Drivin' the Porsche to Seven-Eleven
Written: Dec 13 '00 (Updated Dec 13 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Beautiful scenery , best looking character yet
Cons: 'sloppy' controls . Save , die , repeat game play
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| Rild's Full Review: Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2 For Windows |
I acquired 'Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2' primarily because I am a long time fan of the magazine and the original movie . Heavy Metal has always captured the best blend of imagination , music and powerfully sexual women , A quality Rolling Stone once referred to as the 'rock and roll of science fiction' .
FAKK 2 does a good job of making that interplanetary leap from where we live our daily lives to the fantastic realm of gorgeous 'godslayers' like JULIE -the games heroin ( ever notice how the female nomiker for hero { heroin } is synonymous with a highly addictive hallucinogenic intravenous drug ? - I guess they are both dangerous , destructive , and leave you wanting more !). The Q3 engine enables the games artwork ( and it truly is art ) to be utterly fantastic and true to the heavy metal form i.e; ancient cyclopian buildings , mysterious hulking machinery, and psychotic flowing skies , giving the game an intoxicating sense of immersion . The face and head for Julie are amazingly life like , and very beautiful .
Unfortunately, like most artistic games, it unceremoniously rips you back across the light years with abominable game play . The game has a Tomb Raider style of play , but unlike TR ,it is very short ( I finished it in one weekend ) , and relies very heavily on the monotonous (not to say frustrating)'save , die , repeat' method to help "lengthen" the game by making you play the same bits over and over again.
This game was just simply not well thought out . The level designs are rather generic and rather unbalanced considering the number of weapons and moves available . My guess would be that the levels were designed before all the game features were added . They turned what would otherwise have been some rather interesting monsters/locations into boring time-thieves by making them rather ridiculously hard to kill/navigate in what is a transparent effort to fluff-up the game ,time or feature wise(It reminded me of the old megaman series in this regard).
The story line was thinner than Chinese soup and even a very great deal of adolescently scripted and poorly integrated cutscenery didn't help ( the cut scene with the rastafarian frog -while actually rather cool- takes up more time than playing the level that follows it). Although short and unbalanced the real game killer here is the fuzzy interactivety that leaves you feeling only partially there and only marginally in control . Sure Julie has some great combo moves , but only under optimal conditions , and it is extremely frustrating to watch your sword pass clean through enemies without hurting them .
Nothing in the game feels solid . It seems as though all the corners, edges or seams are covered in large invisible velcro pads , whereas everything else in the game makes you feel as if your pushing a rounded glass block through a slightly oily glass universe . Inadequate ( or completely missing as in the case of footfalls , and grasping ) sounds Mute the experience even further. The over all effect leaves your hands disagreeing with your eyes about where and what you can do , normally your ears which help sort out troubles of this kind just aren't getting enough info , most unsatisfying .
I think the over-all quality of the game is best expressed by the representation of Julie's character model. While Julie's head and face have been done to perfection you only rarely get to see them (during cut-scenes and what not) . So for virtually all of the game play you see Julie's backside . Normally the bum on such a stunning women has a biological propensity for sublime motion , that entices , seduces , subtly and profoundly perpetuates mathematical perfection by way of simple harmonic oscillation . Unfortunately the boys at Ritual gave us a plywood bum shaped cut-out.
Did anyone else notice that the end Boss (I think his name is Tyler-the end level monsters did not rate names they just got power bars with the highly descriptive "Boss" printed next to it) looks suspiciously like the Cyberdemon from doom?
On a final note with a name like Heavy Metal I really expected a lot more music!?. -D
After reading some of the other reviews I gather that a lot of people didn't play this game very long ( let alone all the way through ) before writing about it .
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Rild
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Location: Fresno , Ca. USA
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 2 members
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