Zax: Suck my Heavy Barrel

I have to say that Zax online is everything I imagined it to be. And as long as you can get a decent connection (ping <250ms) then you should have a riot with the multiplayer games.

Having just finished a gaming session with JoWood's Plex (thanks again) - if you are a modem user, then hosting the session will be advantageous. Your ping will effectively be zero. When another player (ctx?) was hosting the game, I was getting a ping of around 250+ and the game was bearable, but when an extra player joined my ping zipped up to 300+ and the game quickly became unplayable. Presumably because the server is communicating with more people and the connection degrades because of more traffic. Anyway, the key is keep the ping down and Zax will be a pleasure to play.

Although the game seems like a straight forward blaster (that some people would call mindless) - the multiplayer game has got some tactical play that is necessary to use to become a winner. Certain parts of the map can hide a player, ready for an ambush. The lightning weapon is very good for hunting out and locating hidden players (mainly due to is long range and large arc of electricity). Grenades and proximity mines are always handy for a retreat making the hunter think twice about following. And I had a glimpse of a weapon the "Heavy Barrel" that is devastating in its use. Even more powerful than rocket launcher. One shot, one kill. Switchable electricity pylons and floor traps can provide valuable protection and also act as enemy detectors (because you can hear them go off). I really enjoyed the session. With a bit better netcode (allowing a number of modem players connect without too much lag) and a map editor, Zax could well become a large online community.

It certainly has a step beyond Diablo in that you can pitch player vs player using weapons and strategy to battle online in a fragfest, gem collecting, flag capturing way. It's pure action and pure fun. Time for me to find that Heavy Barrel gun again and sit in wait for Plex to run by. If I don't kill myself with the damn thing first.

Zax: Love or Hate

I guess Zax polarises people into the love or hate categories. People who love it, love the simplicity of the fundamental need to mow things down with an array of guns - they usually appreciate the quake style control mechanism. People who hate it, want something more involved, with 3d graphics, and plenty of micromanagement, or they just can't get the hang of the quake style control. As a person who appreciates 2d isometric games and what they can offer, Zax gives me an unrestrained ability to go wild with the killing, where most other 2d isometrics play heavy on the roleplay. The storyline is captivating if a little formulaic. The voice acting is second to none - with plenty of it. The only gripe is that Zax is could have had a more elaborate RPG background and this could have enhanced the killing so much more. As it stands its a quality action puzzler, with a killer multiplayer game thrown in. It's a shame that the polarity will mean plenty of people will dismiss it, and due to lack of net popularity, plenty more net gamers will overlook it.

Zax The Alien Hunter

Imagine Diablo with guns. Imagine a multiplayer Diablo with Deathmatch and capture the flag. Imagine the bastard son of Diablo and Quake. Meet Zax the Alien Hunter.

The single player game is a Diablo clone, with gun toting action. Fast and furious. Isometric arcade action. Reminds me of Alien Breed a bit. You are a space hunter, who crashed on a planet, having to help your ships computer rebuild the ship. Meanwhile you take part in a natives vs robots conflict, salvaging what crystals and ore you can - so that your computer can help you manufacture better weapons and shields and equipment.

There are simple puzzles, lever switching, laser light bending and key collecting along with plenty of mowing down robotic cannon fodder and having a bash at some bosses. The levels are nicely rendered, colourful and lead you through the story. Zax himself can run in all directions whilst shooting his guns in any direction the mouse is aimed. He has laser pistols, beam spray weapons, grenade launchers, and rocket lauhchers along with proximity mines and triple dart guns. Its simple, its arcade carnage, its fun. The storyline unfolds gently, but soon has you dispatching many wild creatures and robot guards. They spawn from generator pads which have consoles that need taking out to prevent the metallic horde from descending. The currency is crystals and ore, collected from the planet surface. You return to your ship and craft bigger and better weapons as your ships computer researches them. I don't think there is any way to influence what your computer researches in the form of a tree - she just gathers more and more information as the game progresses and you are then able to buy/craft the new weapons.

Its the multiplayer game where the real fun begins. Arcade blast em action all the way. Three multiplayer modes are supported: Deathmatch, Salvage King and Capture the Flag. Only Salvage King requires any explanation - you collect as much crystals and ore as possible - the one with the highest amount wins. These are strewn across the levels floor, sometimes easy to reach, sometimes strewn around controllable electricity beacons that zap anyone who tries to get them. Players can turn these electric traps on and off. If you take a bullet too many and become a pile of gibs, then you drop all your stash in a pile for the next salvage queen to come along and steal your crown. The multiplayer levels are well thought out, and have weapons and power ups spread around to keep everyone topped up with killing hardware. Doors and traps serve as interesting mechanics to be used against your enemies, coupled with well placed proximity mines or a couple of correctly bounced grenades gives you a lethal but effective blast chamber to dismember your opponents.

It's not too deep, it's not even that clever, but what is does, it does good. Fast paced action shoot em up, for the Diablo generation. It's refreshing to play a fragfest game in an isometric view, instead of the predictable first person.

Worth it for some therapeutic zapping and killing.

Dark Cloud: A Silver Lining

Dark Cloud was acquired on the back of a trade-in for an abysmal game - I foolishly purchased purely on the basis of anime cover art. The offending game was Ephemeral Fantasia, a half baked RPG with anime characters and way too many "Loading" screens. The graphics were sub standard, the battles only climbing above tedious, the town was characterless and repetitive with painfully dull navigation. Did I mention the overuse of the "Loading screens"? Why? There was nothing stunning at the other side? Anyway, this rather drab and dreary cloud, had a dark but silvery lining. A week later, Dark Cloud, one of most anticipated RPG's on the Playstation2 arrived and Ephemeral Fantasia was promptly swapped using Electronic Boutiques 10 day “no quibbles” return policy.

Dark Cloud comes across as infinitely more polished. The startup FMV, pleasures the eye, and hints at an epic storyline revolving around the summoning of a particularly evil dark genie. Dancing tribeswomen abound. The game unfolds gently, with tuition from a wise and stereotypical Fairy Wizard. The premise for your adventure is based on the fact that the dark genie has run amok through the villages of the land. Eating and destroying all he can. The Fairy wizard managed to save a number of villages and villagers, by trapping them in protective spheres called Atla. These spheres were strewn amongst the monsters in a dungeon. The wizard equips you, and only you, with a wrist band called Atlamillia – this can break open the Atla and release the contents within. You collect the pieces of the village and assemble them according the the citizens requests. Restoring the village and making it even better than before (paying mind to each villagers request thus making everyone happy). This makes for some very interesting twiddling. Not only do you get to romp through dungeons and hack and slash quite outrageous monsters, but you take part in a kind of collecting game that lets you build a village and re-arrange it endlessly, and then run around said village in glorious 3d. Several buildings in the village you create open up sub-games or “things to distract you even further” such as fishing – you also need some of the buildings to advance in the dungeon, or to be able to restock your supplies from. Once you have built the whole village – you get to fight a boss and then move on to another village/dungeon combination.

The battling has been likened to PSO, in as much as you are traipsing around a dungeon, locking onto monsters and then slashing at them with a weapon. The dungeons are fairly monotonous, and there isn’t really a lot of character to them. Although they are randomly generated and can provide a level of replayability – when you need to trawl through and collect gold. The “lock on” mechanism is directly ripped from Zelda 64 – there isn’t a great deal complexity to the battle – you have a button for slash and a shoulder button for block. Having said this, each mob usually has its own attack pattern, and different mobs sometimes need quite different tactics to dispatch them easily without lots of loss of health points. There’s a huge bloated frog-like creature in the first dungeon, that throws a wall of shimmering (and painful) light at you, this is easily dodged, however to get at swipe at him, you have to go in close, and he has a habit of flopping forward and doing a good chunk of damage when he lands on you. It’s best to attack him from afar. There are allies to be found in the game, who will join your fighting group. You can switch between these allies and battle the horde with a different character- with different skills. One of the first allies you encounter is a girl who has a penchant for ranged catapult skills. She is quite adept at dispatching the flopping frogs from a distance. There are barriers in the dungeons where only a particular character with appropriate skills can get you through to the other side. Only the main character (Toan) can collect the Atla though.

The interesting thing about Dark Cloud is that the weapon levelling mechanism is much more advanced and complex when compared to character levelling. Subsequently, the weapons are much more fragile than the characters. You often find a weapon nearing breaking point, mid-battle, so a constant supply of repair powders is essential. The amount of tweaking and twiddling that can be done with the weapons is almost obscene – you can level (upgrade) each weapon dagger+1, dagger+2 etc with use – you can enhance the weapon by inserting gems and powerups into the weapons slots. When you upgrade a weapon – those elements in the slots are taken in to the weapons new level, and the slots are empty again, ready for more enhancements. You can turn the whole weapon into a sphere which can be inserted into another weapon, yielding its special abilities – allowing you to craft fine weapons and carry them on when you find newer more powerful weapons in later levels. The statistics and modifiers for the weapon system belittle the simplistic dungeon battling mechanism.

Weapon wear and tear is both novel, interesting and annoying. You really need to build endurance into your weapon or you’ll be plagued with carrying a sackful of repair powders with you wherever you go. Another novel, interesting and annoying aspect is the constant necessity for the character to be hydrated. If your character hasn’t had water in a long time their health will suffer, and they will indeed lose health points. Treasure chests dotted around the dungeons can yield valuable trinkets, food and water bottles – but on most levels there are one or two waterfalls where you can replenish your level of hydration and also your health.

Some large treasure chests can be found, that are usually booby trapped, if you have a treasure chest key you can avoid any nastiness – or if you guess the type of trap (poison, explosion, curse) – you can diffuse it successfully. If you spring the trap, you take the damage and then can defuse it by selecting the damage type. These larger chests usually yield weapons and other rarer items. The exit from a dungeon level is usually gained by killing a monster with an appropriate item, in the first dungeon it is a crest, in the next one an apple etc. You can leave a dungeon by “mind connecting“ with the Fairy wizard, if there are no monsters mentally blocking the transportation, or you can use an escape powder from your inventory. You should collect all the atla in a dungeon, to give you a fighting chance at rebuilding the village properly.
Dungeons have several levels to them, and often these levels hold a mini-boss or special levels such as the “limited” level or the “back door” level. The mini-boss fights tend to be keypress timing events, where several key strokes will pass at the bottom of the screen and you have to press the right combination at the appropriate time to succeed. These can get trickier later on, but add another layer of sub-game to the dungeon crawl. The “limited“ levels are tricky, because they limit you in some specific way, disable an ability, force you to use a specific ally etc. These levels are compulsory and mean that you must level all you and your allies evenly. If you neglect an ally and then find you have to complete a limited level with them, it will be a very tough level indeed. It’s also wise to have two or three weapons on the go for each character. The “back door” levels are optional, needing a specific item to unlock them. They are much harder than normal levels, although they yield much better items and equipment. My advice would be to avoid taking on a back door level off a limited level. Very tricky. Again, these bonus levels add another layer onto the dungeon gameplay. At the end of a dungeon there is a boss level, that require specific tactics and is quite an achievement to overcome. Much like PSO.

Overall, this game is very polished, has a gentle but noticeable progression and gives you so many things to play around with that it will keep you busy, even if the fighting is basic and isn’t as stimulating as it could be. The storyline is standard fare, the characters are not as well rounded as some other RPG’s – but they do the job, and the villagers have specific requests which adds a modicum of personality to them. Some folk may gag at the fact that the game doesn’t seem to go into any depth in any of its game modes (apart from weapon customisation) – however, I think it does a very good job of melding all the modes into a pleasureable gaming experience where there is always something to be thinking about, always something to be aiming for, and always something to be doing. The game infrastructure allows you wander off and explore one aspect or the other, and with the random dungeons and rescued villagers different requests this Dark Cloud will give you a smokey hideaway where you can tinker with your swords, village layout or fishing for many an hour.

PSO: When Four Battle as One

When I first played PSO on my Dreamcast I was convinced the world had moved on. Gaming had advanced one more step into the online world. Now the consoles were getting in on the action. The wave of euphoria as I teamed up with a couple of others and raided a Hildebear enclosure was unsurpassed. For months afterwards I classed PSO as an EQ beater. Better than EQ was the highest accolade I could give it. PSO is based on action. It is a team based role playing game, with lots of arcade style action. Admittedly the team can only ever number four. And the action is limited in as much as the game world has 4 areas, and a set number of monster types, culminating in battles with four bosses. However, the buzz remained for around 3 months. Solid playing. Every night. I never once logged onto Norrath in all that time.



Imagine, landing on a planet, with a hunter who is learning the art of the light sabre, with a brightly coloured force character, resembling a circus magician, who can summon a mean fire ball or two, with an enormous mechanised robot ready to dish out some punishment and me, a ranger with a laser pistol. Imagine, finding a world inhabited with strange bear/dog like creatures who take a swipe at you and you land on your backside. Imagine, said creatures ganging up on you and pounding you into the ground. But, finally imagine, the four of you, each slotting into a niche and covering each other backs. Working together to eradicate the planet of these menacing hordes. Pumping laser rounds into the back of a Gobooma, enough to knock him away from the magician he is currently pounding - giving the magician the breathing space necessary to let a fireball from hell toast the furball.



Although set in a "phantasy" world, the combat is pure action. Sci Fi action. With guns and light sabres.

The first boss you meet after a lot of carnage is The Dragon. In my opinion, he is the best of all the bosses available. He is beautifully rendered, his attack patterns are just stunning to watch, and of course, he IS a dragon! Each boss has a different attack pattern and often requires quite careful planning to avoid party wipeout.

The ability to quest offline and then go online with the same character - gives PSO one the most flexible approaches to character development. However, this does not come without a price. The Gameshark kiddies have found that you can use codes to tool up your character with all sorts of items and powers. Sega tried to stomp on this heavily. With character banning and other measures. The Gamesharkers also found ways to kill other players (yet PSO is strictly co-op), to use jumping tricks to get past locked doorways amongst a number of other cheats and scams.

All in all, PSO is one of the brightest online games I've played in a long time. And although the content is limited, it still draws me back to it - searching for that teamplay buzz once again.

Onimusha: Chop Shlocky

The hype surrounding this title, really pumped it up for me. Although I shy away from Resident Evil clones - never really like them - the lure of the magical samurai sword and the smell of freshly cleaved zombies drew me in.

To sum it up, Capcom have basically given you a Resident Evil with a sword instead of a gun. That's it! The cut scene graphics are quite nice, with plenty of focus on the handsome face of Samanosuke, the demon warrior. There is the usual storyline of good versus evil, with the "Soul Reaver" slant being that you are bestowed with a gauntlet that allows you to capture the souls of the demons you kill. These souls allow you heal, or replenish your magical ability, or enhance your equipment. Each soul type has a different colour and the demons relinquish a cocktail of soul energy when they die, often in different quantities. In general, big demons leave behind large amounts of soul energy. The energy adds a level of strategy to the generally mundane task of chopping and slashing these gnarled minions of evil. You have to take a break from the endless culling, once in a while to harvest some energy to heal up a bit. Then back into the melee.

The slashing action is fun for a while. There are however a couple of things that let this title down badly. Firstly there is no use of the analogue sticks for movement. So all your clever manoeuvres have to be done with just the d-pad. Secondly, the camera angles will often leave you in the position where all the action is taking place in the distance, making it difficult to see exactly what is going on. As a different camera angle kicks in, you often find yourself having to re-adjust your spatial reasoning to the new viewpoint. Sometimes this is confusing, when you are trying to navigate a twisty winding corridor, and it often leaves you visiting the same locations over and over again, simply because you are disorientated. For all its beauty up close, the game is played at quite a distance.

The monotony of bashing the square button to slash, slash and slash is broken up by an L1 guard and then quickly back onto slash, slash, slash. You can execute an impressive magical attack pressing the triangle button, if you have magic enough. It seems as though magic is always in short supply, so use these special attacks sparingly. Save them for the big bosses. You collect a variety of sword types each with an elemental power of its own. Lightning swords, fire swords etc. And it has to be said that the special attacks are suitably impressive and satisfying.

There are small puzzles, usually to unlock a chest with a power up or plot item in it. The game is saved at some sort of Shinto shrine called a "magic mirror". Here you can save your progress, and use the red energy collected to enhance your weapons or items. Much like an RPG (Role Playing Game), each weapon has a level and it can be made more effective by levelling it up. As they gains levels they change form, and their attacks become more powerful. There are sealed doors that can only be opened by collectible orbs. These orbs also have a level, and in order to progress you must invest some energy in levelling them up to open higher levelled seals. You can also level up some of your items, such as healing herbs into medicine, increasing their healing powers considerably. The RPG-like qualities of the game do add some depth to play. However, it is often necessary to collect more energy than the current flock of demons possess. This means you have to back track into previous areas, and the enemies seem to spawn endlessly to allow you this privilege. While useful in places - this can become tedious. Having defeated a room full of nasties only to become disorientated and foolishly enter the room again, to be attacked by the beasts you have just slain.

It seems if you have to load your save game quite a number of times, the game opens up the Easy mode. However, you cannot continue through the current game in Easy, you have to re-start the game again. Some have reported finishing the game in around 4 hours. Reducing the games value-for-money status considerably. Zone of the Enders clocking in at 8 hours was considered a poor show.

All in all, Onimusha gives you a short-lived hack and slash buzz. In places, it’s too much like Resident Evil. The RPG/Soul Reaver aspect adds some depth to the game. It's not a game I could rave about - but I've only done about an hour in total. Maybe it will flourish in the remaining 3 hours?

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

Well, the new Lord of Destruction expansion is upon us.

I bought it on Sunday, and installed it on top of my D2 v1.07 - the offline characters seemed unaffected. One thing to note converting your current D2 chars to be expansion chars, means you can't join any vanilla D2 games. Which obviously has implications for Pinwig and me, and our D2 love-ins.

Anyway, I fired up a new character, theres two classes added, Assassin and Druid. I chose the Druid, cos he gets to summon creatures and transform into creatures.

The ability to shift the graphics up a notch (800x600) is nice, you lose a lot of the pixilated edges. The only downside I noticed was a veritable chug, with the automap displayed whilst running. The larger inventory stash is very welcome, along with the two weapon loads configuration and the ability to shift between them with a single keypress during combat.

Not sure whether I was just summon happy or not, but I levelled up my druid pretty swiftly, with my team of 3 summoned ravens - dive-bombing the enemy, pecking at their eyes, whilst I floored them with an arrow or two. If things got too tough for me, and my birds were down, I'd shift into werewolf form and claw the living shit out of everything that moved. Not a bad expansion. Just for the interface enhancements and the new classes.

I did try the assassin but much prefer the druid and his summonings. I didn't feel right playing a charlies angel. Did I mention I can shapeshift into werewolf form..? Oooooh man, now that gets me excited. Basically, my Druid is well hard. Much easier to take on the quests "solo", when you have a pack of wolves and a hired archer, along for the ride. I barely need to hit anything. My whirlwind team, maul and masacre the horde before I get there. I sometimes like to play target practice with my flaming arrows, or perhaps freeze a wandering brute with my cold attack mace. The life of a Druid is a good one.

Anyway, I guess now the servers will be teaming with Druids and Assassins.