Usually when a game comes in under the radar it’s a bad omen.  Zack Zero was so under the radar I didn’t even know it existed until after it released.  Trailers for the game show off a Ratchet and Clank aesthetic, but with a far less interesting protagonist.  So is Zack Zero the poor product its stealthy release seems to hint at, or a pleasant surprise in a slow month of gaming?

That somewhat dull protagonist alluded to is the titular Zack Zero.  He kind of looks like Duck Dodgers, with his spandex suit and a presumably self-referential Z plastered across his uniform.  Zack is on a quest to save his girlfriend and partner in heroism, Marlene, from the evil clutches of his arch nemesis, Zulrog.  Zulrog has quite the grudge against Zack because Zack and Marlene foiled his plan to take over Zack’s homeworld.  Just to make matters worse, Zulrog’s brother died in the process.  So now Zulrog is on a quest, not only exact his revenge, but also to obtain the materials he needs to power up his time machine and prevent his brother’s demise.

It’s a silly story with slightly too many “Z” names, but it gets the job done and leaves things open for an eventual sequel whilst still providing a reasonable amount of closure to the main storyline.  Story segments consist of comic book style 2D scenes (which features a narrator), and text from your assistant that pops up while you’re out and about platforming.  I don’t mind that the narrator is the only voiceover in the cutscenes but Zack’s assistant definitely needed to be voiced.  Most of the time she’s just making passing comments and not offering meaningful hints, nonetheless I still missed quite a few messages during difficult, time-dependent platforming segments that demanded my attention.

By now you’ve probably figured out that Zack Zero is a platformer, and for the most part that’s what you’ll be doing, but Zack has a couple of tricks up his sleeve.  His suit allows him to take on one of three different super powered forms: rock, fire, or ice.  Ice allows you to slow down time, fire lets you float after a double jump, rock lets you break through certain barriers, and all three have attack moves that can help in a pinch.  Fire and ice are extremely useful and I found myself switching to them all the time for both their puzzle applications and their firepower (pun intended), but the stone form was only ever useful for breaking barriers; you move so slowly in rock form that it’s tough to use for attacking. 

Zack is at his best when you’re exploring the alien landscape and negotiating platforming challenges with your multiple forms.  The level design is great, thanks to interesting and varied obstacles, and plenty of hideaways that store collectables which grant you extra abilities (or, to be precise, give you back the abilities you lost, Metroid style).  It’s not all jumping and timing though, as Zack finds himself in quite a bit of combat as well.  You’ll often come across a room that doesn’t let you carry on until you’ve defeated everything inside, but unfortunately the combat is on the slow side.  It’s fun when you’re quickly switching to one form or another to throw out a huge blast and help out with some crowd control, but that eats up suit power so you can’t do it constantly.  Zack’s go-to weapon is a Tron-type discus that he throws and then retrieves, but it’s just not as fun as the combat in games that are better designed for it, like Metal Slug.  If the combat isn’t going to be sped up then the sequel could do with fewer enemies and more obstacles to maneuver through.  

That isn’t to say that the combat is a bust.  There are a few boss fights, as well as repeating mini-boss enemies that are good old-fashioned pattern recognition fun, although there are a few unfortunate bugs.  One thing I like about Zack Zero is that there are plenty of checkpoints throughout, so when you inevitably die you won’t have to re-tread too much territory.  This is particularly welcome for the lengthy boss fights, although there’s a bug whereby the boss’s actions won’t entirely reset, so sometimes I’d come back to find the last half of the barrage that took me out was still coming for me.  I also happened upon a bug with the final boss where I defeated him (after quite a bit of heartache, by the way), only to find that his corpse had fallen in exactly the right place for me to be stuck between the robot’s legs and his body, with no way to jump or move left or right.  Once I restarted the fight I was able to beat him without further issue, but I was decidedly unhappy.    

While Zack isn’t the most unique looking character in the world the settings he traverses are rife with color and alien fauna/flora.  The gameplay is entirely two dimensional, but the visuals are decidedly 3D, with beautiful vistas often passing by in the background as you journey from left to right.  When you get close up to the models you start to notice the pixelation and sub-HD shadows, but from a purely aesthetic sense Zack Zero is quite a success.  One minor blemish is that for some reason the subtitles are often out of sync, to the point that the audio will be on another sentence altogether before the subtitles change.

All this can be yours for just $ 13, which is pretty good, although it did only take me 4 hours and 15 minutes to complete.  Unfortunately there’s no reason to go back to it after that first playthrough, outside of high-score hunting.  Zack Zero does update you frequently on your ranking and who the top player for each level is, so it’s well designed for high-score hunters at least.  

Zack Zero isn’t quite a diamond in the rough, but it’s still a pleasant surprise.  If the obviously-imminent sequel shores up a few bugs and works on improving the combat, I think it could be the perfect platforming distraction for those who don’t really mind a somewhat clichéd storyline.  As it is, Zack’s an unexpected hero that PS3 owners should give a chance, and I congratulate Crocodile Games on a successful PSN debut. 

This review was based off of a digital copy of Zack Zero, purchased via PSN.

Read More… gamrReview

Um … little help?

In NeverDead, you play as Bryce Boltzmann. A demon killed his wife and then made him immortal, because that’s how demons roll apparently. He has taken the curse/gift and become a drunken anti-hero who spouts lame wise-cracks before he slays a monster.

Not cliché enough for you? What if I said he was sometimes joined by an attractive by-the-book private investigator lady named Arcadia Maximille. They make quite the odd couple with antagonistic chemistry. She wears racy outfits that seem oddly out of character. He calls her “sweet cheeks” because that’s how you talk to women. She coyly scolds him for being so gruff. Did I say coyly? I meant constantly. Well, the characters are nothing to brag about, but what about the gameplay?

NeverDead’s gameplay is at its core a standard third person action game. You have plenty of guns and a butterfly blade for melee combat. The gunplay controls are passable. Unfortunately, all ranged attacks feel terribly underpowered and the floaty aiming is extremely unsatisfying. Luckily, much of the time you can simply melee your way through the enemies. That is if you can ever get used to the odd choice in melee controls. You have to shift out of ranged mode and into melee mode by holding down one of the shoulder buttons and waggling the second analog stick to swing your blade. This doesn’t mean you have to strategically dismember your enemies; you just smack them around till they stop moving. I guess they thought the tried and true “using one of the face buttons” was beneath them. At least switching into melee mode activates a lock on so you aren’t flailing around hitting the air too much.

The big gameplay hook is your character’s ability to fall apart and stay alive. You can lose a leg and keep hopping; lose both and you’ll have to drag yourself around. If you lose your head you can roll it around to pick up your pieces and pull yourself back together. This is a concept that holds a lot of promise. If a tunnel is too dark, you can light yourself on fire to become a human torch (Flame on, indeed). You can pull off your left arm and throw it and it will continue to fire the gun it is holding as a diversion tactic. Numerous puzzles require you to remove your own head so it can roll through areas that are too small for you to fit. This does feel a bit like using the morph ball mode in 3D Metroid games, though this game does add in the challenge that a head is not a perfect sphere and thus is a little tougher to roll around in a straight line. Which is a nice touch, I’ll admit.

For some reason I have Ice Ice Baby stuck in my head

Any fun you might have been able to pull out of this set up gets squashed pretty fast. Being attacked on multiple sides usually means you will take a hit. Bryce controls like a human tank armed with a peashooter; he’s not built for tons of dodging. Of course, he’s supposed to be immortal so he should be able to take a beating and keep on trucking. The problem comes when you realize that Bryce is as structurally stable as a house of cards. Any damage he receives will result in a limb loss or sometimes two. He already isn’t a graceful character, but hopping around like a jackass to retrieve your leg in the middle of a fight is not a proud moment. Heck, you will most likely lose an arm and a leg on your way to the first missing leg because of how not-quite-perfect the hit detection can be. I can already hear people saying, “But that’s just part of the challenge.” No, that is part of the frustration that kills the pacing of the combat. Bryce Boltzmann is a human piñata that instead of being filled with sweet, sweet candy is filled with liquid annoyance.

Naturally the claim that you cannot die in NeverDead is not strictly true. During practically every combat section there are these little puffer-fish enemies, which don’t attack you and you can’t attack. Their main function is to suck in your limbs after they have been dismembered, kind of like a demented demon Kirby. So not only will you usually have to reclaim your limbs in a fight, but if you don’t get to them quickly enough you’ll have to steal them back from these jerks who grab your pieces and go hide in a corner. If they happen get your head, you will have to play a sliding mini game to be released. Failing this means you are trapped in their maw for all time and this gets you a game over screen. This, of course, is like any modern action game hero death and just drops you back at the last checkpoint.

And somewhere along the way this happens

The rotten cherry on the top of this sludge sundae is that almost every enemy encounter in the game features respawning baddies that will never stop unless you track down their regenerator (called a demon womb). So not only will you run into less than a dozen different enemy types in the entire game, but endless clones of them will swarm you until you locate a giant purple demon prune that is birthing them. This turns every battle into a test of the player’s determination. Slowly fighting uphill, reconstructing yourself often, until you find the source, and then cleaning up the rest just so you can go to the next room and start the whole damn thing again. Not even to mention that half the time that plucky partner lady is in the room as well and, even if she can usually hold her own in a fight, her death equals a game over for you. At least a couple times I hacked my way over to a demon womb and had Arcadia keel over on the other side of the room. I’ve never been so happy that a game is only eight hours long.

After a final boss battle that needlessly overstays its welcome you get to watch the credits roll. Ah, but there are also four multiplayer modes to subject yourself to. “Onslaught” unleashes unyielding waves of enemies that’ll… you know what? It’s Horde Mode. Moving on. “Fragile Alliance” is more of a race through checkpoints. “Search and Rescue” has you shepherding civilians through a field of demons that is about as much fun as tearing off your own arm. Finally, “Egg Hunt” is just a ‘find the treasure before the others do’ mode, which might have been fun except there is no mini-map so you will spend the match stumbling around the bland maze of hallways questioning how much of your precious life you are wasting. Online is pretty much a ghost town anyway. You could play the co-op modes, if you feel you have an overabundance of gamer friends. There are also thirteen challenges, which are small variations on the rules of the game that are a brief distraction if anything.

This puzzle sure is a head scratcher

At least graphically NeverDead is surprisingly impressive. The characters animate fluidly and the cutscenes are well done. The set pieces don’t seem to have the same imagination as the character designs but they don’t look bad per se. The sound is fine, but it is killed with characters that won’t shut up and have nothing useful to say. I would gladly replace Arcadia with Navi from LoZ: Ocarina of Time. Oh, you mean I should attack the part of the boss that is glowing as he stands there stunned? How would I have ever figured that out for myself? You know what? You make sure to tell me to do that every single time I can damage the guy during the fight! It’s helpful and not at all annoying!

NeverDead is a prime example of a game that has an excellent premise, but then suffocates it with bafflingly bad design choices. Gamers don’t play games to be exhausted, we play them to have fun, and there are just too many moments in this game that feel like a chore.

Do not buy this game. Do not rent this game. Do not look at this game. Do not associate with people who own this game. It is everything wrong with the action genre of games with a chocolate coating of pretty visuals. Let it fall into the bargain bin and fester there until end times.

Read More… gamrReview

So it seemed like this Xbox Live Arcade port was finally about to make things right by packing in a proper competitive mode from the word go. Happy days, right? Well, they would be if Denki hadn’t managed to forget offline play. Quarrel’s got multiplayer this time around, but only over Xbox LIVE.

Oh that Denki! It’d…

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Read More… VideoGamer.com – Latest Reviews

It’s simple. Plop down three bits of grass and you’ll get a hedge, and whack a trio of hedges together to have them transform into a tree. Three trees make a house, and it goes on and on all the way…

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Read More… VideoGamer.com – Latest Reviews

Designing games is hard work. NeverDead is a great example of just how hard it is. The main gameplay hook – your character being able to detach his own limbs and roll himself back together again – sounds novel on paper (and was tailor-made to sound awesome in preview coverage). However, if you’re going to use a unique mechanic, you have to design a game around making that concept fun (Portal is a great example). Rebellion may have come up with a new idea, but these days that’s simply not enough. By shoehorning this oddball idea into a terrible, unoriginal third-person action game, it created an experience that is too clichéd to feel fresh but also fails at delivering on the basics of the genre.

The plot, which I won’t waste too much time on, is pure drivel. You’re Bryce Boltzmann, an undead employee of a government agency that is tasked with killing off the various demons that threaten our world. Without spoiling too much (though I guessed the big plot “twist” after about 15 minutes), a parallel story told in cutscenes eventually sheds light on Bryce’s origins. Frankly, the writing is so bad I couldn’t care less about the story, and Bryce is armed with some of the worst one-liners in recent memory.

With your fellow agent Arcadia, you proceed to the end of this stolid adventure by shooting and hacking through endless waves of demonic creatures and increasingly frustrating boss battles. The basic combat is divided between standard third-person shooting and analog sword action. The levels are dull (you generally have to kill every enemy in an area to open the next door), with the exception of some amusing platforming you do as a disembodied head.

While there’s nothing wrong with the basic combat design, myriad technical issues mar this experience to the point where, at times, the onscreen action is incomprehensible. The camera is erratic, the targeting suspect, and your body flies apart nearly every time you take significant damage (forcing you to roll your head back to your body before your head is inhaled by enemies). Sometimes, you’ll get caught in a loop of getting hit, rolling your head back on your body, and being hit and flying apart again.

This is even more difficult when the camera wigs out and you can’t tell where you are. The boss battles, which are long, multi-stage wars of attrition, rarely offer anything more creative than “shoot him in the glowing part” and feature such annoying tropes as regenerating health bars. Even worse, a few times I encountered bugs like my severed head rolling through the floor into a weird, blank dimension with only a city skyline and another, more serious bug that left me cut off from the last enemy I needed to kill to advance through the next door.

This lack of polish wouldn’t be nearly as frustrating if not for the fact that the game’s primary feature – the dismemberment of the main characters – makes the game less fun than it would have been as just a plain old third-person action game. Sure, it’s a unique idea – but not every idea is worth pursuing. In the case of NeverDead, this concept should have been left on the cutting room floor. You could say the same about the game itself.

Read More… www.GameInformer.com