Oh ....my god

[A Black Falcon]

Okay, then what happens at the end?

The EVIL FASCIST ALIEN BADGUY TYPES YOU SHOULD HATE are going to lose, and the GOOD RESISTANCE FORCES are going to win. The plot isn't deeper than that, really. It sort of tried to pretend to have some sort of moral, or point, or message, or whatever, but didn't in any way beyond the absolute most basic level. The resistance bar plays a "Propaganda" song, as some sort of mocking thing or something! Oooh, how edgy! I could go on on all the stupid, inexplicable unrealism and questionable plot points, but I did that years ago, when I'd actually played the game recently, so I won't now. :)

So the game as a whole is bad because it had a cheap, lazy, last-second PC port? Come on, dude.

It's not like the gameplay was all that much better even when it DID work considering the bad port. I said at the time I'd give it a B or B- or something (maybe a C something at the worst), score-wise. So not too bad, but pretty seriously flawed as well, and nowhere near the scores a lot of people were giving it, because it definitely didn't deserve that.

I don't blame him. I think it's a neat game, but I could see why he'd get bored of it. On the other hand, you really should play it with a controller and on a console. On the third hand (the first foot?), he's probably played enough of the game to make an adequate judgment of how much better the console game would be and decided that the pros didn't outweigh the cons.

I did have a working gamepad then, actually. It's just that the PC version doesn't let you use it, and is keyboard and mouse only. Keyboard to gamepad mapping software won't help; for instance, there is no way to assign movement to an analog axis, only digital with a run button. This was a big, big problem. So yeah, the horrible controls were one major negative. The bad framerates, in a game that looked no better than the PC version of Rayman 3, which supported dual-analog gamepads and got solid framerates, was also a problem. The numerous fairly serious bugs and complete lack of any patches sealed the deal. I quit playing when a bug and the bad controls kept me from getting around this part in the giant pit mini-dungeon thing underneath the 'police' HQ or whatever.

But anyway, as I said, my problems weren't just with that stuff, it was also with the plot, design, and gameplay... none of which were nearly as good or interesting as I was hoping. It's probably as much a case of expectations that the game completely failed to meet as much as anything else, I guess... though really, that shouldn't excuse all of its problems.

The stealth parts of the game are pretty cool, I enjoyed them. Do they really have to make the drones make the same cheesy "Ahhh!!" time every time you hit their air packs? The combat system leaves a lot to be desired, unfortunately. I was into it at first, but then it just got repetitive. Stun the enemy, hit them, whee. You could sometimes line them up and get more than one, but it got to be a chore, especially if enemies recurred. I do like the picture-taking aspect of the game, though.

It's not "stealth", it's just puzzles. I mean, something where all you have to do to avoid the enemies when you fail to get through the room is run back to the last cooridor, hide in the conveniently located hiding place that there is one of before the entrance of every room, and wait until the enemies go back to their posts, is not a stealth game. It's very hard for me to call that stealth. It was sometimes entertaining, but nothing amazing for sure.

The combat's not interesting either, as I said. It's more fun than Star Fox Adventures' sleep-inducing button mashing, but not by that much... the combat is dull, and because it doesn't punish you at all for dying, there's no reason to care about dying. It resurrects you in the last room with MORE HEALTH THAN YOU PROBABLY HAD BEFORE YOU DIED! Kind of ridiculous, from a challenge standpoint... I quite agree, combat is definitely not this game's strong point either.

Oh, at the time another complaint of mine was about money, something nobody else agreed with if I remember... I just remember always seeing lots of things I needed to get, but never having anywhere near enough money to get them. How were you supposed to afford that stuff, grind it out or something? That's not exactly fun...

The graphics are meh, but this is GameCube we're talking about. Not a huge deal. The story is decent (and yeah, I know the ending, I read it here). I guess I'd give this game a 7 or 8.

The graphics were nice for the time (for a console game), really... no problems there I thought, apart from those framerates on my PC...