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.