Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
Very early on December 3rd, 2002 ...
Oooh, I've only tried it twice yet, finishing the first level, but it sure feels great to be back! And I've seen the intro part of Max' first level as well, wohooo!
Hrm ... More to come later ...
10:32, February 9th, 2003 ...
Okay, now I've got a bit farther into things. I'll spoil the fun right away: things didn't stay as overall great as they started. Hopefully they can pick up speed again but right now the total greatness of the game hes gone down drastically. I'll try to be elaborate:
See, you've got three characters in this game; Kurt, Max and Dr. Hawkins (or Max, Dr. Hawkins and Kurt for another suggestion to what the name means).
Kurt's main features are a parachute and a wonderful sniper rifle. This means he seems tailor made for firing over large distances and make long jumps, falls and other neat stuff using his parachute.
Max, on the other hand, is a bit less subtle. Being a robotic action-hero dog with four arms he can use four weapons at once. Yes, it kicks major ass! He doesn't have a parachute (or sniper rifle) like Kurt, but he can find a jetpack with very limited fuel capacity that allows him a bit more movement.
Finally, there's Dr. Hawkins. Dr. Fluke Hawkins to be exact, creator of Max and employer of Kurt (Kurt's a janitor, what did you expect?). Hawkins' a very non-action guy, specialising in picking up and combining various objects to accomplish his goals.
Sounds like a nice variety for a third-person action game, right? With Kurt you can have a lot of fun in large, open environments and make insanely long jumps without falling damage thanks to the parachute. Kurt can also use things like dummy decoys, the world's most interesting bomb and the world's smallest nuclear bomb to accomplish his goals. Max then. Well,
ACTION!.
Sorry, got a bit carried away there. Sure, he can play with his jetpack as well, but picking up lots of guns and blasting everything that moves is what Max should be used for. And Dr. Hawkins, well ... A nice break from running fast and shooting. His levels are some kind of puzzle solving which is an interesting change of pace and actually works quite well as far as I've played.
Right, good variation in short. Each character has his own levels, so the potential's fantastic for creating fun levels really taking advantage of each character's skills. The first levels really felt like they did. But now I don't know for sure ...
I mean sure, some jumping is okay.
But jumping on moving platforms?
Over instantly-killing toxic waste?
With Max?
Without his jetpack?
Thank god for saving anywhere and quick reloads, that's all I'm saying. It'd better pick up after this, or I'm going to be disappointed and dream of what Shiny could have done if they'd made this sequel ...
Midnight, February 11th, 2003.
The more I play the more I realize how this isn't its own prequel (amazing how long a realisation like that can take to arrive). Bioware just built too much annoyance into it when trying to come up with new cool things. The bomb defusion for example. That was actually a very good idea that I appreciated, once I got the hang of it. But having to figure it out for the first time with a two-minute time limit and one short but damn frustrating jump ruined a whole lot of it. I've just played through a Kurt level, and not even that was close to the glory days. Just a little too much confusion and too little freeform fighting.
Maybe I'm just getting old and cynical. Time for Mr. Picky to go to bed now ...
April 1st, 2003
So, I did it. It's over! I spent roughly ten bucks on a game that ended! A long time ago.
Okay, strictly speaking I've only seen one of the three endings, but I don't know if I had fun enough to work toward seeing the other two. Maybe with a cheat or something. The last part of the final boss battle was just annoying anyway, and I don't quite see how I could do it with the other characters. Now I did it with Max, but only after trying for a good while with Kurt without getting anywhere about halfway through the battle. I don't even know what I did wrong, it looks like a bug to me. Oh well, the post-credit stuff was nice anyway. This isn't a low-quality game by any standard. It just could have been a little more fun a little more often ...
No, really. Don't let the date fool you.