That smiley face looks mighty suspicious
Written: Nov 06 '06 (Updated Nov 07 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cool music
Cons: Huge interface. Not very fun at all
The Bottom Line: This game just isn't any fun. Don't bother
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| cobadee's Full Review: Faceball 2000 for Super Nintendo |
Faceball came out when first person shooters were starting to make their big move into the gaming world. I still go back to play games like Doom and even sometimes Wolfenstein 3D, and I can still have a great time. In Faceball it's hard to get that blast from the past feeling because the game feels so outdated.
So what makes those other first person shooters fun still? They had a story and at least a little bit of depth. Faceball is just a series of levels where you do the same thing over and over again. You're in a big room, and you have no idea what you are doing. The scenery in the room is pretty much all plain and there are different walls and such spread around the level. You have a screen within a screen, meaning that there is the gameplay screen and around that is a huge interface that tells you very minor stuff like what your life is at. Doom had this but it wasn't nearly as big. This seriously takes up 2/3 of the screen. So what do you do in the game? Well you go through a course and you kill everything in sight. It's not like in Doom where you have to hit an elevator switch or something, you just have to kill every enemy you see. Once you have killed enough enemies, you get to the next level by using the exit teleport. Since there are no missions, and the levels are always on one level and the whole game feels like you are playing a multiplayer game against bots, the game feels so repetitive after just a little bit. The enemies you face are 3D smiley faces and they go down with one shot. In the screen you have crosshairs, when you have your crosshairs on the enemy fire at him. When you fire a big yellow thing will fill up the screen and slowly go and hit the other guy, (if you aimed right), and kill him. Hmm when was the last time you saw a game where you fired a bullet that filled up the whole screen. It definitely takes off the visibility the small gameplay screen you have, and that means you have unlimited bullets and you can't just hold down the fire button. They could have easily made a small ball instead of a ginormous ball get fired.
So there are two modes, both of them pretty much have the same gameplay:
Cyberzone: in the Cyberzone mode you pick your difficulty and you go through an arena shooting every enemy in site. When you kill enough enemies you will progress to the next level.
Arena: Pick up six smiloids, (bad guys to fire at) to face off in a battle. There are four different kinds of smiloids:
Gremlins: Very Easy
Turkeys: Easy
Rovers: Average
Bouncers: Hard
The bouncers in the game are way too hard and the Gremlins are way to easy. A bouncer will be going through the level really fast picking you off in a heartbeat. A Gremlin will walk into you and won't fire at you.
There is splitscreen multiplayer in the game which can be fun. They have co-op play and vs. play, both of which feel the same because you are just disposing of the first bad guy you see.
So is the game fun? Well I'll be the first one to find fun in older games, but this game is just not fun anymore. You have other choices for good fps games on the Super Nintendo, but this is just hard to play with it feeling like a multiplayer game against bots the whole time and you have very little gameplay or replay value. The game gets old really fast, and I can see how the game could have been fun back in the day if it was your first fps you had ever played, but honestly I'd pretty much rather play any other first person shooter than this. Sorry Faceball, you're not fun to play!
As for the graphics, they look alright. They designed the players to look 3D, but they end up looking pretty 2 dimensional because they move around and switch angles, but they are happy faces... it's a little hard to make a happy face look 3d. So they will move around and you will see like them at the side but at every angle they just look like a flat circle. There are only a few textures in the levels (excluding the backgrounds) that they use, and a variety of the game's color is just totally one color inside an arena. The colors change during different levels but they are flat colors so like the walls may be completely green and the floors may be just completely red in one level so it looks pretty plain. In the arena mode you see a croud and some background and it looks pretty good, but the cyberzone levels really shine. Depending on what level you are in, the background will be different. Sometimes you may be in some inside building and sometimes the background will be something like Seattle or some other city, and they are drawn very well. When you move through the level, it feels like Wolfenstein 3D, you will take a step forward and it won't feel smooth, your guy will be in one position and a second later he will be in the next position instead of gradually moving forward like fps games of today have. So moving around a level feels really weird because it doesn't feel smooth, you press forward and you will be constantly be teleported about a foot about every second.
The music in the game is pretty fast, paced, but slightly muffled drumming beats with a clear guitar that comes in to make some cool music. After you die the smiley face with a voice over says "Have a nice day." Come on, they could have at least made them say something cool. Other than music and a few small sound effects and "Have a nice day," there are no other sound effects, but the music works so well with the game that it produces a satisfying sound for the game.
Overall this game just isn't fun anymore, and it really wasn't very fun to begin with. I seriously had really absolutely no fun with this game. Don't even bother.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
cobadee
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Member: Josh
Location: Idaho
Reviews written: 234
Trusted by: 65 members
About Me:
Wii Number: 1185 2036 5439 5784; Xbox live: Psych0 Fish;
PS3: cobadee
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