Erockthestrange
One Crash Bandicoot game would never have sufficed. Mario (and Sonic to a lesser extent) built their regal video game empires by stacking entry upon entry on the base of their first title to accentuate the ubiquity of their brands to the heights of superstardom. If Sony were going to stack their de facto platformer mascot Crash Bandicoot to reach the towers where its competitors sit pretty and content among the heavens, they were going to have to produce more Crash Bandicoot content on their console. Also, Crash’s debut didn’t resonate a substantial enough ring to echo his presence in the ears of his rivals. It was a fine first leap into the realm of the third dimension, even as a rudimentary example of the platformer genre’s rough transition. However, the brutal rigidity and error margins coupled with the discernable level of derivativeness certainly did not match the timeless accessibility that solidified Mario as the king of gaming. Still, a second entry is really all a series needs to elevate itself and make that desired impact. After all, the second bomb dropped on Nagasaki was the one that ended the war. Okay, maybe that part of my analogy is a little insensitive, especially since it pertains to an American developer attempting to conquer at least two Japanese console magnates. Still, one cannot deny that Japan realized America meant business after unleashing that following blast of nuclear destruction, forfeiting the ongoing battle as a result of their moxie. If Crash Bandicoot as a series was aligning with a trilogy arc, then Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back should ideally be the entry that fixes the first game and stamps Crash as a serious contender for platforming royalty.
I’ve heard of direct sequels, but this is ridiculous. The events of Crash 2 start quite literally seconds after Crash’s triumphant victory over Cortex at the end of the first game. Simultaneously as Tawna is preemptively giving Crash a smooching sampler of what she has in store for him later that night after rescuing her, if you know what I mean, we see another perspective during this scene when Cortex is tumbling down from his flying, pink zeppelin in defeat. After screaming his uvula off, Cortex miraculously survives the fall after he lands on a soft patch of land underneath the ground in a cavern. To add to this fortunate circumstance, Cortex also experiences a stroke of dumb luck when he sees a glowing pink crystal hovering around his landing zone. Context to Cortex’s joy is not given to the player, but everyone assumes that spotting this oblique, luminescent rock has inspired him to cook up another dastardly plan. During an errand mission to retrieve his sister Coco’s laptop battery charger, Crash is suddenly transported to a circular room with minor lighting issues. At the room’s center is a hologram of Cortex informing Crash that Dr. Nitrus Brio is the true figure of ultimate scum and villainy in this series and that he plans to create something deadly with the power of the crystals if Crash does not proactively snatch the twenty-five remaining crystals left on Earth. In reality, it’s Cortex that is building a colossal space weapon and needs Crash’s assistance to obtain all of them and fully power his magnificent (in the pejorative sense) new machine. Because Crash’s brain is just as misplaced as his shirt, he complies with Cortex’s demands without question.
Admittedly, the only players who wouldn’t understand the context behind Cortex’s enthralled reaction to seeing a pink crystal are those who experienced this game initially back on its 1997 release date. With decades of hindsight behind us, any current fan of Crash Bandicoot will recognize the franchise’s main collectible in a heartbeat. They might be a valuable source of immense power for the series’ antagonists but in the grand scheme of things, their status as a collectible serves to organize the Crash Bandicoot level structure. You know how Mario exits a level in Super Mario 64 upon obtaining a star, namely the one attached to the vague objective selected in the level’s menu? Well, the crystals similarly signify that a level is nearing its end and is about to be successfully completed. One major difference in Crash 2 is that the linear level design validates Crash’s ejection from said level, for there is little ground left unexplored unlike in the sprawling playgrounds found in Super Mario 64. A warp room exhibits five levels per floor, and Crash accesses the elevator at the center to enter the next series of five levels after the interruption of a boss. The straightaway journey with little to no spatial fracturing that comprised all of the levels in the first game has been scrapped for something that compliments the direct nature of Crash Bandicoot’s levels. Everything is neatly symmetrical and cromulent, unlike the first game which disrupted the progress with a milestone whenever it pleased. Also, earning a crystal per level will sustain a sense of satisfaction by simply surviving to the finish line as opposed to browbeating the player for glossing over the extra mile of breaking every box. Oh, and to everyone’s delight, the player can save their progress any time in each warp room. Hallelujah!
Uninitiated players from 1997 will also be the only ones to scratch their heads at the sight of the female bandicoot nagging Crash at the end of the opening cutscene. Future fans of the Crash series will immediately determine from her overalls and blonde ponytail that this is Coco Bandicoot, Crash’s (younger?) sister who makes her series debut here. You may be wondering if Tawna’s absence in this recreational scene with all the good guys is because she’s been abducted once again, but Crash’s trophy girlfriend has actually been cut indefinitely from the series roster. Pamela Anderson was arguably the most significant sex symbol of the decade in which the PS1 Crash games were released. Since everyone, myself included, has dubbed Tawna as an anthropomorphic doppelganger of the busty, Baywatch babe, a few overseas Sony marketers were distraught that the most popular source of masturbatory fantasies was rendered with fur in a video game whose primary demographic is children. Of course, none of the pure, prepubescent brains playing this game would flare up seeing Tawna at all, so this is really a case of adults projecting their shameful arousal while glancing at their child’s digital pastime. In an effort to retcon this bosomy blunder, Naughty Dog has replaced her conceptual role with an innocent, yet precocious, younger female character with a strictly familial, platonic relationship with Crash who keeps her dumb brother from leading himself astray as the oft-token female character of the series. And I thought the odd Star Wars comparisons ended with Cortex holographically signaling to Crash that he is his only hope. The other non-villain character introduced in Crash 2 that pops up every so often in future releases is the adorable baby ice bear Polar, who Crash rides in a select few ice levels similar to the one warthog level in the first game. He also pays off splendidly in the frosty warp room with ten extra lives when Crash gives him a concussion by repeatedly jumping on his noggin. Leave him alone, Crash! He’s just a boy!
Besides the slew of introductions, an exemplary sequel should strive to rework the preexisting elements of the previous title closer to a standard of accessibility. One may not notice the differences in Crash 2’s gameplay at first glance, but the subtleties will be a total relief once they dawn on them. Navigating Crash’s orange ass through the wild terrain of the Wumpa Islands was rather taxing at times. Surviving anything precision platforming oriented in the first game was determined on what felt like a wing and a prayer thanks to both the stilted controls and the disparities coexisting between running on a 2D horizontal axis in a 3D development plane. Soon enough, the player will detect that Crash has undergone whatever the developer equivalent of physical therapy is because his general movement is as nimble as a newborn rabbit. In fact, Crash feels so spry and lively that he can now perform unprecedented feats of agility. Crash can crawl slowly under tight crevices, body slam those sturdier boxes, and skid his feet by sliding like Mega Man. The last maneuver mentioned will be combined frequently with his jump move to soar over gaps like he’s training for the decathlon. Rarely are any of these spirited acrobatics discouraged by the potential risk of Crash accidentally plummeting to his death unless it's truly obvious that a mistake has been made. Quasi-2D sections are implemented into the 3D space minimally as opposed to serving as the basis for a large sum of levels, and the developers have blocked off the awkward pits where slipping could be fatal.
One would think with Cortex teleporting Crash around the world to recover the valuable fuel to his deathly space station that the player will be treated to a geographical odyssey. Alas, all twenty-five of the main levels in Crash 2 seem to be shackled to a selection of specific level themes that persist throughout the game. The five warp rooms will often transport Crash to the untamed jungles, ancient Aztec temples, and chase levels where Crash runs towards the camera from a rolling earth formation as seen in the first game, and these returning level tropes are joined by a bevy of new ones that are sure to overstay their welcome. Crash will go spelunking through sewer systems with branching paths and hazardous electrical wires mixing with the water runoff to shocking effect. Besides the icy levels where Polar gallops like a horse, other levels featuring the Antarctic tundra foreground are free to traverse with Crash by his lonesome. Some levels feature some neat gimmicks such as Crash burrowing underground to evade swarms of bees that make him swell like a balloon animal upon being stung, and the guidance of a particularly radiant species of fireflies illuminating the pathway in total darkness. Still, one can’t help but notice that the foregrounds of these levels essentially boil down to reusing the jungle level motifs. The layout of a given warp room doesn’t signify any semblance of thematic cohesion either. The arctic warp room deviates from offering levels that fit its frosty promises, and it isn’t the only quintet of levels that catapult Crash into areas where he freezes his balls off. It isn’t until the game’s end that there is a noticeable space and factory theme exclusive to the rooftop warp room. Still, two of them involve flying a jetpack through a ventilated space tunnel, and these levels make me want to lynch the man who popularized inverted control schemes.
Even though the level variety on display in Crash 2 isn’t exactly a smorgasbord of creativity, at least the player won’t be tied down to the majority of them for too long. I’ve mentioned previously that saving one’s game in Crash 2 is now free and convenient, akin to using the bathroom in your own home where Crash 1 is like scrambling to find one in public before your bladder explodes. Other instances of quality-of-life improvements are littered aplenty. Crash no longer has to earn access to the bonus rooms by collecting three character tokens. The opportunity to amass wumpa fruits and extra lives in bulk is either beneath saloon doors or a downward plunge, whose locations are symbolized by a question mark. The Nitro Crates that radiate a noxiously green glow accompany the TNT crates as level hazards, and these volatile little boxes should be avoided at all costs. Still, none of them seem to be placed in narrow passages, nor are they strewn about plentifully turning a level into a minefield. Each level is paced accordingly as well. None of the levels are lengthy tests of endurance like “Sunset Vista” that made players beg for sweet release. I suppose the conclusion to arrive at is that Crash 2 is so accommodating that it verges on total ease, especially for returning players. Considering that I am someone of that distinction, I find Crash 2’s lenient difficulty curve to be absolutely pleasant. However, the game does eventually offer a sizable challenge with the two factory levels in the last warp room.
Crash Bandicoot’s bosses can also be brushed off in less than a minute, but returning players already knew that. The colorfully cartoony foes that await Crash to collect the string of crystals to beat him to a pulp are the sole consistency in difficulty this game shares with its predecessor. The contrasting Komodo Brothers pathetically fail to subdue Crash with their scimitar chucking, and the match between the ironically-named Tiny the Tiger is a cakewalk (or saucer walk in this case) because it's a duel of wits instead of physical might. Ripper Roo returns still cackling like a goddamn hyena, only with the newly wild, unkempt long hair and mustache combo like he plays bass in Hawkwind. Again, while I criticize these bosses for not meeting the standard of difficulty with the levels that precede them, I still have to commend them for their diversity and creativity. I adore Cortex’s new right-hand henchman N. Gin by default because I never tire of hearing characters whose voices are impersonations of Hungarian classic Hollywood actor Peter Lorre. His multi-phased mech battle is by far the most engaging and intimidating fight the game offers, but the scope of it is unfortunately diminished by the fact that all it takes for the mech to malfunction is to clog its engines with wumpa fruit. Still, that solution isn’t as stupid as the final fight of Crash 2, which involves nothing but chasing down Cortex through an asteroid belt using the jet pack. Either the player will swat at Cortex three times in a matter of seconds, or the chance to catch the evil little bugger is completely out of reach. This anticlimactic section would only work if it was the second phase of a hypothetical Cortex fight beforehand.
Fortunately, the player has the option to turn Crash 2 into a painful test of one’s patience if they please. Because Cortex is dragging his name through the dirt, N. Brio intercepts the holographic message receptor to warn Crash that Cortex has been manipulating him to be his useful idiot lackey in finishing the construction of what is essentially the Death Star. Coco attempts to convey this vital information to our empty-headed hero sooner to prove her usefulness as a clever aide supporting her brother’s cognitive blind spots, but the reception has been consistently staticky at best. To atone for all the damage he’s inadvertently done, N. Brio suggests that Crash instead gather the gems instead. However, the right path without any guilt and deceit is significantly harder than playing the fool for Cortex. Sure, the player will no longer have to perform pitch-perfect platforming while destroying every crate per level, but this task still isn’t a matter of doing some detective work on the field. A few of the gems in the later portion of the game are found through completing “death routes,” where floating platforms marked with skulls will transport Crash to a 2D platforming section designed similarly to a bonus level. Anyone curious enough to take these alternate routes with the prize of a gem at their finish line will be treated with what are certainly the steepest platforming sections in the entire game. That is if the player stops their completionist commission there. For those who really wish to use N. Brio’s super cannon to blast Cortex’s gaudy space station out of orbit, they’ll have to execute incredibly circuitous backtracking in the death routes with little margin of error to obtain all collectibles possible. Once again, this process becomes the most taxing with the two factory levels in the final warp room. Crash and his friends better just adapt to always seeing Cortex’s gaudy creation lying dormant in the sky like an eclipsing satellite.
I guess this is as good a time as any to reveal to you all my Crash Bandicoot bias. There is more than enough empirical evidence to claim that Crash 2 is leagues above its predecessor in every conceivable way possible. Almost every aspect of the first game is refined to a silky smoothness, including Crash’s mobile dexterity, progression structure, and overall accessibility achieved through its quality-of-life improvements. Both the unexpected ease of Crash 2’s general difficulty and the continued effortless fights with the series’ bosses are, however, not my personal detractors of the series. There is just something about Crash’s simplicity compared to other platformers that keep it away from being lauded in the same respects as the monarchs of the genre Crash sought as competition. Call it unpretentiousness in its best-case scenario, but I’ve always been relatively disengaged with its unsophisticated nature. Is it fair to demerit Crash 2 for what it isn’t when it has improved the series remarkably? Crash 2: Cortex Strikes Back is objectively an exemplary 3D platformer, but something still isn't clicking for me.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
I’ve heard of direct sequels, but this is ridiculous. The events of Crash 2 start quite literally seconds after Crash’s triumphant victory over Cortex at the end of the first game. Simultaneously as Tawna is preemptively giving Crash a smooching sampler of what she has in store for him later that night after rescuing her, if you know what I mean, we see another perspective during this scene when Cortex is tumbling down from his flying, pink zeppelin in defeat. After screaming his uvula off, Cortex miraculously survives the fall after he lands on a soft patch of land underneath the ground in a cavern. To add to this fortunate circumstance, Cortex also experiences a stroke of dumb luck when he sees a glowing pink crystal hovering around his landing zone. Context to Cortex’s joy is not given to the player, but everyone assumes that spotting this oblique, luminescent rock has inspired him to cook up another dastardly plan. During an errand mission to retrieve his sister Coco’s laptop battery charger, Crash is suddenly transported to a circular room with minor lighting issues. At the room’s center is a hologram of Cortex informing Crash that Dr. Nitrus Brio is the true figure of ultimate scum and villainy in this series and that he plans to create something deadly with the power of the crystals if Crash does not proactively snatch the twenty-five remaining crystals left on Earth. In reality, it’s Cortex that is building a colossal space weapon and needs Crash’s assistance to obtain all of them and fully power his magnificent (in the pejorative sense) new machine. Because Crash’s brain is just as misplaced as his shirt, he complies with Cortex’s demands without question.
Admittedly, the only players who wouldn’t understand the context behind Cortex’s enthralled reaction to seeing a pink crystal are those who experienced this game initially back on its 1997 release date. With decades of hindsight behind us, any current fan of Crash Bandicoot will recognize the franchise’s main collectible in a heartbeat. They might be a valuable source of immense power for the series’ antagonists but in the grand scheme of things, their status as a collectible serves to organize the Crash Bandicoot level structure. You know how Mario exits a level in Super Mario 64 upon obtaining a star, namely the one attached to the vague objective selected in the level’s menu? Well, the crystals similarly signify that a level is nearing its end and is about to be successfully completed. One major difference in Crash 2 is that the linear level design validates Crash’s ejection from said level, for there is little ground left unexplored unlike in the sprawling playgrounds found in Super Mario 64. A warp room exhibits five levels per floor, and Crash accesses the elevator at the center to enter the next series of five levels after the interruption of a boss. The straightaway journey with little to no spatial fracturing that comprised all of the levels in the first game has been scrapped for something that compliments the direct nature of Crash Bandicoot’s levels. Everything is neatly symmetrical and cromulent, unlike the first game which disrupted the progress with a milestone whenever it pleased. Also, earning a crystal per level will sustain a sense of satisfaction by simply surviving to the finish line as opposed to browbeating the player for glossing over the extra mile of breaking every box. Oh, and to everyone’s delight, the player can save their progress any time in each warp room. Hallelujah!
Uninitiated players from 1997 will also be the only ones to scratch their heads at the sight of the female bandicoot nagging Crash at the end of the opening cutscene. Future fans of the Crash series will immediately determine from her overalls and blonde ponytail that this is Coco Bandicoot, Crash’s (younger?) sister who makes her series debut here. You may be wondering if Tawna’s absence in this recreational scene with all the good guys is because she’s been abducted once again, but Crash’s trophy girlfriend has actually been cut indefinitely from the series roster. Pamela Anderson was arguably the most significant sex symbol of the decade in which the PS1 Crash games were released. Since everyone, myself included, has dubbed Tawna as an anthropomorphic doppelganger of the busty, Baywatch babe, a few overseas Sony marketers were distraught that the most popular source of masturbatory fantasies was rendered with fur in a video game whose primary demographic is children. Of course, none of the pure, prepubescent brains playing this game would flare up seeing Tawna at all, so this is really a case of adults projecting their shameful arousal while glancing at their child’s digital pastime. In an effort to retcon this bosomy blunder, Naughty Dog has replaced her conceptual role with an innocent, yet precocious, younger female character with a strictly familial, platonic relationship with Crash who keeps her dumb brother from leading himself astray as the oft-token female character of the series. And I thought the odd Star Wars comparisons ended with Cortex holographically signaling to Crash that he is his only hope. The other non-villain character introduced in Crash 2 that pops up every so often in future releases is the adorable baby ice bear Polar, who Crash rides in a select few ice levels similar to the one warthog level in the first game. He also pays off splendidly in the frosty warp room with ten extra lives when Crash gives him a concussion by repeatedly jumping on his noggin. Leave him alone, Crash! He’s just a boy!
Besides the slew of introductions, an exemplary sequel should strive to rework the preexisting elements of the previous title closer to a standard of accessibility. One may not notice the differences in Crash 2’s gameplay at first glance, but the subtleties will be a total relief once they dawn on them. Navigating Crash’s orange ass through the wild terrain of the Wumpa Islands was rather taxing at times. Surviving anything precision platforming oriented in the first game was determined on what felt like a wing and a prayer thanks to both the stilted controls and the disparities coexisting between running on a 2D horizontal axis in a 3D development plane. Soon enough, the player will detect that Crash has undergone whatever the developer equivalent of physical therapy is because his general movement is as nimble as a newborn rabbit. In fact, Crash feels so spry and lively that he can now perform unprecedented feats of agility. Crash can crawl slowly under tight crevices, body slam those sturdier boxes, and skid his feet by sliding like Mega Man. The last maneuver mentioned will be combined frequently with his jump move to soar over gaps like he’s training for the decathlon. Rarely are any of these spirited acrobatics discouraged by the potential risk of Crash accidentally plummeting to his death unless it's truly obvious that a mistake has been made. Quasi-2D sections are implemented into the 3D space minimally as opposed to serving as the basis for a large sum of levels, and the developers have blocked off the awkward pits where slipping could be fatal.
One would think with Cortex teleporting Crash around the world to recover the valuable fuel to his deathly space station that the player will be treated to a geographical odyssey. Alas, all twenty-five of the main levels in Crash 2 seem to be shackled to a selection of specific level themes that persist throughout the game. The five warp rooms will often transport Crash to the untamed jungles, ancient Aztec temples, and chase levels where Crash runs towards the camera from a rolling earth formation as seen in the first game, and these returning level tropes are joined by a bevy of new ones that are sure to overstay their welcome. Crash will go spelunking through sewer systems with branching paths and hazardous electrical wires mixing with the water runoff to shocking effect. Besides the icy levels where Polar gallops like a horse, other levels featuring the Antarctic tundra foreground are free to traverse with Crash by his lonesome. Some levels feature some neat gimmicks such as Crash burrowing underground to evade swarms of bees that make him swell like a balloon animal upon being stung, and the guidance of a particularly radiant species of fireflies illuminating the pathway in total darkness. Still, one can’t help but notice that the foregrounds of these levels essentially boil down to reusing the jungle level motifs. The layout of a given warp room doesn’t signify any semblance of thematic cohesion either. The arctic warp room deviates from offering levels that fit its frosty promises, and it isn’t the only quintet of levels that catapult Crash into areas where he freezes his balls off. It isn’t until the game’s end that there is a noticeable space and factory theme exclusive to the rooftop warp room. Still, two of them involve flying a jetpack through a ventilated space tunnel, and these levels make me want to lynch the man who popularized inverted control schemes.
Even though the level variety on display in Crash 2 isn’t exactly a smorgasbord of creativity, at least the player won’t be tied down to the majority of them for too long. I’ve mentioned previously that saving one’s game in Crash 2 is now free and convenient, akin to using the bathroom in your own home where Crash 1 is like scrambling to find one in public before your bladder explodes. Other instances of quality-of-life improvements are littered aplenty. Crash no longer has to earn access to the bonus rooms by collecting three character tokens. The opportunity to amass wumpa fruits and extra lives in bulk is either beneath saloon doors or a downward plunge, whose locations are symbolized by a question mark. The Nitro Crates that radiate a noxiously green glow accompany the TNT crates as level hazards, and these volatile little boxes should be avoided at all costs. Still, none of them seem to be placed in narrow passages, nor are they strewn about plentifully turning a level into a minefield. Each level is paced accordingly as well. None of the levels are lengthy tests of endurance like “Sunset Vista” that made players beg for sweet release. I suppose the conclusion to arrive at is that Crash 2 is so accommodating that it verges on total ease, especially for returning players. Considering that I am someone of that distinction, I find Crash 2’s lenient difficulty curve to be absolutely pleasant. However, the game does eventually offer a sizable challenge with the two factory levels in the last warp room.
Crash Bandicoot’s bosses can also be brushed off in less than a minute, but returning players already knew that. The colorfully cartoony foes that await Crash to collect the string of crystals to beat him to a pulp are the sole consistency in difficulty this game shares with its predecessor. The contrasting Komodo Brothers pathetically fail to subdue Crash with their scimitar chucking, and the match between the ironically-named Tiny the Tiger is a cakewalk (or saucer walk in this case) because it's a duel of wits instead of physical might. Ripper Roo returns still cackling like a goddamn hyena, only with the newly wild, unkempt long hair and mustache combo like he plays bass in Hawkwind. Again, while I criticize these bosses for not meeting the standard of difficulty with the levels that precede them, I still have to commend them for their diversity and creativity. I adore Cortex’s new right-hand henchman N. Gin by default because I never tire of hearing characters whose voices are impersonations of Hungarian classic Hollywood actor Peter Lorre. His multi-phased mech battle is by far the most engaging and intimidating fight the game offers, but the scope of it is unfortunately diminished by the fact that all it takes for the mech to malfunction is to clog its engines with wumpa fruit. Still, that solution isn’t as stupid as the final fight of Crash 2, which involves nothing but chasing down Cortex through an asteroid belt using the jet pack. Either the player will swat at Cortex three times in a matter of seconds, or the chance to catch the evil little bugger is completely out of reach. This anticlimactic section would only work if it was the second phase of a hypothetical Cortex fight beforehand.
Fortunately, the player has the option to turn Crash 2 into a painful test of one’s patience if they please. Because Cortex is dragging his name through the dirt, N. Brio intercepts the holographic message receptor to warn Crash that Cortex has been manipulating him to be his useful idiot lackey in finishing the construction of what is essentially the Death Star. Coco attempts to convey this vital information to our empty-headed hero sooner to prove her usefulness as a clever aide supporting her brother’s cognitive blind spots, but the reception has been consistently staticky at best. To atone for all the damage he’s inadvertently done, N. Brio suggests that Crash instead gather the gems instead. However, the right path without any guilt and deceit is significantly harder than playing the fool for Cortex. Sure, the player will no longer have to perform pitch-perfect platforming while destroying every crate per level, but this task still isn’t a matter of doing some detective work on the field. A few of the gems in the later portion of the game are found through completing “death routes,” where floating platforms marked with skulls will transport Crash to a 2D platforming section designed similarly to a bonus level. Anyone curious enough to take these alternate routes with the prize of a gem at their finish line will be treated with what are certainly the steepest platforming sections in the entire game. That is if the player stops their completionist commission there. For those who really wish to use N. Brio’s super cannon to blast Cortex’s gaudy space station out of orbit, they’ll have to execute incredibly circuitous backtracking in the death routes with little margin of error to obtain all collectibles possible. Once again, this process becomes the most taxing with the two factory levels in the final warp room. Crash and his friends better just adapt to always seeing Cortex’s gaudy creation lying dormant in the sky like an eclipsing satellite.
I guess this is as good a time as any to reveal to you all my Crash Bandicoot bias. There is more than enough empirical evidence to claim that Crash 2 is leagues above its predecessor in every conceivable way possible. Almost every aspect of the first game is refined to a silky smoothness, including Crash’s mobile dexterity, progression structure, and overall accessibility achieved through its quality-of-life improvements. Both the unexpected ease of Crash 2’s general difficulty and the continued effortless fights with the series’ bosses are, however, not my personal detractors of the series. There is just something about Crash’s simplicity compared to other platformers that keep it away from being lauded in the same respects as the monarchs of the genre Crash sought as competition. Call it unpretentiousness in its best-case scenario, but I’ve always been relatively disengaged with its unsophisticated nature. Is it fair to demerit Crash 2 for what it isn’t when it has improved the series remarkably? Crash 2: Cortex Strikes Back is objectively an exemplary 3D platformer, but something still isn't clicking for me.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
1995
Back to the ol’ grind, eh Capcom? Forgive me if my humorous jab fails to veil my sense of apathy, but I’ve thrown in the towel on the Mega Man X series at this point. When the first Mega Man X game successfully defibrillated the flatlining mainline series that clogged its arteries with too many entries well into the NES’s elderly years, Mega Man’s futuristic second wave of relevancy put the blue bomber on a pedestal that soared far over the heights of when the series was still blossoming a generation prior. Sure, it’s sensible to hold higher expectations for the X series compared to the mainline Mega Man games because they’re inherently privileged by technological advancements. However, it’s difficult to maintain momentum when the first 2.0 upgraded entry practically peaks the franchise’s formula. Every subsequent title is fated to falter as a result, and Mega Man X2 already couldn’t hold a candle to the first game’s glory. Upon playing X 2’s numerical follow-up, Mega Man X3, not only does the game hardly align on the quality of the first game-it proves the damning precedent that I alluded to regarding Mega Man X2.
Mega Man X3’s story arc pertains to X (and Zero) stopping the evil deeds of a new Sigma disciple. However, he was previously a benevolent man of scientific discovery like Dr. Cain and Dr. Light before him. Dr. Doppler, the supposed radical lunatic in question, postulates that the defiant, homicidal nature of the Mavericks isn’t due to a lack of direction, human mistreatment, or listening to Sigma’s resistance dogma in their formative years. Using his gifted scientific mind, Dr. Doppler creates some sort of robotic antidote to pacify the Mavericks as if it were merely a viral corruption in their circuitry. Dr. Doppler’s feats of scientific progress usher in the futuristic utopia that Dr. Cain had envisioned, and they’ve even erected a city called “Doppler Town” to commemorate his accomplishments. However, this far-fetched halcyon scenario is quickly dispatched when eight reploids, the requisite and totally coincidental number of hostile bosses for a Mega Man game, revert to their Maverick status once again and Dr. Doppler is instead fingered as the culprit for what is figured to be an intentional malfunction on his part. Sigma’s Maverick manifesto may mirror many science fiction stories revolving around the sentient autonomy of humanoid robots with artificial intelligence, but at least the themes are still rousing enough to be reused to great effect. Chalking the primary conflict of the series up to an infectious bug in the matrix that seems accidental just strips the narrative of its substance.
So yes, X is hitting the pavement once again to nip the new Maverick menace in the bud before it spreads. What selection of exotic, automaton animals have the developers chosen to represent as the pinnacle challenges of each level? Upon glancing at the menu, we have little clue because there are no descriptions of any of these Mavericks. All we see is four Mavericks aligned across the top and bottom of the screen per usual with a headshot and a still image of their domain. Not even the names of these burly robotic creatures are given. I can only surmise that this is a developer error and an inexcusable one at that. C’mon guys, even the vestigial first mainline Mega Man game at least provided the names of the Robot Masters in the menu! At this point, the stages of the X games are beginning to reuse topographical tropes we’ve already seen in the previous titles. Tunnel Rhino resides in another mine-oriented level buried deep in the underground trenches of the Earth, and the mud spurting from its pores will ensnare X into its viscosity like quicksand. Blizzard Buffalo’s stage is another frosty one but with an artificial cyclone machine exacerbating the turbulent winter overhead as an interesting new gimmick. Surges of electricity shimmy alongside the walls of Volt Catfish’s stage as recurring obstacles, and the “water” stage one would anticipate from Toxic Seahorse is more akin to the gunky sewage of a treatment plant. One would probably expect the two Mavericks designed after bugs to buzz around a humid, untamed jungle area similar to Neon Tiger, but Blast Hornet and Gravity Beetle are located in what appears to be a military complex and airship respectively. At least the submarine stage where X fights Crush Crawfish is somewhat water-oriented, even though it's highly improbable that anyone will find the strictly freshwater crustaceans in the vast, saltwater habitat of the ocean. Nitpicks about the themes surrounding these Mavericks aside, what is actually worth griping about is that several of the stages include plenty of fatal sections such as bottomless pits and beds of spikes at the end of falling that the player cannot anticipate unless they are psychic. These blindspots haven’t marred any Mega Man game since the very first one in 1987, and they’re just as unfair and poorly placed here as they were way back then.
The collective arsenal X can accumulate from the charred remains of the Mavericks are really nothing of note. The “Tornado Fang” and “Frost Shield” penetrate the armor of foes by drilling into their internal wires for double damage. The “Ray Splasher” trickles a flurry of bullets for a few seconds, and Toxic Seahorse’s “Acid Bubble” will corrode the metal right off of enemies once X gingerly plops it out of his arm cannon. The “Gravity Well” and “Parasitic Bomb” effectiveness seems entirely situational, and the “Triad Thunder” is insufficient as a close-ranged weapon and undependable as a long-ranged projectile. The weapon I found to be the most effective blaster substitute was the powerful, dual-wield “Spinning Blade,” but it expends more energy than a clunky air conditioner. If my summary of the boss weapons sounds curt, it's because I’d rather discuss another alternating array of firepower that X3 incorporates. By now, I’m sure every returning player is familiar with the mechs that X can pilot for a short period on the field, caving in cracked corners of land and the faces of enemies with its kinetic punches. In X3, X cannot jack an idle mech or violently take one from an enemy by force. Instead, the mech is summoned from one of the circular podiums littered throughout the levels. X is given the choice of selecting four different mechs with their own unique attributes. The Chimera module is the standard one featured in X with the aforementioned pension for fisticuffs, the Kangaroo module is similar to the one from X2 equipped with a charged attack, the Hawk module borrows the flight function from X2’s mech with rocket arms to boot, and the Frog module is strictly for underwater traversal. Having four flavors of the mech at X’s disposal to boost his offensive and defensive attributes sounds incredibly exciting and convenient on paper. However, the restrictions on this privilege damper its fun factor severely. Firstly, X has to unlock every one of the different mechs by scrounging around the hidden corners of the levels like any other upgrade. Even if X locates three out of four of them, they won’t be available to use until X finds the Chimera module dangling from an elusive room off the beaten path of Blast Hornet’s level. Why does this mech have higher precedence over the others when they all have their own vital utility? In addition, the platforms where a mech is materialized seem to be located in spots where it’s inappropriate to use them. I began to stop bothering with these mechs altogether because using them is sadly burdensome when it should’ve been a highlight of the game.
Unfortunately, the developer’s questionable methods extend to other upgrades found in the game. Remember when finding the energy heart units in the first Mega Man X was just a matter of slightly verging off the intended trajectory? X2 presented a few out-of-reach upgrades locked behind an additional step of using a Maverick’s weapon from another stage, but X3 increased the circuity of obtaining upgrades to the point of overload. For example, one heart unit is located behind a boulder suspended from the ceiling in Tunnel Rhino’s stage, and grabbing it requires both another boss weapon and one of the armor upgrades attached to a specific part of X’s body. Hardly any of the upgrades in X3 are acquired through honest attention on the player’s part. While we’re on the subject of the armor upgrades, X3 tweaks the defensive component of X’s progressive growth into something else that the developers didn’t entirely think through. As usual, armor enhancements are obtained by finding the body-sized capsules in the same obscured corners as the other upgrades. There’s one for each major piece of X’s exterior anatomy, and they all range heavily in opposite spectrums of usefulness. The body upgrade that cuts X’s damage input in half is a given, but the only other new factor of the armor upgrades I appreciate are the vertical leaps granted by the leg armor. Obtaining the helmet upgrade will begin each level with X scanning the layout of the stage and displaying it on a crudely rendered blocked map of the level that indicates where the remaining upgrades are located. This would’ve been a helpful feature only if there was another blipping dot of a different color on the map signifying X’s location in relation to the upgrade. The blaster upgrade is supposed to enhance the magnitude of the charge shot, but the upgrade in X3 rather generates a lopsided beam that sluggishly shoots in whatever direction it damn well pleases. In addition to these, the base upgrades can be augmented even further with the color-swapped pink capsules that insert a chip into the specific piece of armor to increase its effectiveness. Strangely enough, the player can abstain from collecting any of the chips which will reward them with a golden-plated suit of armor with all upgrades attached. Why would the player knowingly pursue the other upgrades beforehand if they were aware that they would come as a package deal by the end? The developers should’ve offered one pink capsule including the golden armor for the player’s efforts to gather up all of the armor upgrades. Actually, scratch that: I advise everyone reading this to forgo the shiny upgrade conglomerate to preserve the practicality of the charge shot.
X3 continues X2’s new trend of secret bosses sporadically interspersed between the levels. I’m glad that not catching the subtle clues of their appearances no longer has permanent, penalizing effects. However, it’s the additional bosses themselves that feel shoehorned in to continue this trend. Dr. Doppler is feeling a tad paranoid to X zeroing in on his location, so he sics two of his specialized henchmen goons called Bit and Byte to dispose of the blue Maverick hunter. While intended to be intimidating, the duo dynamic of these two cronies reminds me less of robotic Vincent and Jules and more of Badger and Skinny Pete. They’re entirely worthless. Meanwhile, one section beneath Crush Crawfish’s stage teleports X to a pathway to a spacious arena where he fights an uncanny apparition of Vile exactly as he did at the first climactic stretch to Sigma in the first game. Despite how irrelevant these supplementary bosses seem initially, vanquishing them somehow has some consequential weight to the remainder of the game. Instead of facing off against the tusked Press Disposer and the abstract Volt Kurageil mech, X will swap their encounters on the way up to Dr. Doppler to fight an unholy fusion of Bit and Byte called the “Godkarmachine O Inary” and Vile for the umpteenth time. However, the player’s completionist pension will not affect the final two bosses of Dr. Doppler and Sigma. Yes, Sigma’s influence still resonates strongly with the corrupted reploids. Except in this context, he exists as the computer virus that has been infecting the Mavericks, and not in a metaphorical manner of spewing anti-organic life rhetoric like a revolutionary propagandist. After X forces Doppler to face the errors of his ways through a swift beating, he tackles a tangible, lifelike version of Sigma in two phases that prove to be far more tense and demanding than the unpolished wireframe head seen in X2. The second phase is especially taxing if the player has inadvertently buggered their charge shot with its upgrade. After an exhausting duel, Sigma reverts to his rudimentary digital self to pull one more trick on X: flooding the arena with ascending lava to literally burn off the last slivers of his health before Zero swoops in and slices him in half of his saber. Excuse me, Sigma, but you’re not allowed to pull a stunt like this unless you are the pinnacle boss of a Metroid game. No, I’m not mad because it killed me unexpectedly (okay, reasonably a little).
Mega Man X3 is a predictable continuation of what the first X game established to advance the Mega Man formula. It expands on what the second X game introduced, albeit all of its aspects that I wasn’t particularly fond of, and makes them reasonably more manageable such as the loosened importance of the additional bosses. Besides the reinstated assets it carries over, the distinctive changes it makes are so bewildering it is as if the developers failed to test the game before releasing it. I’m still scratching my head as to why X can’t freely use the mechs he unlocks, the menu doesn’t list the names of the Mavericks, and so many more to list that I’m frankly appalled. It feels reactionary to assign Mega Man X3 the status of the nadir of the franchise. Still, it’s certainly the most flawed and irritating Mega Man game I’ve played thus far.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
Mega Man X3’s story arc pertains to X (and Zero) stopping the evil deeds of a new Sigma disciple. However, he was previously a benevolent man of scientific discovery like Dr. Cain and Dr. Light before him. Dr. Doppler, the supposed radical lunatic in question, postulates that the defiant, homicidal nature of the Mavericks isn’t due to a lack of direction, human mistreatment, or listening to Sigma’s resistance dogma in their formative years. Using his gifted scientific mind, Dr. Doppler creates some sort of robotic antidote to pacify the Mavericks as if it were merely a viral corruption in their circuitry. Dr. Doppler’s feats of scientific progress usher in the futuristic utopia that Dr. Cain had envisioned, and they’ve even erected a city called “Doppler Town” to commemorate his accomplishments. However, this far-fetched halcyon scenario is quickly dispatched when eight reploids, the requisite and totally coincidental number of hostile bosses for a Mega Man game, revert to their Maverick status once again and Dr. Doppler is instead fingered as the culprit for what is figured to be an intentional malfunction on his part. Sigma’s Maverick manifesto may mirror many science fiction stories revolving around the sentient autonomy of humanoid robots with artificial intelligence, but at least the themes are still rousing enough to be reused to great effect. Chalking the primary conflict of the series up to an infectious bug in the matrix that seems accidental just strips the narrative of its substance.
So yes, X is hitting the pavement once again to nip the new Maverick menace in the bud before it spreads. What selection of exotic, automaton animals have the developers chosen to represent as the pinnacle challenges of each level? Upon glancing at the menu, we have little clue because there are no descriptions of any of these Mavericks. All we see is four Mavericks aligned across the top and bottom of the screen per usual with a headshot and a still image of their domain. Not even the names of these burly robotic creatures are given. I can only surmise that this is a developer error and an inexcusable one at that. C’mon guys, even the vestigial first mainline Mega Man game at least provided the names of the Robot Masters in the menu! At this point, the stages of the X games are beginning to reuse topographical tropes we’ve already seen in the previous titles. Tunnel Rhino resides in another mine-oriented level buried deep in the underground trenches of the Earth, and the mud spurting from its pores will ensnare X into its viscosity like quicksand. Blizzard Buffalo’s stage is another frosty one but with an artificial cyclone machine exacerbating the turbulent winter overhead as an interesting new gimmick. Surges of electricity shimmy alongside the walls of Volt Catfish’s stage as recurring obstacles, and the “water” stage one would anticipate from Toxic Seahorse is more akin to the gunky sewage of a treatment plant. One would probably expect the two Mavericks designed after bugs to buzz around a humid, untamed jungle area similar to Neon Tiger, but Blast Hornet and Gravity Beetle are located in what appears to be a military complex and airship respectively. At least the submarine stage where X fights Crush Crawfish is somewhat water-oriented, even though it's highly improbable that anyone will find the strictly freshwater crustaceans in the vast, saltwater habitat of the ocean. Nitpicks about the themes surrounding these Mavericks aside, what is actually worth griping about is that several of the stages include plenty of fatal sections such as bottomless pits and beds of spikes at the end of falling that the player cannot anticipate unless they are psychic. These blindspots haven’t marred any Mega Man game since the very first one in 1987, and they’re just as unfair and poorly placed here as they were way back then.
The collective arsenal X can accumulate from the charred remains of the Mavericks are really nothing of note. The “Tornado Fang” and “Frost Shield” penetrate the armor of foes by drilling into their internal wires for double damage. The “Ray Splasher” trickles a flurry of bullets for a few seconds, and Toxic Seahorse’s “Acid Bubble” will corrode the metal right off of enemies once X gingerly plops it out of his arm cannon. The “Gravity Well” and “Parasitic Bomb” effectiveness seems entirely situational, and the “Triad Thunder” is insufficient as a close-ranged weapon and undependable as a long-ranged projectile. The weapon I found to be the most effective blaster substitute was the powerful, dual-wield “Spinning Blade,” but it expends more energy than a clunky air conditioner. If my summary of the boss weapons sounds curt, it's because I’d rather discuss another alternating array of firepower that X3 incorporates. By now, I’m sure every returning player is familiar with the mechs that X can pilot for a short period on the field, caving in cracked corners of land and the faces of enemies with its kinetic punches. In X3, X cannot jack an idle mech or violently take one from an enemy by force. Instead, the mech is summoned from one of the circular podiums littered throughout the levels. X is given the choice of selecting four different mechs with their own unique attributes. The Chimera module is the standard one featured in X with the aforementioned pension for fisticuffs, the Kangaroo module is similar to the one from X2 equipped with a charged attack, the Hawk module borrows the flight function from X2’s mech with rocket arms to boot, and the Frog module is strictly for underwater traversal. Having four flavors of the mech at X’s disposal to boost his offensive and defensive attributes sounds incredibly exciting and convenient on paper. However, the restrictions on this privilege damper its fun factor severely. Firstly, X has to unlock every one of the different mechs by scrounging around the hidden corners of the levels like any other upgrade. Even if X locates three out of four of them, they won’t be available to use until X finds the Chimera module dangling from an elusive room off the beaten path of Blast Hornet’s level. Why does this mech have higher precedence over the others when they all have their own vital utility? In addition, the platforms where a mech is materialized seem to be located in spots where it’s inappropriate to use them. I began to stop bothering with these mechs altogether because using them is sadly burdensome when it should’ve been a highlight of the game.
Unfortunately, the developer’s questionable methods extend to other upgrades found in the game. Remember when finding the energy heart units in the first Mega Man X was just a matter of slightly verging off the intended trajectory? X2 presented a few out-of-reach upgrades locked behind an additional step of using a Maverick’s weapon from another stage, but X3 increased the circuity of obtaining upgrades to the point of overload. For example, one heart unit is located behind a boulder suspended from the ceiling in Tunnel Rhino’s stage, and grabbing it requires both another boss weapon and one of the armor upgrades attached to a specific part of X’s body. Hardly any of the upgrades in X3 are acquired through honest attention on the player’s part. While we’re on the subject of the armor upgrades, X3 tweaks the defensive component of X’s progressive growth into something else that the developers didn’t entirely think through. As usual, armor enhancements are obtained by finding the body-sized capsules in the same obscured corners as the other upgrades. There’s one for each major piece of X’s exterior anatomy, and they all range heavily in opposite spectrums of usefulness. The body upgrade that cuts X’s damage input in half is a given, but the only other new factor of the armor upgrades I appreciate are the vertical leaps granted by the leg armor. Obtaining the helmet upgrade will begin each level with X scanning the layout of the stage and displaying it on a crudely rendered blocked map of the level that indicates where the remaining upgrades are located. This would’ve been a helpful feature only if there was another blipping dot of a different color on the map signifying X’s location in relation to the upgrade. The blaster upgrade is supposed to enhance the magnitude of the charge shot, but the upgrade in X3 rather generates a lopsided beam that sluggishly shoots in whatever direction it damn well pleases. In addition to these, the base upgrades can be augmented even further with the color-swapped pink capsules that insert a chip into the specific piece of armor to increase its effectiveness. Strangely enough, the player can abstain from collecting any of the chips which will reward them with a golden-plated suit of armor with all upgrades attached. Why would the player knowingly pursue the other upgrades beforehand if they were aware that they would come as a package deal by the end? The developers should’ve offered one pink capsule including the golden armor for the player’s efforts to gather up all of the armor upgrades. Actually, scratch that: I advise everyone reading this to forgo the shiny upgrade conglomerate to preserve the practicality of the charge shot.
X3 continues X2’s new trend of secret bosses sporadically interspersed between the levels. I’m glad that not catching the subtle clues of their appearances no longer has permanent, penalizing effects. However, it’s the additional bosses themselves that feel shoehorned in to continue this trend. Dr. Doppler is feeling a tad paranoid to X zeroing in on his location, so he sics two of his specialized henchmen goons called Bit and Byte to dispose of the blue Maverick hunter. While intended to be intimidating, the duo dynamic of these two cronies reminds me less of robotic Vincent and Jules and more of Badger and Skinny Pete. They’re entirely worthless. Meanwhile, one section beneath Crush Crawfish’s stage teleports X to a pathway to a spacious arena where he fights an uncanny apparition of Vile exactly as he did at the first climactic stretch to Sigma in the first game. Despite how irrelevant these supplementary bosses seem initially, vanquishing them somehow has some consequential weight to the remainder of the game. Instead of facing off against the tusked Press Disposer and the abstract Volt Kurageil mech, X will swap their encounters on the way up to Dr. Doppler to fight an unholy fusion of Bit and Byte called the “Godkarmachine O Inary” and Vile for the umpteenth time. However, the player’s completionist pension will not affect the final two bosses of Dr. Doppler and Sigma. Yes, Sigma’s influence still resonates strongly with the corrupted reploids. Except in this context, he exists as the computer virus that has been infecting the Mavericks, and not in a metaphorical manner of spewing anti-organic life rhetoric like a revolutionary propagandist. After X forces Doppler to face the errors of his ways through a swift beating, he tackles a tangible, lifelike version of Sigma in two phases that prove to be far more tense and demanding than the unpolished wireframe head seen in X2. The second phase is especially taxing if the player has inadvertently buggered their charge shot with its upgrade. After an exhausting duel, Sigma reverts to his rudimentary digital self to pull one more trick on X: flooding the arena with ascending lava to literally burn off the last slivers of his health before Zero swoops in and slices him in half of his saber. Excuse me, Sigma, but you’re not allowed to pull a stunt like this unless you are the pinnacle boss of a Metroid game. No, I’m not mad because it killed me unexpectedly (okay, reasonably a little).
Mega Man X3 is a predictable continuation of what the first X game established to advance the Mega Man formula. It expands on what the second X game introduced, albeit all of its aspects that I wasn’t particularly fond of, and makes them reasonably more manageable such as the loosened importance of the additional bosses. Besides the reinstated assets it carries over, the distinctive changes it makes are so bewildering it is as if the developers failed to test the game before releasing it. I’m still scratching my head as to why X can’t freely use the mechs he unlocks, the menu doesn’t list the names of the Mavericks, and so many more to list that I’m frankly appalled. It feels reactionary to assign Mega Man X3 the status of the nadir of the franchise. Still, it’s certainly the most flawed and irritating Mega Man game I’ve played thus far.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
1996
Talk about a video game relic. Understanding Duke Nukem’s rampant popularity in the brief window of time where he was a bonafide video game celebrity was kind of a “you had to be there” type of scenario. Along with Pogs and Pauly Shore, Duke Nukem is now stamped into the era-defining pop culture staples of the mid/late 1990s that could not escape beyond the years of their initial relevance. For those who were sentient at that momentary period or are scholarly video game historians, we know that Duke Nukem’s legacy is synonymous with the vestigial early period of the burgeoning first-person shooter genre. When id Software was churning out the genre’s pioneering staples such as Wolfenstein and Doom in the early 1990s, Duke Nukem was designed as yet another 2D platformer protagonist in a time where they were as omnipresent in gaming as the mascots on name-brand cereal boxes. One quick relook at this gruff, cigar-smoking He-Man, who was already toting a soldier’s ragbag of firepower as is, gave the developers at 3D Realms some considerable clarity to refashion Duke into the nuanced spatial range of the third dimension with Duke Nukem 3D, hence the “D” following the sequential number in the title. As a result, 1996 was early enough to distinguish Duke as one of the first-person shooter’s founding fathers before a little game called Halo redefined the modern FPS standard indefinitely. Among the respected ranks of elder FPS titles, I’ve always positioned Duke Nukem 3D as the quintessential game over its primordial peers. There’s a certain element of charisma and refinement that Duke Nukem 3D exudes that earns its pinnacle placement in my mind.
One additional point to Duke Nukem 3D’s charisma is giving the titular character a voice to accentuate the personality of the muscle-bound figure behind those sunglasses so dark that the frames look like van windows. Admittedly, Duke Nukem isn’t the most dynamic or relatable character gaming has to offer. In fact, his uber-macho persona is so exaggerated that it comes across as a parody of the 1980s and 1990s action heroes that oozed pure testosterone from every sweating pore. But what a parody Duke is! If Bruce Willis, Sly Stone, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Steven Segal all ejaculated into a petri dish and the collective of hyper-masculine leading movie man semen was fertilized with an egg, the spawn conceived by this experimental breeding method still wouldn’t be as badass as Duke Nukem. Remember all of those Chuck Norris jokes that circulated around the internet in the latter half of the 2000s? All those tongue-in-cheek tributes to the Walker, Texas Ranger star and martial artist being an indestructible demigod of righteousness would have easily been just as applicable to Duke Nukem. Duke’s as rugged as a superhuman steel worker and approaches all hostility directed at him by beastly extraterrestrial invaders without flinching and quivering that clenched toothy grin of his. Duke is also a connoisseur of carnal pleasures with the ladies, and the harems he regularly coordinates would knock Wilt Chamberlain off as the supreme champion of the (sexual) scoring scoreboard. My favorite aspect of Duke Nukem as a character is that he’s a God at spewing one-liners. The game will automatically pull the Duke Nukem doll string at every other step he takes, and the bodacious single-sentenced lines of dialogue he utters with Jon St. John’s gravelly, monster truck rally radio voice providing the vocal delivery is music to my ears. Arguably, Duke Nukem’s golden quips are the aspect of this game that have been immortalized the deepest in the gaming zeitgeist thanks to their continual persistence as soundbites. I realize that since modern gaming journalism has expanded the conversation of social consciousness regarding the medium, Duke Nukem is a character commonly indicted as the epitome of a vicarious outlet to a misogynistic male-power fantasy, and I can’t deny that there is plenty of evidence to support the validity of this claim. Still, I refute this smudge to Duke’s integrity by stating that there might have been a time when gamers thought Duke Nukem was cool, but there was never a time when we all took him seriously. Duke Nukem is such an ostentatious embodiment of gaming camp that he reverts back around to actually being the coolest motherfucker ever depicted in pixels or polygons. I can’t say for certainty if the developers intended for Duke Nukem to be perceived through a lens of irony back in the 90s, however.
Despite his retrospective controversies, I still believe that Mr. Nukem is still an upstanding guy with a sense of justice in his heart. After all, the overarching objective of Duke Nukem 3D is an altruistic one, rescuing all the earthling babes that those alien bastards have abducted and reuniting them into the safe and protective arms of human warmth (his own, probably wrapped around them while they stroke his ironclad abs with their fingers). Whether it’s all human females, ones of a reproductive age bracket, or just the sexy ones aged 18-30 with supple breasts (sort of) is unclear. Regardless, Duke is willing to risk his biscuit on a valiant mission to retrieve the fairer half of Earth’s population from invading scum from outer space. Duke’s a lone wolf NSA assassin: the spitting image of J. Edgar Hoover’s wet dreams come to realization in an interactive medium. Or, Duke is not on a mission of government defense and is acting out against the alien forces as personal retribution for shooting down his ride en route to Los Angeles. Either or, the aliens have signed their death warrant by provoking the wrath of the last human they’d be able to handle.
Duke’s mission to save all the babes unceremoniously taken from Earth’s soil is divided into four chapters comprising around seven to ten individual levels. Instead of soaking up the sun’s rays in Malibu with a dozen loose, silicone-enhanced women, Duke now has to engage in a citywide firefight with the aliens in “L.A. Meltdown.” Doesn’t sound like Duke’s vacation to the City of Angels was deterred too drastically, no? The invasion at least grants him the opportunity to kick ass and chew bubblegum, which is one of many pop culture references that Duke coopts as a catchphrase. As he’s making mincemeat out of the squadron of alien forces, Duke will leave Los Angeles County to the California-spanning San Andreas fault located east in the desert. “Lunar Apocalypse” sends Duke slightly beyond the skies to a space station orbiting over the Earth, a massive headquarters operated by the alien army. Duke logically assumes that dismantling the oppressive establishment will be a critical blow to the alien opposition, but the eyesore is really a red herring that tests Duke’s gullibility. While Duke was distracted outside of Earth’s atmosphere, the aliens revved their task force to eleven back in LA, which Duke must revisit to remedy the increased rate of chaos in “Shrapnel City.” Without the pushback from Duke for a momentary period, the aliens accomplish their primary goal that coincides with the capturing of Earth’s human females. In the additional final chapter released with the “Atomic Edition” of the game, one candidate from the selection of unwilling female participants is impregnated with the seed of the alien’s queen, and “The Birth” as the chapter’s title connotes the distressful reality that they’ve succeeded. Who’s the lucky lady deemed to have such exceptional ovaries? We don’t know, but she most likely died during childbirth considering the horrifying creature that violently scratched and clawed its way out of her vagina. Because she’s the regal leader of this alien army and an overall abomination, Duke must expunge this matriarchal monstrosity from existence before her first birthday. While the four chapters align with some sort of narrative arc, the order in which the player tackles them is ultimately superfluous because they are given the option to select any chapter in the main menu. Still, what the chapter format provides is thematic cohesion between all of the individual levels. After hopping around several levels in space during the “Lunar Apocalypse” chapter, it genuinely feels as if a significant portion of progress has passed after Duke returns to civilization.
Whether the backdrop is the sunset strip or the outer limits, the levels of Duke Nukem 3D are bonded by a consistent design philosophy. Each level is technically a trek from point A to B, but that simple trajectory will be thwarted constantly by layers upon layers of circuity. A common integral aspect of the convolution is the need to find three key cards that block paths to progression exactly like in Doom. In fact, this general design philosophy reflects Doom’s methods so similarly that it’s practically like peering into a mirror image. Come to think of it, we don’t have any clear evidence that Duke Nukem isn’t the nom de guerre of “The Doom Guy” unmuffled now due to not having to protect himself with that hefty body armor from the oxygenless atmosphere of Mars or the noxious sulfur of Hell. Seeing how uncanny the levels are between the two FPS games, one could reasonably conclude that there’s only room for one king of the roost in this universe, but he’s the same person after all. While Duke Nukem 3D doesn’t make any meaningful strides of innovation to the FPS genre’s design philosophy, it avoids further accusations of cheap imitation of Doom by sprucing up the visuals. The opaque, cryptic visuals were sensible enough for Doom’s esoteric hellscape, as was the enclosed, repetitive dungeon design of Wolfenstein’s castle interior. The environments in Duke Nukem 3D, however, should have some semblance of realism because of its real-world setting, or at least a broad real-world setting for three out of four of the chapters. Hollywood Boulevard and the surrounding areas may not exude that sunny pomp the city is known for, as the invasion has apparently rendered it in nocturnal darkness. Still, the neon glow of an urban metropolis is discernible enough that the player recognizes that the environment is a concrete jungle with all of the familiar iconography. The levels in LA are packed with earthly establishments fitting for a first-world society. Duke will pass through a number of movie theaters, restaurants, office cubicles, and several assortments of bodegas to convey that sense of a lived-in environment. Duke will also find himself visiting strip clubs and the sets of pornographic films. These settings will give him ample room to flaunt his pension for shoving a couple of bucks in every surviving woman’s face, requesting them to “shake it, baby” to fan the flames of outrage. Even when they comply and show him their boobs, his critics are still going to label him as a sexist pig. A few levels in “The Birth” expound on the real-world setting theme by expanding the recurring places of interest into the length of fully-fledged levels. “Duke-Burger” is a fast food joint with the protagonist as its spokesperson, “Shop-N-Bag” is a supermarket that dwarfs the size of any Costco, and “Babeland” is a theme park that looks as if Disney acquired Hooters as one of their properties. Even when the levels in outer space can feasibly get by with minimal visuals in the foregrounds, every backdrop from the living quarters to the desolate docking bays is still beaming with pixelated detail. One recurring section in “Lunar Apocalypse” that is quite striking is the green, veiny corridors stretched over the perimeter of a wall or an entire room that stores the women deemed disposable by the aliens affixed in what look like cocoons made of mucus. Seeing their naked bodies writhing in excruciating discomfort with their feeble dialogue line of “kill me” is more disturbing than anything seen in Doom.
Naturally, the aliens will be a constant hindrance to reaching the goal point in the already convolutedly-mapped levels. While each of these imperialistic, intergalactic pests is all working under the same branch of some military, whatever planet they call home sure does house an eclectic ecosystem of species. Admittedly, the range of alien enemies is another aspect of Duke Nukem 3D that causes more comparisons with Doom. One can spot parallels between specific types of enemies between Duke Nukem 3D and Doom to strengthen the comparisons as well (ie. the Assault Troopers and the Imps and the Octobrains and Cacodemons). The array of enemies will also increase in difficulty as the game progresses. In “LA Meltdown,” Duke will blast through plenty of frail Assault Troopers and the LAPD who have been transformed into rabid boars who brandish shotguns while still wearing their blue uniforms. Some may be horrified by the sight of our boys in blue being overtaken by the aliens in this degrading fashion, but all they really did was swap the interior natures of these officers to their exteriors (this is a joke, please don’t hurt me). In the later chapters, these enemies will be joined by a legion of formidable foes that Duke needs to keep a mindful watch of around every corner. The floating, spherical Assault Commanders will blast rockets at Duke in enclosed spaces, and God help you if you encounter one of the Battlelord Sentries, who are durable enough with their hulking spike-covered armor pads and rail gun/mine launcher hybrid cannon to qualify as a miniboss. Encountering the bosses at the end of each chapter isn’t exactly a cinematic display, but their behemoth bodies will force Duke to dispense all of his ammunition into them. I especially enjoy the Overlord boss that climaxes “Lunar Apocalypse'' because Duke’s fatality maneuver that finishes off this boss for good sees him literally ripping his head off and shitting down his neck. Duke does not make idle threats, and the evidence of one of his most quoted sayings here is uproariously funny. For as extensive as Duke Nukem 3D’s enemies are, the game never overwhelms the player with an overabundance of them in one spot as a level gimmick like Doom tended to do.
Because every enemy spans a broad range of offensive and defensive attributes, Duke’s arsenal needs to match their eclecticism appropriately. Fortunately, as I’ve alluded to before, Duke’s as strapped as a Pee-Wee soccer team in a minivan. Of course, Duke’s first few weapons cover the basic firearms requisite for all FPS protagonists. The pistols, shotgun, and multispread chain gun are all effective in their own ways, but the joy of combat really kicks off after the first few levels. Grenades are great in situations where bushels of enemies in close quarters must be obliterated simultaneously, but the volatile nature of their timed impact can sometimes result in fatal cases of friendly fire. Why not take total control over the impact with pipe bombs, which always prove to be efficient and relatively more precise? Accompanying the RPG in the category of projectile explosive power is the Devastator weapon which fires several rounds of mini rockets with the fire rate of a machine gun. Laser Trip Bombs can be applied to upright surfaces to punish unobservant enemies, but sticking these to the walls while enemies are shooting at Duke isn’t exactly a practical method of combat. The special weapons that defy the laws of physics are the ones that are especially fun as one can imagine, and they’re surprisingly just as useful. The Shrinker weapon will reduce almost any common enemy to the size of a mouse, and they’ll tremble in fear before Duke pulverizes them with the crushing might of his foot. Duke’s left boot also comes into play after using the Freezethrower, the elemental opposite of a flamethrower that solidifies an enemy in solid ice before Duke shatters them into pieces. Alternately to the Shrinker, the Expander inflates an enemy to the point of bursting like a bomb that impacts all enemies directly around them. Duke Nukem may not possess something as awe-strikingly destructive as the BFG, but each weapon he carries is satisfying to use and will splatter the brains of enemies all over the streets of LA and beyond.
Duke Nukem is generally easier than the FPS games that influenced it on a fundamental level. As I’ve stated before, the pushback from enemies is relatively mild and manageable, unlike the feverish onslaught of Hell’s forces to contend with in Doom. However, the margin of error in Duke Nukem 3D is also razor thin, erasing all level progress made upon dying and making the player revert back to the beginning. This measure isn’t any less harsh here than it is in other FPS games that share the same sense of punitive discipline. On one hand, health kits of varying quantities are plentifully scattered across each level. This convenience also pertains to the array of items such as the mobile health kit and the protective resources like the boots and scuba gear to prevent Duke from harming himself with environmental hazards or drowning respectively. Duke can even restore his health by ten points by taking a whizz whenever he comes across a bathroom, and can fully restore his status by slurping the gushing pipe water upon breaking a toilet or urinal. The lethargic pace of the healing will skirt Duke’s patience, however, and it’s just kinda gross. With all of the liberties one can take to stave off the stiff death penalty, it all tends to be compromised anyway in some situations. God forbid Duke ever gets squished, and there are more cavernous pits to accidentally tumble down than there ever were on the empty planes of Mars or Hell. I understand that these levels are intended to be completed quickly, and every restart will prove quicker after every failure through familiarity. Still, I’ve always vocalized how unfair it is to send the player back to whence they started for any type of game, and the FPS genre is no exception.
As far as the oldest of the old-school FPS games are concerned, Duke Nukem 3D shines the brightest. This metaphor could include but is not limited to the scrupulous detail implemented to give the player reasonably perceptible environments or the intrepid attitude of its GigaChad protagonist that outshone the silent avatars that already flooded the genre in its early period. Duke Nukem 3D still has some jarring elements common across the early examples of the FPS genre, but I can confidently declare that its issues are the sins of the father. Some may chalk up Duke Nukem 3D’s legacy as channeling Doom under a different name, bolstering shallow attributes such as presentation and not much else: Au contraire, my skeptical friends. Duke Nukem 3D’s graphical sheen and vibrant energy make the FPS more joyous and accessible, which is certainly a stride in the genre’s evolution.
Hail to the king, baby!
------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
One additional point to Duke Nukem 3D’s charisma is giving the titular character a voice to accentuate the personality of the muscle-bound figure behind those sunglasses so dark that the frames look like van windows. Admittedly, Duke Nukem isn’t the most dynamic or relatable character gaming has to offer. In fact, his uber-macho persona is so exaggerated that it comes across as a parody of the 1980s and 1990s action heroes that oozed pure testosterone from every sweating pore. But what a parody Duke is! If Bruce Willis, Sly Stone, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Steven Segal all ejaculated into a petri dish and the collective of hyper-masculine leading movie man semen was fertilized with an egg, the spawn conceived by this experimental breeding method still wouldn’t be as badass as Duke Nukem. Remember all of those Chuck Norris jokes that circulated around the internet in the latter half of the 2000s? All those tongue-in-cheek tributes to the Walker, Texas Ranger star and martial artist being an indestructible demigod of righteousness would have easily been just as applicable to Duke Nukem. Duke’s as rugged as a superhuman steel worker and approaches all hostility directed at him by beastly extraterrestrial invaders without flinching and quivering that clenched toothy grin of his. Duke is also a connoisseur of carnal pleasures with the ladies, and the harems he regularly coordinates would knock Wilt Chamberlain off as the supreme champion of the (sexual) scoring scoreboard. My favorite aspect of Duke Nukem as a character is that he’s a God at spewing one-liners. The game will automatically pull the Duke Nukem doll string at every other step he takes, and the bodacious single-sentenced lines of dialogue he utters with Jon St. John’s gravelly, monster truck rally radio voice providing the vocal delivery is music to my ears. Arguably, Duke Nukem’s golden quips are the aspect of this game that have been immortalized the deepest in the gaming zeitgeist thanks to their continual persistence as soundbites. I realize that since modern gaming journalism has expanded the conversation of social consciousness regarding the medium, Duke Nukem is a character commonly indicted as the epitome of a vicarious outlet to a misogynistic male-power fantasy, and I can’t deny that there is plenty of evidence to support the validity of this claim. Still, I refute this smudge to Duke’s integrity by stating that there might have been a time when gamers thought Duke Nukem was cool, but there was never a time when we all took him seriously. Duke Nukem is such an ostentatious embodiment of gaming camp that he reverts back around to actually being the coolest motherfucker ever depicted in pixels or polygons. I can’t say for certainty if the developers intended for Duke Nukem to be perceived through a lens of irony back in the 90s, however.
Despite his retrospective controversies, I still believe that Mr. Nukem is still an upstanding guy with a sense of justice in his heart. After all, the overarching objective of Duke Nukem 3D is an altruistic one, rescuing all the earthling babes that those alien bastards have abducted and reuniting them into the safe and protective arms of human warmth (his own, probably wrapped around them while they stroke his ironclad abs with their fingers). Whether it’s all human females, ones of a reproductive age bracket, or just the sexy ones aged 18-30 with supple breasts (sort of) is unclear. Regardless, Duke is willing to risk his biscuit on a valiant mission to retrieve the fairer half of Earth’s population from invading scum from outer space. Duke’s a lone wolf NSA assassin: the spitting image of J. Edgar Hoover’s wet dreams come to realization in an interactive medium. Or, Duke is not on a mission of government defense and is acting out against the alien forces as personal retribution for shooting down his ride en route to Los Angeles. Either or, the aliens have signed their death warrant by provoking the wrath of the last human they’d be able to handle.
Duke’s mission to save all the babes unceremoniously taken from Earth’s soil is divided into four chapters comprising around seven to ten individual levels. Instead of soaking up the sun’s rays in Malibu with a dozen loose, silicone-enhanced women, Duke now has to engage in a citywide firefight with the aliens in “L.A. Meltdown.” Doesn’t sound like Duke’s vacation to the City of Angels was deterred too drastically, no? The invasion at least grants him the opportunity to kick ass and chew bubblegum, which is one of many pop culture references that Duke coopts as a catchphrase. As he’s making mincemeat out of the squadron of alien forces, Duke will leave Los Angeles County to the California-spanning San Andreas fault located east in the desert. “Lunar Apocalypse” sends Duke slightly beyond the skies to a space station orbiting over the Earth, a massive headquarters operated by the alien army. Duke logically assumes that dismantling the oppressive establishment will be a critical blow to the alien opposition, but the eyesore is really a red herring that tests Duke’s gullibility. While Duke was distracted outside of Earth’s atmosphere, the aliens revved their task force to eleven back in LA, which Duke must revisit to remedy the increased rate of chaos in “Shrapnel City.” Without the pushback from Duke for a momentary period, the aliens accomplish their primary goal that coincides with the capturing of Earth’s human females. In the additional final chapter released with the “Atomic Edition” of the game, one candidate from the selection of unwilling female participants is impregnated with the seed of the alien’s queen, and “The Birth” as the chapter’s title connotes the distressful reality that they’ve succeeded. Who’s the lucky lady deemed to have such exceptional ovaries? We don’t know, but she most likely died during childbirth considering the horrifying creature that violently scratched and clawed its way out of her vagina. Because she’s the regal leader of this alien army and an overall abomination, Duke must expunge this matriarchal monstrosity from existence before her first birthday. While the four chapters align with some sort of narrative arc, the order in which the player tackles them is ultimately superfluous because they are given the option to select any chapter in the main menu. Still, what the chapter format provides is thematic cohesion between all of the individual levels. After hopping around several levels in space during the “Lunar Apocalypse” chapter, it genuinely feels as if a significant portion of progress has passed after Duke returns to civilization.
Whether the backdrop is the sunset strip or the outer limits, the levels of Duke Nukem 3D are bonded by a consistent design philosophy. Each level is technically a trek from point A to B, but that simple trajectory will be thwarted constantly by layers upon layers of circuity. A common integral aspect of the convolution is the need to find three key cards that block paths to progression exactly like in Doom. In fact, this general design philosophy reflects Doom’s methods so similarly that it’s practically like peering into a mirror image. Come to think of it, we don’t have any clear evidence that Duke Nukem isn’t the nom de guerre of “The Doom Guy” unmuffled now due to not having to protect himself with that hefty body armor from the oxygenless atmosphere of Mars or the noxious sulfur of Hell. Seeing how uncanny the levels are between the two FPS games, one could reasonably conclude that there’s only room for one king of the roost in this universe, but he’s the same person after all. While Duke Nukem 3D doesn’t make any meaningful strides of innovation to the FPS genre’s design philosophy, it avoids further accusations of cheap imitation of Doom by sprucing up the visuals. The opaque, cryptic visuals were sensible enough for Doom’s esoteric hellscape, as was the enclosed, repetitive dungeon design of Wolfenstein’s castle interior. The environments in Duke Nukem 3D, however, should have some semblance of realism because of its real-world setting, or at least a broad real-world setting for three out of four of the chapters. Hollywood Boulevard and the surrounding areas may not exude that sunny pomp the city is known for, as the invasion has apparently rendered it in nocturnal darkness. Still, the neon glow of an urban metropolis is discernible enough that the player recognizes that the environment is a concrete jungle with all of the familiar iconography. The levels in LA are packed with earthly establishments fitting for a first-world society. Duke will pass through a number of movie theaters, restaurants, office cubicles, and several assortments of bodegas to convey that sense of a lived-in environment. Duke will also find himself visiting strip clubs and the sets of pornographic films. These settings will give him ample room to flaunt his pension for shoving a couple of bucks in every surviving woman’s face, requesting them to “shake it, baby” to fan the flames of outrage. Even when they comply and show him their boobs, his critics are still going to label him as a sexist pig. A few levels in “The Birth” expound on the real-world setting theme by expanding the recurring places of interest into the length of fully-fledged levels. “Duke-Burger” is a fast food joint with the protagonist as its spokesperson, “Shop-N-Bag” is a supermarket that dwarfs the size of any Costco, and “Babeland” is a theme park that looks as if Disney acquired Hooters as one of their properties. Even when the levels in outer space can feasibly get by with minimal visuals in the foregrounds, every backdrop from the living quarters to the desolate docking bays is still beaming with pixelated detail. One recurring section in “Lunar Apocalypse” that is quite striking is the green, veiny corridors stretched over the perimeter of a wall or an entire room that stores the women deemed disposable by the aliens affixed in what look like cocoons made of mucus. Seeing their naked bodies writhing in excruciating discomfort with their feeble dialogue line of “kill me” is more disturbing than anything seen in Doom.
Naturally, the aliens will be a constant hindrance to reaching the goal point in the already convolutedly-mapped levels. While each of these imperialistic, intergalactic pests is all working under the same branch of some military, whatever planet they call home sure does house an eclectic ecosystem of species. Admittedly, the range of alien enemies is another aspect of Duke Nukem 3D that causes more comparisons with Doom. One can spot parallels between specific types of enemies between Duke Nukem 3D and Doom to strengthen the comparisons as well (ie. the Assault Troopers and the Imps and the Octobrains and Cacodemons). The array of enemies will also increase in difficulty as the game progresses. In “LA Meltdown,” Duke will blast through plenty of frail Assault Troopers and the LAPD who have been transformed into rabid boars who brandish shotguns while still wearing their blue uniforms. Some may be horrified by the sight of our boys in blue being overtaken by the aliens in this degrading fashion, but all they really did was swap the interior natures of these officers to their exteriors (this is a joke, please don’t hurt me). In the later chapters, these enemies will be joined by a legion of formidable foes that Duke needs to keep a mindful watch of around every corner. The floating, spherical Assault Commanders will blast rockets at Duke in enclosed spaces, and God help you if you encounter one of the Battlelord Sentries, who are durable enough with their hulking spike-covered armor pads and rail gun/mine launcher hybrid cannon to qualify as a miniboss. Encountering the bosses at the end of each chapter isn’t exactly a cinematic display, but their behemoth bodies will force Duke to dispense all of his ammunition into them. I especially enjoy the Overlord boss that climaxes “Lunar Apocalypse'' because Duke’s fatality maneuver that finishes off this boss for good sees him literally ripping his head off and shitting down his neck. Duke does not make idle threats, and the evidence of one of his most quoted sayings here is uproariously funny. For as extensive as Duke Nukem 3D’s enemies are, the game never overwhelms the player with an overabundance of them in one spot as a level gimmick like Doom tended to do.
Because every enemy spans a broad range of offensive and defensive attributes, Duke’s arsenal needs to match their eclecticism appropriately. Fortunately, as I’ve alluded to before, Duke’s as strapped as a Pee-Wee soccer team in a minivan. Of course, Duke’s first few weapons cover the basic firearms requisite for all FPS protagonists. The pistols, shotgun, and multispread chain gun are all effective in their own ways, but the joy of combat really kicks off after the first few levels. Grenades are great in situations where bushels of enemies in close quarters must be obliterated simultaneously, but the volatile nature of their timed impact can sometimes result in fatal cases of friendly fire. Why not take total control over the impact with pipe bombs, which always prove to be efficient and relatively more precise? Accompanying the RPG in the category of projectile explosive power is the Devastator weapon which fires several rounds of mini rockets with the fire rate of a machine gun. Laser Trip Bombs can be applied to upright surfaces to punish unobservant enemies, but sticking these to the walls while enemies are shooting at Duke isn’t exactly a practical method of combat. The special weapons that defy the laws of physics are the ones that are especially fun as one can imagine, and they’re surprisingly just as useful. The Shrinker weapon will reduce almost any common enemy to the size of a mouse, and they’ll tremble in fear before Duke pulverizes them with the crushing might of his foot. Duke’s left boot also comes into play after using the Freezethrower, the elemental opposite of a flamethrower that solidifies an enemy in solid ice before Duke shatters them into pieces. Alternately to the Shrinker, the Expander inflates an enemy to the point of bursting like a bomb that impacts all enemies directly around them. Duke Nukem may not possess something as awe-strikingly destructive as the BFG, but each weapon he carries is satisfying to use and will splatter the brains of enemies all over the streets of LA and beyond.
Duke Nukem is generally easier than the FPS games that influenced it on a fundamental level. As I’ve stated before, the pushback from enemies is relatively mild and manageable, unlike the feverish onslaught of Hell’s forces to contend with in Doom. However, the margin of error in Duke Nukem 3D is also razor thin, erasing all level progress made upon dying and making the player revert back to the beginning. This measure isn’t any less harsh here than it is in other FPS games that share the same sense of punitive discipline. On one hand, health kits of varying quantities are plentifully scattered across each level. This convenience also pertains to the array of items such as the mobile health kit and the protective resources like the boots and scuba gear to prevent Duke from harming himself with environmental hazards or drowning respectively. Duke can even restore his health by ten points by taking a whizz whenever he comes across a bathroom, and can fully restore his status by slurping the gushing pipe water upon breaking a toilet or urinal. The lethargic pace of the healing will skirt Duke’s patience, however, and it’s just kinda gross. With all of the liberties one can take to stave off the stiff death penalty, it all tends to be compromised anyway in some situations. God forbid Duke ever gets squished, and there are more cavernous pits to accidentally tumble down than there ever were on the empty planes of Mars or Hell. I understand that these levels are intended to be completed quickly, and every restart will prove quicker after every failure through familiarity. Still, I’ve always vocalized how unfair it is to send the player back to whence they started for any type of game, and the FPS genre is no exception.
As far as the oldest of the old-school FPS games are concerned, Duke Nukem 3D shines the brightest. This metaphor could include but is not limited to the scrupulous detail implemented to give the player reasonably perceptible environments or the intrepid attitude of its GigaChad protagonist that outshone the silent avatars that already flooded the genre in its early period. Duke Nukem 3D still has some jarring elements common across the early examples of the FPS genre, but I can confidently declare that its issues are the sins of the father. Some may chalk up Duke Nukem 3D’s legacy as channeling Doom under a different name, bolstering shallow attributes such as presentation and not much else: Au contraire, my skeptical friends. Duke Nukem 3D’s graphical sheen and vibrant energy make the FPS more joyous and accessible, which is certainly a stride in the genre’s evolution.
Hail to the king, baby!
------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
2000
This review contains spoilers
Rare wasn’t a one-trick pony regarding the titles they developed for Nintendo’s first 3D console. The N64 age was what I’d consider to be the British developer’s golden era, crafting a plethora of fresh and distinctive IPs over the span of five years. Their creative flux was facilitated by a lucrative partnership with the most successful company in gaming, and Nintendo benefited wonderfully from Rare’s dedication to innovation and overall quality. However, a fair quantity of Rare’s output on the N64 catered towards the younger demographic that Nintendo already had cornered the market of to the point of direct correlation. As I understand it, N64 purchasers were fed so many sugary sweet wholesome games featuring kooky, inoffensive cartoon characters that they were liable to contract gaming diabetes. Diddy Kong Racing was so puerile in its presentation that it made Mario Kart 64 look like the chariot races from Ben-Hur by comparison. As much as I respect and adore Banjo-Kazooie (and its sequel to a considerably lesser extent), expressing your fondness for the collectathon platformer past a certain age is bound to raise some judgmental eyebrows and cast some not-so-subtle snickers in your direction. Blast Corps and Jet Force Gemini injected some high-octane adrenaline into Rare’s catalog, but the tone of these two games exuded something that was still ultimately aimed at pleasing youngsters. No, Conker’s Bad Fur Day is not the exception to this rule, as the game was more juvenile than having someone pull your finger at a funeral. Simply because the game is rife with content that is inappropriate for children doesn’t mean it alienates them with an air of sophistication. However, Perfect Dark is the Rate title that an adult could be inclined to incorporate into their cultured leisure activities alongside breaking open a glass of scotch of Bordeaux wine while putting on some Sade or Bill Evans Trio to unwind.
Perfect Dark’s inherent maturity comes from the fact that it’s a first-person shooter title. Upon revealing this information about the game’s identity, hundreds of gamers are going to interject with Goldeneye 007 to dispute my claim that Perfect Dark was Rare’s first foray into enlightened territory. After all, who can possibly outclass the iconic, debonair British spy who always orders his vodka martinis shaken, not stirred, and is the unparalleled epitome of a ladies' man? Hell, some could argue that a James Bond video game adaptation being one of Rare’s properties negates the necessity for Perfect Dark to deviate from the company’s normal practices of pumping out kid-friendly material. However, Perfect Dark’s dignification transcends Goldeneye 007 in more than just its tone and content. Perfect Dark bends the gung-ho gameplay of the first-person shooter genre upward into an intelligency arch, towering over its fast-paced, electric peers by making its players think critically about the overall objective of an FPS game’s levels in a slower, methodical manner. Does this complex approach complement the genre’s general format, or does it prove to be a counterintuitive mistake that causes unnecessary dissonance? With Perfect Dark, either stance is entirely debatable.
On top of the way Perfect Dark conducts itself, the game is irrefutably a technical marvel beyond the boundaries of a standard N64 game. While Perfect Dark is staunchly associated with the now-retro period of the early 3D age alongside the rest of Rare’s notable N64 releases, I mean that it surpassed the others on a technical level in an impartial sense. Perfect Dark’s full scope was so ambitious that it literally could not be exhibited entirely on the primitive 3D console. Everything except the bare-bones multiplayer mode is inaccessible unless the player purchases an expansion pack that adds several gigabytes of RAM to the N64, and only then can the player experience Perfect Dark in its comprehensive glory. The auxiliary aid of the external apparatus renders a noirish, futuristic world akin to the unmistakable cyberpunk aesthetic of the science fiction classic Blade Runner. All Perfect Dark’s setting needs is the Atari logo spanning across the side of a skyscraper to really hone in on that state of a spellbinding, cybernetic world, but featuring another company’s insignia in a video game, not of that company’s creation might involve a serious lawsuit. Requisite, albeit still fantastical, setpieces like flying automobiles zoom through the city skyline illuminated by the artificial iridescence of urban lighting. A conversation of great urgency via telecommunications is heard in the backdrop of this scene, ending when a woman in a skin-tight uniform shimmies down from the chopper the camera has had a narrowed focus on throughout the cutscene onto the roof of one of the tallest buildings in this metropolitan area, signaling the time for action is nigh. Somewhere in Japan, Hideo Kojima’s ego is either bursting with pride that his auteur strides in gaming are being emulated, or he’s green with envy that another developer has managed to craft an opening with the same heightened cinematic scope that he believed was unparalleled. Either way, comparing Perfect Dark’s introduction sequence to that of Metal Gear Solid’s is a lofty compliment, and it should reel the player into the futuristic adventure they are about to embark on. With the enhancement to the system’s capabilities, Perfect Dark’s graphics and cinematic splendor exceed all that we thought was possible on the N64. However, I cannot say that Perfect Dark compares to MGS in the voice acting department, as it’s indicative of the subpar, directionless vocal delivery associated with the growing pains of 3D gaming. Every (human) character has either an American or British accent with the half-and-half consistency of a coin flip, and as much as I snicker at how infamous lines like “No! That wasn’t meant to happen!” are spoken, I don’t think I’m intended to find humor in them given the context. The game doesn’t exactly scream camp to me like Resident Evil.
The character descending from the chopper hovering from above is secret agent Joanna Dark, the game’s protagonist whose “Perfect Dark” alias is the namesake of the title. Some people have been campaigning recently to gender swap James Bond for both a fresh character perspective and to depict more shrewd, capable female protagonists in pieces of media for the sake of inclusivity. Little do they know, gaming was somehow light years ahead of the curve in this regard. It’s uncertain how Joanna prefers the concentration of her gin-oriented cocktails, but this young lady is certainly as adept in executing feats of classified government espionage as her male inspiration. Her sultry, feminine charms are also a plus that Agent 007 could never exude for obvious reasons. Joanna is the prime secret operative working for the Carrington Institute, a research facility whose goal is to halt the clandestine affairs of the military weapons corporation dataDyne. Because dataDyne knows that their recent business interactions are shady and illegal, they’ve armed themselves to the teeth with a battalion of alert guards prepared to strike down any snakes in the proverbial grass. The one-(wo)man-army of Joanna Dark is facing a legion of opposition defending their roost, so it's of the utmost importance for her to approach every corner and crevice of their facilities with caution and masterful coordination. If this sounds overwhelming to the player, the game offers them plenty of room for preparation. Exiting the menu from the laptop where the main missions are selected will transport the player to navigate through the Carrington Institute. Not only will simply traipsing around the clean and professional hallways of this high clearance institute allow the player to grasp the base controls but certain sections are dedicated to allowing Joanna to brush up on her fieldwork. An indoor firing range will display an array of targets to test Joanna’s reflexive shooting aim, and a room painted with a black and white grid will emulate various obstacles to maneuver around, materialized via VR technology. Sure, presenting ways to train one’s abilities to better ensure accuracy in dire situations isn’t something previous FPS games have neglected to provide. However, the freeform, interactive space of the Carrington Institute is a neat little touch of deeper interactivity that creates an immersive quality unfound by simply selecting these training options from a menu. The developers took note that neutral hub zones were a prevalent attribute to the 3D era’s evolution of level design, and flaunting the Carrington Institute is one of the N64’s most atypical examples.
While Joanna is capable of walking to any of the institute’s facilities, she’ll still have to be transported to any of the game’s main levels that further the story by selecting them from the menu on a laptop screen. Perfect Dark’s story is divided into chapters, and those chapters are often spliced up even further by the missions in fractions of two to three. If a chapter is fractured, the collective individual missions are usually confined by a particular arc or setting, such as the main dataDyne building as the focal point of the first chapter or the three-act mission arc of rescuing the American president in the fifth one. Joanna’s overarching assignment to end dataDyne’s scheming will take her to a myriad of eclectic locations. Outside of the sterile, Nakatomi Plaza hallways of the dataDyne headquarters and the underground laboratories where the corporation’s secrets are obscured from the public eye, this operation will also take Joanna on a tour of oceanside villas, inside the quarters of a submarine, and the private jet of the most enterprising executive officials in the world. Joanna even burgles into Area 51, which is as thrilling as one could imagine. The streets of cyber-age Chicago in the third chapter are especially awe-striking, with that neon-drenched urban glow that made the visuals of Ridley Scott’s magnum opus (and Akira while we’re on the subject) so captivating. Joanna is treated to a grand tour of level setpieces, but they all tend to adopt the same design despite their expansive topographical range. The earliest FPS titles were confined to a labyrinthian level construct, and Perfect Dark continues to trap the player in claustrophobic, monochromatic corridors as if it's devoted to some kind of genre tradition. Admittedly, the offices of a thirty-story building and the interior of a nautical station are appropriately serpentine. However, the dim ice caves of the snowy tundra where the Air Force One jet plummets is a clear indication that the game’s areas are constrained to this sort of construct. As a result of this cohesive design, traversing through Perfect Dark’s levels can be as frustratingly dizzying as attempting to escape a hedge maze while drunk as a skunk.
Lest we forget in discussing Perfect Dark’s levels is that it's still an FPS game, so anyone can logically assume that the vexing search for an exit will constantly be distracted by swathes of armed guards for Joanna to subdue. One could also draw conclusions from the spy implications that Joanna’s carrying a treasure trove of weapons and gadgets to use on the field as well. The Carrington Institute doesn’t supply Joanna with any drastically covert items like a stick of lip gloss that melts steel walls when pressed on surfaces, or bubblegum that disables security cameras when it is spat on the lens. Still, the revolving array of doodads the agency does grant Joanna are government-grade materials and are bound to draw a sense of curiosity from the player. Joanna’s primary weapon that seems most commonplace in her utility belt is a scoped pistol called “The Falcon,” and it can be supplemented by the slew of automatic firearms that the guards generously leave behind after Joanna has picked them off. The Dragon, Cyclone, and the K7 Avenger are as deadly and proficient as their badass names would suggest. They are also the weapons I recommend using during missions because their ammunition can be replenished plentifully due to enemies prevalently using them to strike Joanna down. If it sounds like the institute has overestimated Joanna’s abilities by only granting her access to a peashooter with minimal ammunition, fear not: their budget is exorbitant enough to supply their finest operative with some creative and esoteric gadgets financed by the cumulative tax dollars of the people. A crossbow may not seem unorthodox for something exclusive to secret agents, nor does it seem efficient for killing. However, it proves to be the only weapon in the game that ensures a quick dispatch for any target in Joanna’s sights. Sleep arrows are an alternate type of ammunition for delicate targets who must be sedated temporarily. The agency provides a laser that is comfortably placed on Joanna’s wrist like a watch, and a sniper rifle is evidently too essential a weapon to have Joanna scrounge on the field. The fetching weapon that outclasses all of its peers in Perfect Dark is definitely the Laptop Gun, a sub-machine gun that also functions as a detached, automated turret disguised as a seemingly innocuous laptop. Joanna is also equipped with plenty of non-deadly gadgets that are entirely situational to specific objectives such as night vision goggles and the voyeuristic CamSpy. No matter the size or firepower of a weapon, all of them are equipped with a secondary view that zeros in on a target from afar. While the utility of this feature seems like a no-brainer, the aiming controls when looking through the reticle are more slippery than a sea lion. Couldn’t the agency have provided Joanna with some Diazepam to calm her nervous tremors? Actually, it doesn’t matter how unwavering this supplementary sight is because aiming in the standard viewpoint is already course-corrected by the game. Because the FPS genre’s core gameplay mechanic is automatically assisted, the satisfaction that should’ve come with mowing down enemies with Joanna’s eclectic arsenal was ultimately unfulfilled.
Then I quickly realized that shooting combat is not the focal gameplay aspect of Perfect Dark as it is for the average FPS title. I’ve mentioned the word “objective” plenty throughout this review so far, but I have yet to emphasize how pertinent the mission objectives are in establishing Perfect Dark’s directional identity that discerns it from its more guerilla FPS peers. Before the introductory cinematic that sets the scene for a mission, the player is given a checklist of tasks that they must complete in order to succeed. Only during the first mission is Joanna’s trajectory a straightforward trek from point A to Zed, as these objectives will have her scatter across the map searching for solutions to where one of these objectives is located and how to approach it. The number of objectives needed to complete the level coincides with the three different difficulties, with the easiest “agent” requiring three objectives, the standard “special” with four, and the most daunting “perfect agent” presenting a whopping five of which to contend. Every objective found in the simplest difficulty is shuffled with the additional one or two, and the peremptory ones needed for the harder difficulties are still actively occurring even if the player doesn’t have to bother with them. As stressful as the prospect of adding more tasks to the workload might be for some players, maximizing the productivity in each area with the highest number of objectives is the best way to fully engage with an area to its fullest extent. Doing so will also inject more context into many of the scenarios that the easiest difficulty omits for the sake of mitigation. For example, the scene in which Elvis the alien miraculously wakes from his vegetative state in what is essentially a levitating coffin all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on “agent” difficulty seems too conveniently instantaneous. One objective for the “special agent” difficulty sees Joanna resurrecting the intergalactic creature with a medkit after acting as his sole pallbearer and suddenly, all of my confusion and skepticism was assuaged. Still, regardless of whether or not the player wishes to leave each level without a trace of unfinished business, the objective model alone requires a concerted amount of brain power and patience from the player that no other FPS game has ever come close to factoring into their gameplay.
However, there is an underlying issue with the objective-latent pace of the missions, for it makes the game severely demanding. The missions in Perfect Dark are rather delicate, to say the least, and the margin of error for many of the level’s objectives can be as thin as dental floss. The simplest of mistakes can compromise Joanna’s efforts entirely, and she’ll be forced to abort the mission and have her Secret Service badge revoked indefinitely for her insubordination. I first had the impression that Perfect Dark was intentionally languid so the player could meticulously seek out objectives and carefully consider their options. Eventually, I learned that the game’s true intentions were to have the player fail intentionally unless they have honest-to-god Secret Service training and can deal with any of these situations accordingly. This way, every mistake will eventually ensure a flawless run that will lead the player to victory, but this should only be for those who are concerned with beating their timed scores. Sure, the specifics of the objectives are elucidated upon in the dossier, but there are still some stipulations that the game still keeps in the dark. I was not aware of the thirty-second timer that started before the suitcase carrying Joanna’s equipment was compromised by the mountain lodge’s security, nor was I aware that killing the stewardess’s bodyguards was a punishable faux pas that violated the agency’s code of ethics. When a mission is aborted due to the player’s supposed ineptitude, all progress is reverted right back to the beginning. Not to mention, they’ll still have to factor in the amount of damage Joanna receives, and her death will naturally signal a failed mission as well. The game may direct the player’s aim towards an enemy with more assistance than other FPS titles, but this still does not guarantee that they won’t have the sharpened reflexes to shoot Joanna before they are even sighted in her peripheral. Beyond the “agent” difficulty, allowing an enemy to graze Joanna will result in a hefty decrease in Joanna’s health. Joanna is cooked once the red health threshold fills completely (with blood, no doubt). Shields can be utilized as protective armor, and they seem to be more durable than Joanna’s suit. However, on the harder difficulties, the shields found in the locations of the “agent” difficulty have been erased from the equation completely. Does it seem fair that the player’s extra attention in searching for additional aid is all for naught? An agreeable solution to balancing the higher difficulty settings would be to diminish the shield at the same rate as Joanna’s health because she sure as hell is still going to need them to survive. As it is, Perfect Dark tends to put more on the player’s plate than what is manageable.
Maybe the rate of Perfect Dark’s difficulty is on a steep incline because the stakes of the story ratchet upwards to an incomprehensible, galactic crisis. Perfect Dark’s central conflict supersedes the ordeal between the Carrington Institute and dataDyne, as both are acting as the allying benefactors for two alien factions fighting in a war for interplanetary dominance. The Carrington Institute is siding with the greyer, meeker Maians who look like the sketch artist's depiction of every conspirator’s account of their experience of being abducted by aliens. On the feuding side, dataDyne is in league with the Skedar race of aliens, who are indescribably beastly monsters with the power of shape-shifting their appearances (to something less horrific). Negotiations with dataDyne’s austere head honcho, the reputable, sour-faced Cassandra de Vries, have led the Skedar to an artifact submerged in the abyss of the Pacific Ocean. The transactional reward for dataDyne’s efforts is to finance the corporation with enough assets to crush every one of their competitors, but their first inclination with the superweapon is to test its unspeakable potency on Earth before they use it to wipe the Maians from existence. No wonder the floating dataDyne AI John Carroll defected and joined Carrington’s cause. With the help of Maian’s representative Elvis, who is surprisingly far more charming than his archetypal alien design should allow, Joanna makes De Vries learn the error of her ways. She then takes the fight to the Skedar leader on their home planet, who has been posing as a human operative named Mr. Blonde. Besides the unconventional boss fight against the supreme Skedar lifeform, the ending is rather anticlimactic. Joanna and Elvis congratulating themselves on a job well done as they return to their respective environments isn't a conclusion with the sense of urgency that this epic ordeal should have warranted. Considering that situations differ between difficulties, the outcome of completing the final task should also depend on the extent of the player’s accomplishments.
Despite the resounding success of Goldeneye 007, Rare still wasn’t finished in proving their point that original FPS titles could exist competently on a console’s hardware. Goldeneye 007 provided enough evidence that this hypothesis was feasible, but Perfect Dark is the next leap from Rare’s previous FPS title that suggested that some console FPS games could surpass the quality of those on the PC. Perfect Dark is a layered and cerebral FPS game that trumped the PC crowd’s precious progenitors by cooling its formula to the point of rich refinement that only the patient and acute and clever gamers could entertain. Perhaps I’m not as astute of a gamer as I thought, but there’s a difference between a sharp wit and intuition and psychic foresight that the game sometimes expects from its players. Goldeneye passed the ocular pat down to sit and fraternize with the regulars at the FPS bar, but Perfect Dark is the Frasier Crane of this analogy that talks of urbane subjects whether or not the other patrons understand him.
Tres bien, Rareware.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
Perfect Dark’s inherent maturity comes from the fact that it’s a first-person shooter title. Upon revealing this information about the game’s identity, hundreds of gamers are going to interject with Goldeneye 007 to dispute my claim that Perfect Dark was Rare’s first foray into enlightened territory. After all, who can possibly outclass the iconic, debonair British spy who always orders his vodka martinis shaken, not stirred, and is the unparalleled epitome of a ladies' man? Hell, some could argue that a James Bond video game adaptation being one of Rare’s properties negates the necessity for Perfect Dark to deviate from the company’s normal practices of pumping out kid-friendly material. However, Perfect Dark’s dignification transcends Goldeneye 007 in more than just its tone and content. Perfect Dark bends the gung-ho gameplay of the first-person shooter genre upward into an intelligency arch, towering over its fast-paced, electric peers by making its players think critically about the overall objective of an FPS game’s levels in a slower, methodical manner. Does this complex approach complement the genre’s general format, or does it prove to be a counterintuitive mistake that causes unnecessary dissonance? With Perfect Dark, either stance is entirely debatable.
On top of the way Perfect Dark conducts itself, the game is irrefutably a technical marvel beyond the boundaries of a standard N64 game. While Perfect Dark is staunchly associated with the now-retro period of the early 3D age alongside the rest of Rare’s notable N64 releases, I mean that it surpassed the others on a technical level in an impartial sense. Perfect Dark’s full scope was so ambitious that it literally could not be exhibited entirely on the primitive 3D console. Everything except the bare-bones multiplayer mode is inaccessible unless the player purchases an expansion pack that adds several gigabytes of RAM to the N64, and only then can the player experience Perfect Dark in its comprehensive glory. The auxiliary aid of the external apparatus renders a noirish, futuristic world akin to the unmistakable cyberpunk aesthetic of the science fiction classic Blade Runner. All Perfect Dark’s setting needs is the Atari logo spanning across the side of a skyscraper to really hone in on that state of a spellbinding, cybernetic world, but featuring another company’s insignia in a video game, not of that company’s creation might involve a serious lawsuit. Requisite, albeit still fantastical, setpieces like flying automobiles zoom through the city skyline illuminated by the artificial iridescence of urban lighting. A conversation of great urgency via telecommunications is heard in the backdrop of this scene, ending when a woman in a skin-tight uniform shimmies down from the chopper the camera has had a narrowed focus on throughout the cutscene onto the roof of one of the tallest buildings in this metropolitan area, signaling the time for action is nigh. Somewhere in Japan, Hideo Kojima’s ego is either bursting with pride that his auteur strides in gaming are being emulated, or he’s green with envy that another developer has managed to craft an opening with the same heightened cinematic scope that he believed was unparalleled. Either way, comparing Perfect Dark’s introduction sequence to that of Metal Gear Solid’s is a lofty compliment, and it should reel the player into the futuristic adventure they are about to embark on. With the enhancement to the system’s capabilities, Perfect Dark’s graphics and cinematic splendor exceed all that we thought was possible on the N64. However, I cannot say that Perfect Dark compares to MGS in the voice acting department, as it’s indicative of the subpar, directionless vocal delivery associated with the growing pains of 3D gaming. Every (human) character has either an American or British accent with the half-and-half consistency of a coin flip, and as much as I snicker at how infamous lines like “No! That wasn’t meant to happen!” are spoken, I don’t think I’m intended to find humor in them given the context. The game doesn’t exactly scream camp to me like Resident Evil.
The character descending from the chopper hovering from above is secret agent Joanna Dark, the game’s protagonist whose “Perfect Dark” alias is the namesake of the title. Some people have been campaigning recently to gender swap James Bond for both a fresh character perspective and to depict more shrewd, capable female protagonists in pieces of media for the sake of inclusivity. Little do they know, gaming was somehow light years ahead of the curve in this regard. It’s uncertain how Joanna prefers the concentration of her gin-oriented cocktails, but this young lady is certainly as adept in executing feats of classified government espionage as her male inspiration. Her sultry, feminine charms are also a plus that Agent 007 could never exude for obvious reasons. Joanna is the prime secret operative working for the Carrington Institute, a research facility whose goal is to halt the clandestine affairs of the military weapons corporation dataDyne. Because dataDyne knows that their recent business interactions are shady and illegal, they’ve armed themselves to the teeth with a battalion of alert guards prepared to strike down any snakes in the proverbial grass. The one-(wo)man-army of Joanna Dark is facing a legion of opposition defending their roost, so it's of the utmost importance for her to approach every corner and crevice of their facilities with caution and masterful coordination. If this sounds overwhelming to the player, the game offers them plenty of room for preparation. Exiting the menu from the laptop where the main missions are selected will transport the player to navigate through the Carrington Institute. Not only will simply traipsing around the clean and professional hallways of this high clearance institute allow the player to grasp the base controls but certain sections are dedicated to allowing Joanna to brush up on her fieldwork. An indoor firing range will display an array of targets to test Joanna’s reflexive shooting aim, and a room painted with a black and white grid will emulate various obstacles to maneuver around, materialized via VR technology. Sure, presenting ways to train one’s abilities to better ensure accuracy in dire situations isn’t something previous FPS games have neglected to provide. However, the freeform, interactive space of the Carrington Institute is a neat little touch of deeper interactivity that creates an immersive quality unfound by simply selecting these training options from a menu. The developers took note that neutral hub zones were a prevalent attribute to the 3D era’s evolution of level design, and flaunting the Carrington Institute is one of the N64’s most atypical examples.
While Joanna is capable of walking to any of the institute’s facilities, she’ll still have to be transported to any of the game’s main levels that further the story by selecting them from the menu on a laptop screen. Perfect Dark’s story is divided into chapters, and those chapters are often spliced up even further by the missions in fractions of two to three. If a chapter is fractured, the collective individual missions are usually confined by a particular arc or setting, such as the main dataDyne building as the focal point of the first chapter or the three-act mission arc of rescuing the American president in the fifth one. Joanna’s overarching assignment to end dataDyne’s scheming will take her to a myriad of eclectic locations. Outside of the sterile, Nakatomi Plaza hallways of the dataDyne headquarters and the underground laboratories where the corporation’s secrets are obscured from the public eye, this operation will also take Joanna on a tour of oceanside villas, inside the quarters of a submarine, and the private jet of the most enterprising executive officials in the world. Joanna even burgles into Area 51, which is as thrilling as one could imagine. The streets of cyber-age Chicago in the third chapter are especially awe-striking, with that neon-drenched urban glow that made the visuals of Ridley Scott’s magnum opus (and Akira while we’re on the subject) so captivating. Joanna is treated to a grand tour of level setpieces, but they all tend to adopt the same design despite their expansive topographical range. The earliest FPS titles were confined to a labyrinthian level construct, and Perfect Dark continues to trap the player in claustrophobic, monochromatic corridors as if it's devoted to some kind of genre tradition. Admittedly, the offices of a thirty-story building and the interior of a nautical station are appropriately serpentine. However, the dim ice caves of the snowy tundra where the Air Force One jet plummets is a clear indication that the game’s areas are constrained to this sort of construct. As a result of this cohesive design, traversing through Perfect Dark’s levels can be as frustratingly dizzying as attempting to escape a hedge maze while drunk as a skunk.
Lest we forget in discussing Perfect Dark’s levels is that it's still an FPS game, so anyone can logically assume that the vexing search for an exit will constantly be distracted by swathes of armed guards for Joanna to subdue. One could also draw conclusions from the spy implications that Joanna’s carrying a treasure trove of weapons and gadgets to use on the field as well. The Carrington Institute doesn’t supply Joanna with any drastically covert items like a stick of lip gloss that melts steel walls when pressed on surfaces, or bubblegum that disables security cameras when it is spat on the lens. Still, the revolving array of doodads the agency does grant Joanna are government-grade materials and are bound to draw a sense of curiosity from the player. Joanna’s primary weapon that seems most commonplace in her utility belt is a scoped pistol called “The Falcon,” and it can be supplemented by the slew of automatic firearms that the guards generously leave behind after Joanna has picked them off. The Dragon, Cyclone, and the K7 Avenger are as deadly and proficient as their badass names would suggest. They are also the weapons I recommend using during missions because their ammunition can be replenished plentifully due to enemies prevalently using them to strike Joanna down. If it sounds like the institute has overestimated Joanna’s abilities by only granting her access to a peashooter with minimal ammunition, fear not: their budget is exorbitant enough to supply their finest operative with some creative and esoteric gadgets financed by the cumulative tax dollars of the people. A crossbow may not seem unorthodox for something exclusive to secret agents, nor does it seem efficient for killing. However, it proves to be the only weapon in the game that ensures a quick dispatch for any target in Joanna’s sights. Sleep arrows are an alternate type of ammunition for delicate targets who must be sedated temporarily. The agency provides a laser that is comfortably placed on Joanna’s wrist like a watch, and a sniper rifle is evidently too essential a weapon to have Joanna scrounge on the field. The fetching weapon that outclasses all of its peers in Perfect Dark is definitely the Laptop Gun, a sub-machine gun that also functions as a detached, automated turret disguised as a seemingly innocuous laptop. Joanna is also equipped with plenty of non-deadly gadgets that are entirely situational to specific objectives such as night vision goggles and the voyeuristic CamSpy. No matter the size or firepower of a weapon, all of them are equipped with a secondary view that zeros in on a target from afar. While the utility of this feature seems like a no-brainer, the aiming controls when looking through the reticle are more slippery than a sea lion. Couldn’t the agency have provided Joanna with some Diazepam to calm her nervous tremors? Actually, it doesn’t matter how unwavering this supplementary sight is because aiming in the standard viewpoint is already course-corrected by the game. Because the FPS genre’s core gameplay mechanic is automatically assisted, the satisfaction that should’ve come with mowing down enemies with Joanna’s eclectic arsenal was ultimately unfulfilled.
Then I quickly realized that shooting combat is not the focal gameplay aspect of Perfect Dark as it is for the average FPS title. I’ve mentioned the word “objective” plenty throughout this review so far, but I have yet to emphasize how pertinent the mission objectives are in establishing Perfect Dark’s directional identity that discerns it from its more guerilla FPS peers. Before the introductory cinematic that sets the scene for a mission, the player is given a checklist of tasks that they must complete in order to succeed. Only during the first mission is Joanna’s trajectory a straightforward trek from point A to Zed, as these objectives will have her scatter across the map searching for solutions to where one of these objectives is located and how to approach it. The number of objectives needed to complete the level coincides with the three different difficulties, with the easiest “agent” requiring three objectives, the standard “special” with four, and the most daunting “perfect agent” presenting a whopping five of which to contend. Every objective found in the simplest difficulty is shuffled with the additional one or two, and the peremptory ones needed for the harder difficulties are still actively occurring even if the player doesn’t have to bother with them. As stressful as the prospect of adding more tasks to the workload might be for some players, maximizing the productivity in each area with the highest number of objectives is the best way to fully engage with an area to its fullest extent. Doing so will also inject more context into many of the scenarios that the easiest difficulty omits for the sake of mitigation. For example, the scene in which Elvis the alien miraculously wakes from his vegetative state in what is essentially a levitating coffin all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on “agent” difficulty seems too conveniently instantaneous. One objective for the “special agent” difficulty sees Joanna resurrecting the intergalactic creature with a medkit after acting as his sole pallbearer and suddenly, all of my confusion and skepticism was assuaged. Still, regardless of whether or not the player wishes to leave each level without a trace of unfinished business, the objective model alone requires a concerted amount of brain power and patience from the player that no other FPS game has ever come close to factoring into their gameplay.
However, there is an underlying issue with the objective-latent pace of the missions, for it makes the game severely demanding. The missions in Perfect Dark are rather delicate, to say the least, and the margin of error for many of the level’s objectives can be as thin as dental floss. The simplest of mistakes can compromise Joanna’s efforts entirely, and she’ll be forced to abort the mission and have her Secret Service badge revoked indefinitely for her insubordination. I first had the impression that Perfect Dark was intentionally languid so the player could meticulously seek out objectives and carefully consider their options. Eventually, I learned that the game’s true intentions were to have the player fail intentionally unless they have honest-to-god Secret Service training and can deal with any of these situations accordingly. This way, every mistake will eventually ensure a flawless run that will lead the player to victory, but this should only be for those who are concerned with beating their timed scores. Sure, the specifics of the objectives are elucidated upon in the dossier, but there are still some stipulations that the game still keeps in the dark. I was not aware of the thirty-second timer that started before the suitcase carrying Joanna’s equipment was compromised by the mountain lodge’s security, nor was I aware that killing the stewardess’s bodyguards was a punishable faux pas that violated the agency’s code of ethics. When a mission is aborted due to the player’s supposed ineptitude, all progress is reverted right back to the beginning. Not to mention, they’ll still have to factor in the amount of damage Joanna receives, and her death will naturally signal a failed mission as well. The game may direct the player’s aim towards an enemy with more assistance than other FPS titles, but this still does not guarantee that they won’t have the sharpened reflexes to shoot Joanna before they are even sighted in her peripheral. Beyond the “agent” difficulty, allowing an enemy to graze Joanna will result in a hefty decrease in Joanna’s health. Joanna is cooked once the red health threshold fills completely (with blood, no doubt). Shields can be utilized as protective armor, and they seem to be more durable than Joanna’s suit. However, on the harder difficulties, the shields found in the locations of the “agent” difficulty have been erased from the equation completely. Does it seem fair that the player’s extra attention in searching for additional aid is all for naught? An agreeable solution to balancing the higher difficulty settings would be to diminish the shield at the same rate as Joanna’s health because she sure as hell is still going to need them to survive. As it is, Perfect Dark tends to put more on the player’s plate than what is manageable.
Maybe the rate of Perfect Dark’s difficulty is on a steep incline because the stakes of the story ratchet upwards to an incomprehensible, galactic crisis. Perfect Dark’s central conflict supersedes the ordeal between the Carrington Institute and dataDyne, as both are acting as the allying benefactors for two alien factions fighting in a war for interplanetary dominance. The Carrington Institute is siding with the greyer, meeker Maians who look like the sketch artist's depiction of every conspirator’s account of their experience of being abducted by aliens. On the feuding side, dataDyne is in league with the Skedar race of aliens, who are indescribably beastly monsters with the power of shape-shifting their appearances (to something less horrific). Negotiations with dataDyne’s austere head honcho, the reputable, sour-faced Cassandra de Vries, have led the Skedar to an artifact submerged in the abyss of the Pacific Ocean. The transactional reward for dataDyne’s efforts is to finance the corporation with enough assets to crush every one of their competitors, but their first inclination with the superweapon is to test its unspeakable potency on Earth before they use it to wipe the Maians from existence. No wonder the floating dataDyne AI John Carroll defected and joined Carrington’s cause. With the help of Maian’s representative Elvis, who is surprisingly far more charming than his archetypal alien design should allow, Joanna makes De Vries learn the error of her ways. She then takes the fight to the Skedar leader on their home planet, who has been posing as a human operative named Mr. Blonde. Besides the unconventional boss fight against the supreme Skedar lifeform, the ending is rather anticlimactic. Joanna and Elvis congratulating themselves on a job well done as they return to their respective environments isn't a conclusion with the sense of urgency that this epic ordeal should have warranted. Considering that situations differ between difficulties, the outcome of completing the final task should also depend on the extent of the player’s accomplishments.
Despite the resounding success of Goldeneye 007, Rare still wasn’t finished in proving their point that original FPS titles could exist competently on a console’s hardware. Goldeneye 007 provided enough evidence that this hypothesis was feasible, but Perfect Dark is the next leap from Rare’s previous FPS title that suggested that some console FPS games could surpass the quality of those on the PC. Perfect Dark is a layered and cerebral FPS game that trumped the PC crowd’s precious progenitors by cooling its formula to the point of rich refinement that only the patient and acute and clever gamers could entertain. Perhaps I’m not as astute of a gamer as I thought, but there’s a difference between a sharp wit and intuition and psychic foresight that the game sometimes expects from its players. Goldeneye passed the ocular pat down to sit and fraternize with the regulars at the FPS bar, but Perfect Dark is the Frasier Crane of this analogy that talks of urbane subjects whether or not the other patrons understand him.
Tres bien, Rareware.
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