PlanetDreamcast | Games | Reviews | D2

D2 Page 2/2 You shot a HARE !! You got 2 meats. - Review By Mr. Domino The combat is neat the first few times, but quickly becomes bland. None of this is entertainingly bad (in that MST3K sense), either. Both Laura's general stupidity and the poorly conceived story damage the whole mood of the game, since you can't really lose yourself in the experience. The opening movie treats us to the sight of our favorite mute riding a plane which is taken over by terrorists. Then we see a warlock in aisle 2 chanting "Shadow: The Final Destroyer... Shadow: The Final Destroyer..." again and again. As if that's not enough, a meteor strikes the plane and sends it crashing into a Canadian mountain range. Amazingly, people survive. No explanation. They just survive. Unfortunately, the game only gets dumber with time, too. Without spoiling the rest of what passes for a story, it will have you wondering what the minds at Warp were on when creating this thing. The combat engine is also leaning toward bad. D2 uses random enemy encounters for combat fodder, much like a RPG. You'll walk a bit and after a few steps the camera zooms in on Laura. She looks around and enemies either pop up out from the snow or just appear to be standing right in front of her. The game switches to a first person perspective, but no real movement is allowed. Laura just stands motionless, aiming a cursor over the approaching horde and firing repeatedly at them. If an enemy appears to Laura's sides, then you'll have to follow an onscreen arrow and press the X or B buttons to get Laura to look in that direction. The cursor does not move the screen, which becomes a nuisance. Aim. Shoot. Rinse. Repeat. No real strategy or challenge at all. While an improvement over Enemy Zero's incredibly unforgiving combat engine, there is little fun to be had with D2's battles. Boss battles require a hint of thought (aim at the correct spot), but still boil down to the tired old mindless shooting you'll be doing throughout the game. He must have played too much D2. It's too bad that the combat system stinks as it does, since far too much time is spent walking through the snow. Aside from a brief (perhaps a minute long) first-person perspective jaunt through a mine, Laura spends all four discs traveling across one snowy mountain after another. She runs slow, too. While I think the snowy locale does make a nice backdrop for a game, and what D2 has looks nice enough, it's just too repetitive to stand up for four discs. During certain portions of the game Laura will have access to a snow mobile to speed up her journey, which eases this a tiny bit. The only problem is that Laura is still vulnerable to the same random monster encounters she faces on foot (especially stupid since Kimberly tells Laura that the monsters cannot attack her while riding the snow mobile). The monsters also look too out of place popping up out of the snow, but at least the element of surprise is always there because of it. D2 never falls into the Resident Evil trap of staged enemy encounters (knowing an enemy lurks just around a corner, beyond a window, etc.), which would be a good thing if the enemies were something to look forward to. Unfortunately, they're not. Finally, the cinemas by and large use the in-game character models, which is just dumb. I can't understand why the game spans four discs when there is very little CGI/FMV in the game. The character models and objects themselves look pretty poor, too, especially considering how little the environments tax the Dreamcast. While the faces are well done, bodies, buildings, enemies, and so forth have a blocky, slightly better than PlayStation look to them. The lip syncing is just awful as well (not a problem with Laura, of course), leading to some pretty ridiculous facial contortions and mismatched dialogue. The mountain surface uses some odd, Gourad-shading type of shifting texture and is sprinkled with occasional cardboard trees and fences borrowed from Sega Rally 2. Although the view distance is impressive, the lack of detail and slight pop-up put a damper on that positive note. While none of the poor graphics interfere with the game itself, it's just another hole to bore into an already sinking ship. The Final Word Warp has never released a good game, and D2 does nothing to change that record. Although D2 is as stylish as other Warp titles have proven to be, it just isn't any fun. A myriad of other complaints make this a rental, at best. Developer: Warp Publisher: Sega Genre: Adventure Highs: Great atmospheric music, decent voice acting. Lows: Beyond stupid storyline, bland environment, boring combat engine. Other: 1 Player, VMU Compatible (9 blocks), Jump Pack Compatible, VGA Box Compatible. Media: Intro 1(MPEG) - Laura wakes up in a strange place. [Big (20.4M)] - [Med (11M)] - [Small (2.3M)] Gameplay 2 (MPEG) - Walking and fighting and walking and fighting. [Big (14.9M)] - [Med (8M)] - [Small (1.7M)] Gameplay 3 (MPEG) - Walking and fighting and hunting. You got 3 meats. [Big (11.9M)] - [Med (6.4M)] - [Small (1.4M)] Final Score: (out of a possible 10) Visit this Game's Dreamcast Database Entry Previous Reviews Comments on this review? Mail Feedback.