinder gameplay. Since the online servers are shut down (and there’s probably no one playing even if they weren’t), online play couldn’t be tested, but I’m sure it would have been really fun and competitive. There is a lot of extra content, like videos, outfits, clubs, and balls, so you have many hours of gameplay, and there are a lot of characters to play as well. If you’re tired of your traditional golf games, pick up Outlaw Golf 2, and you should have a good time.
Side games have been very poor when it comes to Mortal Kombat. Shaolin Monks is probably the first good one, but it still isn’t perfect and has many flaws. You play as either Kung-Lao or Liu-Kang, and the game is set in the Mortal Kombat II universe. The two champions run around different worlds, such as the Living Forest, the Wastelands, the Wu-Shi Academy, and even the Soul Tombs. They are trying to stop Shao-Kahn, but the story is pretty stretched out and not very good, even for MK fans. You come across fan favorites such as Baraka, Mileena, Kitana, and even Scorpion.
The game is an action-adventure and has a pretty solid fighting system. There are light attacks, heavy attacks, power attacks, and special attacks. Each character has their own signature power attacks, such as Kang’s flying sidekick, bicycle kick, and fireballs. Lao has his hat toss, among many others. The combat system is responsive and quick and is pretty fun to use. You can accomplish some big combos on the ground. There is the option to unlock new moves via points that you get from killing enemies, and yes, don’t worry, fatalities are present. These are performed by performing combos and building your fatality meter. One full orb lets you do a fatality, two lets you perform a mutality, and three lets you perform brutality. Fatalities can be unlocked by finding hidden red coins (trust me, they are a pain to find without the strategy guide). New fatalities are obtained by finding those red coins and unlocking “Fatality Images,” which are viewed in the concept art area. This can be a bit of a pain, and loading and saving are slow and tedious.
The game has combat puzzles that involve using your abilities. This involves knocking enemies into vicious death traps or testing your might with strength puzzles (MK fans will love this). Each level has different death traps, such as in The Living Forest, where you must feed the tree’s bodies before passing, and in The Soul Tombs, knocking enemies into spiked ceilings or iron maidens. The game is brutal, like MK is known for, and that will satisfy fans. Even the fatalities are awesome, but unlocking the best takes a lot of hunting for those red coins.
Getting through the game has kind of a Metroid feel since you must find certain abilities to reach different parts of the game, like double jumping, pole swinging, wall running, and fists of ruin. This, unfortunately, makes backtracking tiresome. What makes that worse is that some coins aren’t reachable until you get said ability, and this could be really far into the game, and you might forget to go back. This is just one of many flaws the game has. The combat system may be solid, but it’s a bit shallow and could have used some more depth. Most of the flaws revolve around the graphics. They aren’t that great. Even when the game came about in 2005, they weren’t showing the PS2’s true potential, and this is sad. The game is full of low-res textures and models, and it looks worse than the franchise’s staple fighting games. There are collision detection issues and complete hangups that require system restarts. Save points are scarce, and you don’t even have to kill enemies to progress. What’s up with that? There are only a few times where you must kill enemies to progress, but most of the time you can just pass them, and what I truly hate is the fact that they can respawn.
The sounds in the game are okay, but they could have been better. All the MKII sounds are used, so nostalgia sets in, but I would have liked some richer sounds. The voice acting is also terrible, but MK is known for that. The game doesn’t look high-budget, even though Midway (RIP) gives the MK team endless amounts of money to make these. This disappointed me more than anything, along with the super short length. 4-6 is the completion time, and some hardcore players could finish this in one or two sittings. What makes up for some of the shortcomings is the Ko-op mode, however, and this also makes those damn red coins more of a pain to obtain since some can only be obtained via Ko-op.
The game has fun boss fights, lots of secrets, and tons of MKII references, and using that universe will make fans happy. If you can see past the shortcomings underneath, this is a solid MK side game that I hope sees a sequel with a bigger budget. You can find this game for less than $10 in most places, so its bargain bin price point is just more of a reason for people to play this game.
No, don’t panic. Xbox LIVE is still up and running. I’m talking about the original Xbox Live in that big, clunky green and black box. I know it’s a bit late, but on April 15th, Microsoft pulled the plug on original Xbox LIVE support, and you can now no longer play those old multiplayer games. Yes, even Halo 2 was cut, but that’s ok because you can still play the single-player games. They also cut leaderboards, DLC, and anything else associated with the original Xbox Live. While I personally have no fond memories since I was a PS2-only player during the last generation, some people will be saddened by this. There will also be no more backward compatibility updates, and this should have been seen a long time ago since the last update was in November 2007.
The Xbox’s production was even halted early on in 2006 due to poor sales, and NVIDIA (their graphics chip provider), due to the Xbox 360 being just released here, decided to no longer manufacture the GPU. So, if you were an Xbox lover, these past 4 years haven’t been good for you (same goes for you GameCube fans), but this is a new era, so let’s all hope the Xbox 360 doesn’t suffer the same fate.
I’m not really a James Bond fan, but I can’t help but pass up a good action game, no matter what the license is. Everything or Nothing is based on the film when Pierce Brosnan was still a famous spy, and Everything or Nothing is pretty solid. The story is pretty nonsensical and is your typical Bond plot with a bad guy (Willam Defoe) hell-bent on ruling the world. Diavolo has nano-mites that can eat through metal and plans on attaching payloads of this stuff to nukes. Bond runs into a henchman (Jaws) and a beautiful woman to stop the evil madman.
The best part is the vehicle sections, and the shooting sections are hard as hell and mundane. I’m going to throw that out there right now. The vehicle sections have Bond driving real-world vehicles with missiles, machine guns, flame throwers, and oil slicks attached to them. What makes the driving sections so grand is the sense of speed. Driving across a bridge, jumping through signs, and finding shortcuts to trigger “Bond Moments”. While these are hard to find (even in on-foot sections), they can be satisfying. Every driving section is different, from escorts to flying over rooftops to races. All vehicles handle very well, even at high speeds, and this is what truly matters.
The on-foot sections are mundane and extremely frustrating. Even in the easiest setting, the game throws dozens of bad guys at you, and ammo is a loot and hunt type thing. You start out with a puny P99 pistol, and the game throws about 10 bad guys at you. The lock-on feature is clumsy since you can’t lock on unless the camera is facing an enemy. If you get close enough to someone, Bond will put his gun away and start meleeing while other guys around him are shooting. This can make you die in very tight spots. The melee is pretty basic, with heavy and light punches along with counters. You can hide behind the cover, but this tends to be a problem if the cover is taller than Bond can shoot.
You can use a lot of gadgets, but they tend to be useless unless the level requires them. You get Q spiders, which are remotely operated spiders that can blow things up and go inside little nooks. The coin grenades are pretty straightforward but have crappy physics and bounce around like rubber balls. There’s the nanosuit that makes you invisible, but I never even had to use it since stealth in this game is very hard and almost not an option. The rappel gun is what I used most. Being a Bond game, I wish the gadgets would have come in handy, but they are if you really want to use them. The shooting sections are just so frustrating due to the unbalanced difficulty. I died over 10 times on certain missions, and there are no checkpoints. Some of the longer levels have one, but most levels have none, and this can make you throw your controller across the room.
The graphics are pretty decent for a 2004 PS2 game. The textures are solid, the audio is nice, and there are only slight framerate problems due to the PS2’s limitations. There is an online co-op, but this will never be tested since the servers were shut down. There are a lot of missions in this game, and it will keep you busy for a good 8–10 hours, depending on how many times you die. The game is pretty solid, and you won’t be disappointed. Even people who don’t like Bond can enjoy this game, and that’s the beauty of it.
I watched the movie when it first came out, and now I’m late playing the game. While I played the PC version, I found the Xbox 360 version not much different. The game does sport decent graphics, but now, in 2009, they feel pretty dated, there are a lot of collision detection issues, and the game is very…green. While you spend 70% of the time playing as Jack, you wish you could play as Kong more. There are a decent variety of enemies, such as giant centipedes, bats, T-Rex, raptors, crabs, and so forth. You just wish there were more.
When you play as Jack, you are in a first-person perspective, and there are no health bars, no ammo meters, just you and your instincts. Ubisoft made it this way, so the game feels more cinematic like the movie, and it works. I was surprised at how well you can aim with the spears and guns without a reticle, and it’s very easy to do. Most of the playing as Jack is pretty straightforward, with most of the puzzles revolving around burning brush via lit spears. Most of these puzzles get pretty dull towards the end, but thankfully, as you progress, you play as Kong more often. Playing as Kong, though, is the best part. You are in a 3rd-person POV, and the camera sweeps around dramatically while you beat up a giant T-Rex and fend off dozens of bats.
There are moments when you run along giant cliffsides and swing on huge pillars. While this is good and all, it does get repetitive, and it’s the same thing over and over. The game isn’t very well-paced, and there aren’t any clips from the movie at all. I understand that Michel Ancel wanted players to not emerge out of the experience with jaunting clips from the movie, so everything is done in real-time. Of course, all the load times defeat this purpose since some chapters are only one cutscene long. I also have to mention that King Kong has the easiest access to 1000 GP ever. Just complete the game, and you have all your achievements and GP. Yes, you heard me, just complete certain chapters, and they hand them to you. Of course, this had a lot to do with the fact that most developers didn’t give two sh**s about achievements during the first year or so of the console’s life. While Ubisoft did a good job in the short time they had, it could have been a lot better. The game also ends very abruptly, and it feels like they took huge shortcuts. Despite all this, you’ll get a kick out of the game on any console, and it’ll sure to please the movie fans.
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Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.