Machine Head Review

It's not just a Death Machine, it's also a Miracle Bra!

Thus begins Machine Head, a game that has absolutely nothing to do with the song. You are the beautiful young female doctor who got klonked on the head and strapped into an ugly machine that squeezes your breasts together so you have cleavage deeper than the Grand Canyon. (Any female readers offended yet? Wait, it gets worse.) You are controlled by your co-worker, the aforementioned geek, and are forced to carry out his orders or he'll blow you to kingdom come. You also get to listen to his sleazy comments and come-ons throughout the entire game. Oh, there's also a nanotechnology plague that covers the earth (remember that?)

The graphics in Machine Head are okay. All the full motion video sequences are very detailed, right down to the 'Juggs' magazine on the geek's desk. In the game itself, the landscape is pretty bleak. Machine Head's biggest problem is with pop-up. You can walk looking straight into the air and not know that there in a bridge above you until you are almost directly underneath it. Even then, the bridge appears in chunks, totally ruining any attempts at creating the feel of a realistic world.

The music and sound are remarkably adequate. Nothing really stands out, they simply do their job and complement the action. Guns sound like guns, geeks sound like geeks, etc.

The control is difficult to get the hang of. Even after playing Machine Head for awhile, you are still unable to move about as easily as some other games in this genre. Because the pop-up is so bad, enemies literally come out of nowhere. Maneuvering to see which direction they are hitting you from is next to impossible.

Except for the rather unique Marathon, Doom-type games are not known for their plot. Machine Head is no exception. The "plot" exists solely for humor and has absolutely nothing to do with the game what-so-ever. The game designers appeared to have concentrated on the sexual themes of this game more than the gameplay itself. If they can spend enough time and money to make sure a Juggs magazine was in view on a desk for a second, they surely could have spent the time to get rid of the awful pop-up.

Doom-type games come and go as often as the tides. Some stand out, like Marathon or Duke Nuke'm, while others just pass by, hardly noticed. While there's not a lot wrong with these games, they just don't possess that certain something... that 'je ne sais quois' that is difficult to spell. In a world of first-person shooters, Machine Head is remarkably average.

If you like to see a lot of shots of a busty woman strapped into a post-apocolyptic Lay-Z-Boy, then you just might think that Machine Head is the best game ever made. If, however, you would like to have a lot of gameplay combined with cool graphics and sound, you should probably keep on looking.