Throwing a genetically modified tomato Review

Throwing a genetically modified tomato

There’s something about making a game based on a movie or television license that

seems to crush the creativity and talent out of everyone working on the project.

Previously brilliant programmers are mysteriously turned into gibbering idiots.

Highly regarded companies suddenly decide that this time they’re going to just

stuff any old thing in a box, slap a logo on it and try to sell it to you. Meanwhile

they take all the time and money they saved on development costs and spend it

drinking tequila all day.

What

I’m trying to say here is that the developers of Dark Angel must have

gone on a six month bender in Puerto Vallarta. It’s not that Dark Angel

is brutally awful or full of bugs like the TV spinoff Survivor:

The Interactive Game, it’s that it lacks any originality whatsoever. It’s

a boring, repetitive cookie-cutter game straight from the Nabisco ovens. You’ve

eaten this cookie many times before; and if you’re old enough, the first time

it was called Streets of Rage.

But at least Dark Angel is wrapped up in a nice shiny package with

a TV logo on it, right? You play as Max, the sexy heroine of Dark Angel,

a show that lasted two seasons before it was cancelled. It has James

Cameron’s (Titanic,

The

Terminator) name on it, but I imagine he just sold it to them for some cash.

They paid for couple other celebrity names too, because Jessica

Alba and Michael

Weatherly who star in the TV show provide the voices for the characters.

A nice touch, but it doesn’t make a game.

Max is a genetically engineered soldier searching for her lost siblings in

a grim future version of Seattle. She is aided by Logan Cale an underground

cyber-journalist with a conscience. To complicate matters, she is hunted by

the clearly evil – I – Corporation, which wound be investigated by the SEC if

they didn’t get special Evil Tax Breaks.

Dark Angel (and Streets of Rage) is the sort of game we like

to call a “beat ’em up.” In these games you move along a fixed path where a

nearly endless series of enemies is thrown at you. You defeat them with an even

more endless series of button presses. That’s pretty much the whole game as

it was then and as it is now.

The enemies in Dark Angel present little challenge to Max’s genetically

engineered ass kicking. It’s really a very simple matter to dispatch hordes

of enemies just by mashing the buttons. The manual actually lists such devastating

moves as Punch, Punch, Punch. Or you can top that one with Punch, Punch, Punch,

Punch. And even Punch, Punch, Punch, Punch, Punch. (I am not kidding, it’s actually

in the manual)

Of course if you get tired of the Punch button, you can also hit Jump, Kick,

or Throw, but you don’t really need to. Even Streets of Rage required

a little more strategy than that.

There’s

also a half-assed attempt at putting in some stealth levels, but they fail miserably,

mostly because of the camera, which works fine for fighting, but absolutely

refuses to let you look around a corner. On the stealth levels, when you are

discovered by an enemy a timer starts counting down (usually one minute). If

you haven’t knocked out every single enemy when it hits zero, you automatically

lose the game, despite the fact that you are at full health and have been handily

Kicking their butts with the Kick button.

At least the graphics are better than Streets of Rage. Everything is

crisp and clear and smooth. You can’t really see what the powerups are, but

none of them are bad for you so you just run up to anything that glows. I’ve

tried out both the Xbox and the PS2 version, and if there’s a difference between

them, I can’t see it. The graphics are solid, but wont win awards on either

system.

The combat-heavy streets of Seattle are full of trash and dumpsters and graffiti,

and the best parts are Max’s moves. She twists and spins and jumps off walls

like she’s in a John

Woo film. The action frequently goes into slow-mo when Max gets in a particularly

good punch or slams an enemy up against a dumpster.

It’s actually kind of fun at first” until you’ve punched your 200th bad guy

and you realize there are 2000 more to go. You’ll also begin to notice that

the streets of futuristic Seattle all look exactly the same, with the same burnt

out cars and the same dumpsters placed every thirty feet. Then it just gets

boring.

Dark Angel will make a fine rental for hardcore fans of the show. It’s got

the real actors and the plot mirrors an episode of the show almost exactly.

You’ll be able to beat it in a weekend, easy. But for everyone else, this game

really isn’t worth your time sitting there hitting the Punch button just to

see what Jessica Alba will eventually say next. This Dark Angel has fallen

from grace.