March 10, 2004- be ey 2 ' 3 t Dragon's Lair 3D >> UBI Soft, 2002 The bumbling hero, Dirk the Daring, returns yet again to the lair of the dragon Singe. His goal, to retrieve the ditzy Princess Daphne (yet again) from the evil wizard Mordroc who is holding her captive. Though not as ground breaking as the original, which was the first game to appear on a laser disc, this game carries much promise. Using similar third person action to Ocarina of Time, the pro- grammers went out of their way to make sure that all the animation in this game is hand drawn. The game itself is not a sequel but a remake of the original. Several of the rooms, such as the drawbridge and the falling floor room come out of the original. Death comes with a sense of humour in this game as traps set throughout the dungeon defeat the noble hero using staples from cartoon history such as flattening and burning to ash. Even the death and resurrection of Dirk the Daring is right out of the original Dragons Lair game all though this gets incredibly old when you hit some of the harder puzzle rooms. Unfortunately, this game shares too many similarities with the Legend of Zelda series of games. The most obvious is the whirl- wind attack. Some of the others include heart containers and weird crystals which allow cap- tured maidens to talk with you. Aside from a few minor annoy- ances, Dragons Lair 3D is an excel- lent game with excellent graphics. I recommend it for those who were fans of the original as well as those who enjoy action games mixed with puzzles. Grade: B+ - Walter oe Once Upon a Knight >> Atari, 2003 Once Upon a Knight (OUAK) melds a Warcraft style real-time strategy (RTS) with a Diablo style role-playing game (RPG), while injecting the whole works with plenty of off-beat humour. Unfortunately, while the game achieves this objective, it doesn’t do that great of a job of it. The RTS mode follows the adventures of Prince John, a good and honourable knight, as he retakes his kingdom from the despicable lord Valtamand, who accidentally zapped John into another dimension. The gameplay follows normal RTS conventions. Cows are sent to pasture to eat grass and produce the game’s only resource, milk. This milk is then used to construct a base and train units. Unfortunately, the tech tree is quite lacking. The RPG mode follows the adventures of a solitary hero on a quest to free Prince John from his dimensional prison. Unfortunately, this portion merely replaces the base building, resource management, and army building of the RTS game with rudimentary inventory and skill systems. Either way, OUAK is a nice looking game. The camera can be rotated and zoomed, and every- thing just looks damn good. The sourid is decent. The game strives for humour, and occasionally actu- ally succeeds. Most of the funny, however, isn’t. Also, the minimap becomes uselessly cluttered with symbols. OUAK also features multiplayer for up to 8 players in either mode over LAN or the Earthnet match- making service. Overall, OUAK is merely ade- quate. I give ita C. Grade C - Brad Thank You! Over the Edge would like to extend a special thanks to Ruins and Love ‘n Lace for kindly sponsoring our Soul Calibur Tournament, and our annual Roll up the Rim Job to Win contest. Without the kind participation of these local businesses, Over the Edge’s contests would be so lousy they’d give you communicable diseases. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King >> EA Games, 2003 The Return of the King could quite possibly be the hardest game I have ever had the pleasure of playing. Even on easy mode there were some levels that made me so frustrated that my controller ended up on the other side of the room. In this game you actually are in the middle of the battles directly from the moyie, and the legions of orcs just seem to keep coming and coming. Enough of what I didn't like about the game, it did have a lot of good things about it too. It was very entertaining, combining many scenes from the movie. You actually feel as if you are a part of the story line. During movie events such as the battle at Helms Deep, the con- frontation of Shelob, or the black gate you can contribute your skills as Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Sam, or Frodo. After level completion, the points you collected for each death (the more artistic the kill the more points awarded) can be used to purchase upgrades for your character or for the whole team. The game also has a fantastic mul- tiplayer mode in which you and a friend take part in the same battle at the same time, no split screen. Having seen the movies, lid say that EA games do a pretty good job of putting you in them. Although this time, the fate of Middle-earth is in your hands. I just wish that it was just a little bit easier. 3 Grade A -Zeek Bindertwine > Electronic Arts, 2003 “What would bond do? That’s the question players will answer in every dramatic moment of James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing,” as EA games states. Well, I'm fairly certain that the answer to this question isn’t ‘stumble around into a firefight, Staring at the wall behind you’. It’s incredible the extent to which EA went with the celebrity voic- es; this game features Pierce Brosnan, Willem Dafoe, John Cleese, Judi Dench, Shannon Elizabeth, Mya, and Heidi Klum, as well as an entirely original plot line featuring a myriad of weapons and gizmos, with all the same plot twists and cliches that have become trademark of the Bond movies. Unfortunately, celebrity cameos can only help a game so much. The controls in this game are dodgy at best. The game is played entirely in third-person, with the player in control of the camera. This would be okay in isolated circumstances, but the automatic-positioning of the camera is agonizingly slow - a buttonhook turn will have you staring behind you for several seconds before the game finally realizes that it’s making you run blind. The movement is loose and, confusing and, therefore, takes a lot of getting used to, and the ‘innovative new hand-to- hand combat system’ kind of, as I once heard a wise erudite say, “sucks the balls”. It has one but- ton for “left attack” and one for “right attack”, but both do more or less the same thing - there don’t seem to be any combo attacks or anything like that; once you start beating the tar out of someone, you've pretty much taken them out. One good thing about the hand-to-hand system, however, is that it interacts with the environment-meaning that if there’s a wall next to you, Bond might smack ‘henchman holding wrench’ into the wall instead of just doing the regular ‘punch punch kick’ thing. The game isn’t entirely disori- enting combat, though. There are vehicle sections peppered throughout, the most impressive of which is a ridiculously fun motorcycle chase down a free- way, where you ride a Bond-style motorcycle down a freeway in pursuit of a big-rig tanker, dodg- ing in and out of oncoming traf- fic while taking out bad guys left right and center. The multiplayer, however, doesn’t use such ’fun’ parts. The ‘death match’ holds very little novelty, to it, and the co-op is pointless and, frankly put, sim- ply not much fun. Allin all, this is a crappy game with a few really fun parts scat- tered throughout. Grade C+ - Bitter Old Man Halo: Combat Evolved >> Bungie, 2003 Halo was originally planned for | the Mac, eventually also for PC. Then, Microsoft bought Bungie, the developer, and Halo became an XBOX exclusive. Finally, last September, Microsoft released a version of Halo for the PC. Created by Gearbox Software, the PC ver- sion of Halo includes the complete single player campaign from the XBOX game, with new mouse- friendly menus and an expanded multiplayer mode. Halo looked good on the XBOX, and it looks even better on the PC, provided you have a beastly computer, as the game could be better optimised. The environments have a good, organic look and feel to them, and the character and weapon models are exquisite. Another place that Halo shines is the sound’ The score is stirring, the voice act- ing is exceptional, and the various sounds are all wonderful. Where Halo is not so good are the levels in the single-player cam- paign. Simply put, some of them are mind-numbing, consisting of a — seemingly endless string of essentially the same damn room. One thing which makes these levels more tolerable on the PC is the con- trols. Mouselook is the only way to play a shooter. Halo for PC adds multiplayer over LAN or Internet. There are a number of new maps, and some PC multiplayer exclusive vehicles and weapons. Gone, however, is the Co-op mode from the XBO® ver- sion. Overall, Halo is apparently pretty good on the XBOX, and, in my humble opinion, really good on the PC. I give it an A. Grade A - Brad