Requiem: Avenging Angel Review

8.9

Format PC

Developer 3D0

Publisher Ubisoft

Genre First Person Shooter

He walks into an empty room... and suddenly a gun goes 'boom'... There must be an angel... playing with Charlie Brooker's heart...

We've seen some far-fetched gaming storylines here at PC Zone, but this one takes the cake. Requiem is an ultra-violent first-person shooter in which you're going gun bonkers on behalf of God himself. We're not kidding: you play 'Malachi', an angel sent to 21st century Earth to wipe out the Fallen - a group of fallen angels - who, sickened by everything mankind stands for, are planning to instigate the apocalypse. You're a holy commando.

We're all for it ourselves, but we can't help wondering just how this is going to go down in US's Bible Belt. Presumably they're going to love the fact that for once the player is aligned with the big G, but just how they'll react to the sight of an angel toying with rocket launchers, machine-gunning people in the face - and at one point shouting 'Jesus!' with surprise - is anyone's guess. Hyuk hyuk.

YES, YES, BUT...

Okay. What of the game itself? Well, glance at the score if you haven't already: we're happy to report that Requiem rocks great big holy bells. This is a particularly pleasing outcome because - well, we'll level with you. For the first half-hour or so of playtime, we thought it was a bit... crap.

Dunno why. Maybe we were in a bad mood, or maybe it was something to do with the unusual opening: you start out wandering through 'the realm of chaos' - which looks a lot like Hell to us - using your hands to fire balls of energy at a bunch of ugly beasties. Whatever. The prospect of spending an entire game playing a sort of 'magic angel' simply didn't appeal.

But, we were proved wrong. Following a brief jaunt through the wibbly-wobbly chaos realm, you're transported to Earth and things start to seriously pick up. It's dark. It's dank. You're in a big, grimy city. Pigeons flutter by. Armed guards wander around, beating civilians. Intrigued, you start exploring. And before you know it, a couple of hours have passed without your permission... and that's it. You're hooked. It's sucked you in.

Requiem unfolds in a similar way to Half-Life (PCZ #71, 95%) - although don't get too excited, it's not quite of the same calibre. The levels blend into one another to form one gigantic, sprawling whole (although it does cheat a couple of times by having you suddenly teleport into a location).

Like Half-Life, it's similarly rock-hard in places - health is depleted extremely quickly when you take a hit - and also makes use of occasional scripted sequences to perk your interest. The main difference, in fact, is that Requiem's AI pales into insignificance alongside Half Life's - people and monsters often seem to just run at you, guns blazing. Still, the variety, the visuals, and the quality of level design make up for it.

PRETTY LITTLE ANGEL EYES

You can't possibly have failed to notice from the screenshots that Requiem looks pretty good. Weirdly, the visuals seem to improve the longer you play - the opening stage looks downright ropey compared to later levels. Aside from the architecture and the fancy coloured lighting, there's those impressive character models that move in all kinds of unpleasantly believable ways, for instance, when shot, guards don't always just slump to the floor - they often roll around squealing in agony for ages (just as you'd imagine they would in real life). Some of the monsters are genuinely frightening too - especially the ones that leap at your face and start peeling you like a banana.

The gameplay itself also improves with play. Not only do you start getting hold of more weapons, but there's also a range of fancy angelic powers to consider. In practice, many of the best ones (usually the most violent) are hard to use in the heat of the moment, but others, like the 'deflection' shield and the 'insist' spell, which turns an enemy into an ally, are indispensable.

Still, there are niggles. In some ways, the game feels a little rushed - which is unusual when you consider that it's nowhere near Christmas - and a few glitches which really should have been ironed out turn up to throw something nasty in the party punchbowl from time to time. For one thing, some of the guards seem to have a bizarre ability to suddenly leap from the floor onto higher surfaces in the blink of an eye. This is particularly disconcerting if you happen to be standing on the said 'higher surface' yourself. Also, the weapon sound effects seem a bit weedy - the rapid-fire assault rifle in particular makes a sound not entirely dissimilar to rain pattering against the window during a thunderstorm. Rambo would never have stood for that. Still, Rambo wasn't an angel.

PRAISE BE

If the EEC passed a bizarre law requiring all videogames to have incredibly accurate titles, Requiem would probably have to be rechristened The Weird, Holy 'Quake-a-Like' That's Not As Good As Half-Life But Is A Damn Fine Chunk Of Entertainment In Its Own Right Nevertheless. Not that that would fit on the box. Anyway, if you're tired of waiting for Kingpin (reviewed on page 76) and you fancy a bit of Half Life-style fun, give it a spin in your CD drive. And who knows, maybe all that angelic goodness will rub off on you, and you'll stop spending so much time looking at filth on the Internet. No - thought not.