| 1080 Degree Avalanche | |||
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| Grade: B+ |
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Last modified 2006/2/4.
The overriding criteria is how fun the game is to play, although control, graphics, and sound are also taken into account. |
Screen shots courtesy of IGN.com, Game Nation TV, Gaming Age Online, Nintendo.com, Sega.com.
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Before reviewing 1080 Degree Avalanche, I played a few rounds of SSX3 to calibrate my snowboarding sensibilities. The SSX series has been the de facto standard for snowboarding games for so long, comparisons to it are inescapable. But Avalanche has a very different feel. The courses look more natural than the artificial wonders of SSX, and the gameplay is less complicated in general. For casual gamers, this may actually be a better choice. I personally love the understated natural beauty of these courses, with their powdery snow, scenic evergreens, and scurrying wildlife. Most are a joy to ride, but there are a few that inexplicably have more mud and ice than snow (yuck). The controls are simple as can be, although "rolling" the joystick to regain your balance seems oddly unintuitive. A more practical feature is the way your character becomes transparent so your line-of-sight is never obstructed - I like that. I also like how the slow-motion kicks in as you're pulling off mad stunts in mid-air. As much as I love the racing aspect of Avalanche, I must admit that the "tricks" element of the game is somewhat lacking. Another weak area is the music. I recommend turning it off completely in favor of the crisp sound effects of slicing through the icy tundra. A terrific split screen mode allows up to four people to compete against each other, and it doesn't seem watered down at all. I only wish they would have incorporated a multi-round "championship" mode (a la Mario Kart). It's not the most ambitious snowboarding game ever made, but for those who prefer to keep it simple, 1080 Degree Avalanche is the perfect antidote to SSX.
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On paper, Alien Hominid is a shooter fan's dream. We're talking gorgeous layered 2D graphics, lightning-fast action, and rapid-fire shooting controls. Although comparable to classics like Metal Slug (Neo Geo) and Gunstar Heroes (Genesis), Hominid's gameplay is twice as fast and borderline frantic. Controlling a likeable little yellow alien with a wicked arsenal, you blast you way through thousands of FBI agent clones and face down their huge metallic contraptions. This game is brimming with style and has an outrageous sense of humor. Your firepower is overwhelming, but you can also slice and dice foes at close range, or toss grenades from a distance. If that's not enough, you can hop on their backs and bite their heads clean off! Yeah, there's gore, but it's so cartoonish and over-the-top that few will find it offensive. To break up the monotony, you can commandeer cars or spaceships. In a tribute to the old arcade game Rampage, one stage lets you control of a huge abominable snowman that literally fills the screen! Hominid's graphics and hilarious animations are hands-down spectacular. The backgrounds look like they're painted, and the explosions are massive. The pulse-pounding background music is equally terrific, and the sound effects are crisp. Several mildly amusing mini-games are also included, and some pay homage to the pixilated games of the early 80's. I should have loved Alien Hominid, but I didn't. This is one of those games where the sum is less than its parts. First off, Alien Hominid subscribes to the modern shooter philosophy that says you have to spend at least half of the time fighting bosses that take forever to wear down. Man does that get old! Next, the ease in which you can dispatch the normal bad guys really takes the edge off the game. It's like the Matrix movies where Keanu Reeves beats up a never-ending parade of agents - fun for a while, but soon becomes a bore. The game's flashy graphics and huge objects often make it hard to tell what's going on. Finally, this game gave me the worst case of carpal tunnel ever. Alien Hominid takes its cue from several 2D classics, but it doesn't possess the same old school sensibility or addictive gameplay. I've heard several people complain that this game is too short, but for this critic, it's enough Hominid for a lifetime.
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Good Batman games are hard to come by these days, but Vengeance is terrific, sporting impressive audio-visuals that are extremely faithful to the cartoon series. An engaging storyline incorporates three of Batman's arch-enemies: The Joker, Mr. Freeze, and Poison Ivy. Starting with the obligatory training course, the difficulty ramps gradually as you acquire new skills. In addition to a bevy of fancy martial arts attacks, Batman's utility belt is loaded with gadgets like bat-a-rangs, grappling hooks, nets, and remote charges. Some of the game's more original elements include saving people falling in mid-air (!) and the ability to handcuff defeated henchmen so they won't come back for more. The level design is superb, so for the most part it's obvious where you need to go and what needs to be done. Spicing up the action are occasional driving stages. The graphics in Batman Vengeance are crisp and attractive, employing vivid colors over dark backgrounds, although a few areas are a bit hard to discern. The music and sound effects are spectacular, obviously lifted directly from the TV series, and there are over 40 minutes of gorgeous cinematics. While my experience was overwhelmingly positive, I did uncover a few flaws. The "C" stick used to target enemies is far too sensitive, and the camerawork is awkward at times, especially on the ledges of tall buildings. In your first encounter with the Joker, you can hear him, but you can't tell where the heck he is! Finally, it would be nice if when you picked up an item the game actually told you what the freakin' thing was! But don't let these problems steer you away from this above-average superhero title.
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My friends all had similar reactions to Beach Spikers: "This is a GameCube game?!" It's not often that you see beautiful, scantily-clad women jumping around on a Nintendo system. The box claims "Beach Volleyball has never been hotter!" and you'll get no argument here. The female athletes are certainly curvaceous, and while there's nothing truly objectionable in the game, my friends did whoop it up pretty good when the gals tenderly embraced to congratulate each other. Apparently the days of having men players in volleyball games are long gone, and good riddance! So, is Beach Spikers any good? Absolutely. As they did with Tennis and Soccer, Sega has transformed an average sport into an arcade extravaganza. And the game's arcade origins are obvious when you see "Enjoy the game" and "Thanks for playing" on the screen. Beach Spikers is simple to play but completely addictive and challenging. The volleys are exciting, and positioning your players is key. Only two buttons are used, and a simple meter determines the power of spikes and serves. Playing modes include arcade, multi-player, career, and even a few mini-games. The idea behind the career mode is to incrementally increase the skill of your inept CPU partner, who you can praise, encourage, or reprimand! The announcer in Beach Spikers sounds overtly gay, so it's hard not to crack up when you hear his lisp. One flaw with the game is the camera, which is constantly swinging around, making it easy to become disoriented. The blocks aren't particularly effective, so most of the time it's best to hang back. Also, this game needs a tournament mode in the worst way. But in general Beach Spikers is a winner, especially with four players. It's not quite up to the level of Virtua Tennis, but it's cast from the same mold.
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The star of this dark action-adventure is a half-human, half-vampire chick by the name of Rayne who battles mutants, swamp creatures, and - you guessed it - Nazis! Bloodrayne's third-person gameplay consists of seeking out enemies and slicing them up with the huge knives attached to you arms. I enjoyed the dark theme, but technically the game could be better. The graphics are only average, the collision detection is spotty, and the camerawork stinks at times. Still, there are a lot of very cool elements that make Bloodrayne worth checking out. For one thing, the lead character is a hottie of the highest magnitude. With her short red hair, bouncy breasts, and skin-tight leather outfit, she looks more like a dominatrix than a vampire! Better yet, she has a sexy voice and a serious attitude. Upon slicing off a soldier's arm, she'll casually mention "you dropped something" before sauntering away. Oh yeah - that's another thing about this game - the excessive gore. Rayne enjoys hacking her foes into meaty chunks, and the blood flies far and wide. Making the violence even more gratuitous is the ultra-gory "blood rage" mode and the slow-motion "dilated perception" mode. The language is pretty rough too - I think this is the first game I've ever heard the "F" word pronounced so boldly. The first stage is set in the swamps of Louisiana, and these creepy areas incorporate some blood-curling audio effects. I found the Nazi fortress stages to be fairly "blah" by comparison. In addition to her blades, Rayne has other weapons at her disposal including shotguns and a harpoon to "reel in" bad guys (Scorpion style). The auto-aiming mechanism not only makes it easy to target enemies, but alerts you to their presence. When Rayne's health meter gets low, she can suck blood to regain life - but you already knew that. BloodRayne is has style to burn and enough originality to suck in casual gamers with an appetite for blood. It's a good time, but definitely for mature gamers only.
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It's the same old story: Boy meets girl, girl meets boy, girl transforms into huge white rabbit and beats the living [expletive] out of boy. Bloody Roar is the unlikely 3D fighting series that legitimized itself on the Playstation a few years back, thanks to its clever "fighter turns into animal" gimmick. Returning characters include the wolf, bunny, tiger, and lion. New beasts like the chameleon and dung beetle provide some fresh "faces", but clearly they're running out of animals! The intro features some impressive anime work, and the game itself looks colorful and stylish. The level of graphic detail is a step below Virtua Fighter 4, but not too far behind. The ladies look great, thanks to their skimpy outfits and bouncing bosoms (gratuitous for sure, but who's complaining?) The simple control scheme (one punch button, one kick button) not only encourages button mashing, but rewards it. For best results I'd recommend using the digital pad. Chaining together combos is the order of the day, and you can link some wild moves together without even looking in the manual (which lists combos over 10 buttons long!). Ironically, Bloody Roar contains no blood, but flashy effects compensate for that. The backgrounds range from a dull Asian temple, to a city bridge, to a beautiful aquarium. There's not much to see, and the audio is equally weak. The soundtrack is forgettable, and I really hate how my fighter screams like a little girl upon being defeated - especially since he's a guy! Bloody Roar is a competent fighter, but Activision missed a few opportunities to make this special. What ever happened to "morphing"? The characters here instantly transform into creatures, and it's downright unspectacular. Also, while the arenas are enclosed, you can't knock your opponent through the walls, even after the walls are damaged (unlike previous editions). Overall, Bloody Roar provides some mildy amusing fighting action, but ultimately comes off as shallow and forgettable.
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With its break-neck speeds, spectacular collisions, and adrenaline-soaked gameplay, Burnout absolutely blew me away! It's amazing how it so effectively conveys the feeling of high-speed, reckless driving through dense traffic. The single-player mode challenges you to race three other cars through fourteen courses located in the USA and Europe. Burnout dares you to drive dangerously, rewarding near-misses, power slides, and driving against traffic (in the wrong lane). These increment your turbo meter, which can only be used when it's completely full. To be honest, turbo just tends to make you crash faster. The tracks are long (maybe too long), but wide and perfect for racing. It's quite a rush to careen through busy intersections and thread your way through oncoming traffic. Sometimes you'll miraculously whiz through a crowded intersection and wonder how the heck you made it out in one piece! Another great thing about Burnout is how CPU-controlled opponents can also wreck. It's supremely satisfying to be tailing the leader and watch him smash into a truck! Burnout's graphics are silky smooth, the music is mesmerizing, and load times are minimal. The generic highway of the first course isn't much to look at, but later tracks are more interesting, including a scenic Paris-inspired River City. The main problem with the game lies with its use of timers and checkpoints. Like many arcade racers, the game is really a race against the clock, and not making it to the next checkpoint in time will end your game even if you're in first place! Another issue is how the transparent green arrows tend to have traffic coming out of them, which is hard to see. Finally, after a wreck, you often find yourself resuming the race in a far better position! This is especially unfair in the two-player mode, where you can pass a crashed player only to have him reappear ahead of you! Problems like this add an element of frustration to an otherwise outstanding racer. But then again, that's what sequels are for.
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If you like your racers fast and furious with little regard for realism, Burnout 2 is your game. The game rewards you for reckless driving, and it's truly exhilarating as you weave through oncoming traffic and squeeze through busy intersections. Your turbo meter builds whenever you catch air, power slide, drive against traffic, or have a "near miss" (or should that be a "near-hit"?). The wide roads are nicely designed, with plenty of straight-aways tailor-made for turbo-boosting. The first-person viewpoint looks terrific - unless you're prone to motion sickness that is. The fresh new batch of tracks includes an interstate, a rainy airport, and several California cities. The scenery is attractive enough, but you won't have much trouble keeping your eyes on the road. Point of Impact addresses a few of the major flaws of the first game. For one thing, you no longer have to worry about your time expiring between checkpoints, which was a huge problem with the original game. Cars driving towards you blink their lights, making it easier to see oncoming traffic. When you collide with the green arrows that block certain turns, you're gently guided back on track instead of crashing. Point of Impact is incredibly forgiving, so you can crash several times and still win the race! And that's the main problem with Burnout 2 - the lack of difficulty. I won a long string of races before I encountered one that was even remotely challenging. It's as if the developers were overcompensating for the frustrating difficulty of the first game. The mind-blowing "turbo boost" effect of the first game has been toned down considerably, but crashes are even more spectacular with incredible impacts that send cars flipping end over end. If you're like me and thrive on destruction, you'll really appreciate the addictive new "crash" mode. The idea is to cause as much damage as possible by plowing into crowded intersections, causing devastating domino-like chain reactions. This mode in of itself is worth the price of the game. Another new mode is "pursuit", where you try to cause another car to crash. We've seen this before in other games (Need For Speed comes to mind), but never done this well. Burnout 2 is one of the best racers of the Gamecube, and a must-have if you prefer arcade action.
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Holy cow - this may be the worst shooter I've ever played! Like most modern shooters, it attempts to meld 3D visuals with 2D gameplay. I'm the biggest fan of the genre you could ever meet, but Chaos Field is a disgrace. It's nothing but one pointless "boss" battle after another! By 2006, everybody knows that boss battles are totally played out, and everybody just hates them in general. But apparently O-3 Entertainment didn't get the memo! In Chaos Field, you encounter one huge ship after another, and each takes forever to wear down while it disseminates hundreds of slow-moving projectiles. Besides normal shots and lock-on missiles, there's the concept of "changing fields", but this is poorly explained in the manual and confusing in general. You also have a "sword", which acts like a windshield wiper, cleaning out projectiles in front of you ship. Since you can't fire while using the sword, you'll need to alternate it with your attacks, which is tedious and dumb. The techno soundtrack is decent, but Chaos Field's graphics are completely forgettable and lacking in detail and imagination. The gaming media loves to refer to games like Chaos Field "old school", but they forgot that old school games were actually fun. This isn't. As a shooter expert, let me assure you that this game totally sucks.
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I suspect Nintendo was pretty desperate for a new game that would utilize their bongo drum controllers, and Jungle Beat fits the bill nicely. Visually the game resembles Donkey Kong Country, with attractive, 3D-rendered characters and simple 2D gameplay. It's the controls however that really set this game apart. Tapping the left or right bongo makes your ape run in that direction. Hitting both at the same time initiates a jump, and clapping causes Kong to emit a shock wave. This dual-purpose wave sucks in floating bananas and stuns nearby enemies. There are times in the game when Kong will latch onto a larger creature, and tapping both drums alternately lets you beat the hell out of it, which is quite satisfying. The controls lack that crisp, responsive feel, but that's compensated for by Jungle Beat's easy difficulty and forgiving gameplay. The game offers a nice variety of brief stages, incorporating standard platform jumping, flying, swimming, racing, and obligatory boss encounters. The bosses are imaginative enough, but they tend to repeat. As you would expect from a Nintendo game, the presentation is beyond reproach. Jungle Beat's graphics are sugary sweet and its festive music will get your toes tapping. Although most stages are your standard Donkey Kong fare, there is one that truly stands out, in which you swim through what appear to be chunks of floating Jell-o! It's fairly amazing and certainly original. Jungle Beat is strictly a single player game, and there's only one playing mode. That's fine, because with the constant pounding and clapping, you'll want to keep your play sessions brief anyway. Beware - this game will give your arms a workout! For the record, I tried using a normal controller but that just sucked. It's easy to write off Jungle Beat as a novelty item, but this game is too fun to resist.
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Here's an innovative little game that will appeal to anyone who enjoys dance music. In the tradition of Dance Dance Revolution or Samba De Amigo, the idea is to hit bongo drums (left, right, or both) and rhythmically clap your hands in time to symbols moving across the screen. Donkey Konga comes packaged with a sturdy little set of drums, making it a terrific value. I've played Konga with several friends, and it never fails to elicit big smiles and frequent laughter. Once you get into the rhythm, the game feels natural and almost hypnotic. Then again, it only takes a brief lapse in concentration to totally throw you off. The controller is very responsive (sometimes too much so), and a nice rubber undercoating keeps it from slipping off the table. A microphone between the drums is used to pick up the "clap" sounds. Of course, what makes or breaks any music game is its song selection, and Konga includes 33 tunes that cover just about every genre including pop, Latin, country, classical, and rap. Some of my personal favorites include "All The Small Things", "Whip It", "The Impression I Get", "Rock Lobster", and the "Loco-Motion". There are even some jazzy renditions of Nintendo themes like Mario Bros and the Legend of Zelda. 33 might seem like a lot of songs, but after going through them all you'll be wishing for more. In addition to the single player mode, there's a "jam session" mode that allows up to four players to perform simultaneously - each with their own separate rhythm track. Donkey Kongo is great fun, but it's sometimes hard to tell who won after each contest. Even if you only have one drum set however, you can still play cooperatively with a friend by letting him take care of the clapping responsibilities as you beat on the drum. Donkey Konga throws in a few mini-games (notably a wack-a-mole clone), but these are only mildly entertaining. One magazine claimed Konga was a rip-off off Drum Mania, but I've never heard of that game before. In my opinion Donkey Konga is a brilliantly executed concept, and a rare title that the whole family can enjoy.
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I went ape over the original Donkey Konga, but this sequel feels like a half-hearted rehash. Donkey Konga 2's gameplay is practically identical to the first, save for a few new wrinkles and 25 new songs. Like any type of musical game, the soundtrack is key, but this new lineup leaves a lot to be desired. There are a handful of decent tunes (U Don't Have To Call, Hit 'Em Up Style, The Anthem), but really no truly standout tracks. Worse yet, a few of these songs seem woefully out of place. What the [expletive] is "Losing My Religion" doing in there? And even if you do like the song selection (unlikely), you'll sense that something is very wrong once you actually start listening to these tunes, because it's woefully clear that these were not performed by the original artists! You couldn't even tell with the first game, but some of these are way off. It really put a damper on my desire to play through the single player mode. Earning "coins" offers little incentive, as they just unlock pointless "bonuses" like irritating sound effects and alternate song mixes (pass!). The annoying bongo sound effects are one bonus feature I'd prefer to re-lock! Not only do they sound awful, but they drown out the music! The two-player mode routinely awards victory to the worst player, and the quirky "rock-paper-sissors" ending sequences are worthless. Then there's the highly touted "Freestyle" mode, which lets you bang away as random images are plastered across the screen. Can you say "Worst Mode Ever"? After about 10 seconds of that garbage, my friend Jonathan gasped "What the [expletive] was that?!" Sorry to say, only the most devoted Donkey Konga fans will find this lame follow-up worthy of their attention.
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Mixing elements of Resident Evil and Tomb Raider, this dark adventure offers some a number of original features including multiple playable characters, spell-casting, finishing moves, and an inventive "sanity meter" that's bound to freak you out. Eternal Darkness unofficially marks the Gamecube's transition to the "mature" demographic. That's right, this is a mature-rated (17+) title from the company who brought you Yoshi. Initially, the game feels like Resident Evil as you guide a woman around her grandfather's mansion to investigate his gruesome death. Her subtle facial expressions are amazing, but her hair looks chunky. While collecting items and solving puzzles, the calm is occasionally shattered by a startling event that will scare the living hell out of you. As it soon becomes apparent, this mansion serves as the "hub" of the game. Certain books and transcripts send you back in time where you play out ancient stories as a Roman soldier, a servant woman, a swashbuckling swordsman, and a colonial American doctor. These stages feel a lot like Tomb Raider, offering a nice blend of traps, puzzles, and hand-to-hand combat. The animated monsters look incredible, and I love how they writhe on the floor after being mortally injured. Characters don't show external injuries, but they do slow down and limp as their life depletes. The audio effects in Eternal Darkness are outstanding. From water trickling in a fountain, to mysterious whispers, to the shambling sound of rotting flesh, a number of effects really caught my ear. The game's unique control scheme lets you target specific body parts, so you can hack off the limbs of approaching creeps. I love it how the skeletons feel for their heads after being decapitated. Finishing moves are also available - very unusual for an adventure game. Unlike many survival horror games, the bosses in Eternal Darkness are few and far between, thank goodness. The spell casting aspect might have been a good idea had it not been so ridiculously complicated. Not only do you need to collect the necessary spells, artifacts, runes, and tablets to create a spell, but then you need to combine everything correctly! The most interesting feature of the game is its bizarre sanity meter which triggers events that blur the line between fantasy and reality. Your character will grow larger, the camera will sway, the title screen will appear, or a message will tell you you're controller isn't connected! While these don't really affect the gameplay, they usually catch you off guard and sometimes freak you out. Scary, quirky, and fun, Eternal Darkness is a good choice for those looking for an original horror title for the GameCube.
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