30-Mar-2005 If there's one thing sure to promote a flicker of interest in a first-person shooter, it's the presence of a sassy firebrand heroine wearing cheese-wire knickers and low-cut denims. Give her a unique and satisfying arsenal, notably an Udder Gun and flesh-seeking robotic pit bull mines, and the phrase 'the Germans are going to love it' immediately springs to mind. Sadly, despite being locally brewed, the Germans weren't all that impressed. Partly because Angie Prophet has the look of a Cabbage Patch doll, but mostly because for all its B-grade, schlock pretensions, the game is an unsatisfying mess of unrealised potential from start to finish.
Take, for instance, your supernatural powers, which promise such stunts as bullet-time and telepathy. Now we love slowing down the clock and cracking people over the head with teapots, but here such abilities are treated as cheap power-ups, clearly bolted on to add a bullet-pointed feature to the back of the packaging.
The variety and weight of level design is impressive, with surreal locales far more emotive than anything Max Payne or Deus Ex could conjure up. The standard weapons (M16, MP5 and so on) have a pleasing bulk to them, but for every second of satisfaction, there is a minute of monotony; where cardboard enemies fall under a cloud of red paint, physics offer no value whatsoever, AI is largely non-existent and gameplay follows the worn-ragged formula of coloured keycards and enemies that appear from thin air. And the less said about the Udder Gun the better.
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