A second game in the D "trilogy", Enemy Zero is another "interactive movie" from Kenji Eno, this time for Sega Saturn.
It's probably the game out of the trilogy I've enjoyed the least. First of all, let's talk about the whole "interactive movie" thing. None of Eno's games can be even remotely perceived as movies, and if this WERE a movie, it'd be panned for being a complete and utter rip-off of Alien, which I know even though I've never seen Alien, because it's just so blatant.
I don't think I've mentioned this in my previous reviews, but Kenji Eno had this wild idea about having "digital actors" in his games. That is, the idea that you can reuse the same character who would "play" different people. When examined in the, let's call it Laura trilogy, it failed miserably. Indeed, the only connecting tissue between the games is the main character, always called Laura, who's always a different person. However if you've not read about the digital actor idea, you'd probably just think Eno likes the name, because with games coming out on different platforms Laura always looks different. Does she have the same actress? Also no. In fact, this is yet another game in which Laura is basically mute, which really begs the question as to why you make what's supposed to be a movie with the main character who never really reacts to things outside of a shocked gasp. The only good thing to come out of this idea is that they could skip some of the character design, I suppose.
Enemy Zero is a bit of a mix between D and D2 in terms of gameplay: there are plenty of pre-rendered rooms you can examine and collect items, but it also has a few labyrinthian FPS sequences where you try to kill invisible enemies via a metal detector-like sound system of various beeps and bloops. It's probably the best part of the game because at least it's original and somewhat tense.
As with other Laura titles, this game also likes to waste your time and be needlessly obtuse at points, and this time I just gave up and used the guide halfway through as the game pretty much required me to go to a random spot on a fairly large map. On the other hand, some puzzles basically solve themselves, which is really strange. The music and graphics are, as always, nice, but I just can never recommend actually playing Eno's main series of games because they seem designed to infuriate, and their best (and worst) moments are confined to cutscenes.
And yet again I find that it was the original D to shock me the most with its final flashback scene, as this game can barely be called scary. Unlike with D2 it doesn't even try to go for shock, mainly just featuring various levels of gore throughout. I've still enjoyed playing it more than D which felt completely pointless, but again, if this sounds interesting, Youtube is that-a-way.
It's probably the game out of the trilogy I've enjoyed the least. First of all, let's talk about the whole "interactive movie" thing. None of Eno's games can be even remotely perceived as movies, and if this WERE a movie, it'd be panned for being a complete and utter rip-off of Alien, which I know even though I've never seen Alien, because it's just so blatant.
I don't think I've mentioned this in my previous reviews, but Kenji Eno had this wild idea about having "digital actors" in his games. That is, the idea that you can reuse the same character who would "play" different people. When examined in the, let's call it Laura trilogy, it failed miserably. Indeed, the only connecting tissue between the games is the main character, always called Laura, who's always a different person. However if you've not read about the digital actor idea, you'd probably just think Eno likes the name, because with games coming out on different platforms Laura always looks different. Does she have the same actress? Also no. In fact, this is yet another game in which Laura is basically mute, which really begs the question as to why you make what's supposed to be a movie with the main character who never really reacts to things outside of a shocked gasp. The only good thing to come out of this idea is that they could skip some of the character design, I suppose.
Enemy Zero is a bit of a mix between D and D2 in terms of gameplay: there are plenty of pre-rendered rooms you can examine and collect items, but it also has a few labyrinthian FPS sequences where you try to kill invisible enemies via a metal detector-like sound system of various beeps and bloops. It's probably the best part of the game because at least it's original and somewhat tense.
As with other Laura titles, this game also likes to waste your time and be needlessly obtuse at points, and this time I just gave up and used the guide halfway through as the game pretty much required me to go to a random spot on a fairly large map. On the other hand, some puzzles basically solve themselves, which is really strange. The music and graphics are, as always, nice, but I just can never recommend actually playing Eno's main series of games because they seem designed to infuriate, and their best (and worst) moments are confined to cutscenes.
And yet again I find that it was the original D to shock me the most with its final flashback scene, as this game can barely be called scary. Unlike with D2 it doesn't even try to go for shock, mainly just featuring various levels of gore throughout. I've still enjoyed playing it more than D which felt completely pointless, but again, if this sounds interesting, Youtube is that-a-way.