Blade II
Score: 65% ESRB: Mature Publisher: Activision Developer: Marvel/Mucky Foot Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Action/ Fighting
Graphics & Sound: New Line Cinema's box office slam-dunk Blade II undoubtedly lends itself to an equally enriching console game. It's just too bad the pros at Activision couldn't have sought out a more suitable developer to box this one up, though, as the sleek, silver gadgetry and machine hand-guns didn't do for the game what they did on the set. While we're lent semi-nice scenes, the player models have a few less polys then I want to see in any PS2 game, much less from a developer that should know better. The visuals are pretty much average, yet past that we also have an entirely different style then the movies. The animations are a real scare, too - I'm almost afraid to press the jump button again for fear of seeing Blade's reenactment of a clumsy fatass... If the developers were purposely fitting the dull slums with dull music then they passed this test with flying colors. In all seriousness, the music is quite the boring aspect, but the sound effects aren't so awful. At least the liquidy, squishing flesh noises make for a more expected quality then the aforementioned...then again blockbusters depend very little on the sound effects' liquidity and squish-factor, unfortunately for Activision...
Gameplay: The powers-that-be particularly squandered this great license with the gameplay as well, but before I get ahead of myself I can say that the fight system, if only a tad underdeveloped, is nearly a nice touch. The attacks are executed by utilizing, none other than the - right analog? Suffice to say it takes a little getting used to. However what don't take getting used to are the slow, repetitive attacks in all of the eight directions. Basically fighting more than one vampire at once is nearly suicide, since the joystick is so slippery that you might clobber the opponent once out of every 3 tries (which takes forever). Five points to Mucky Foot for the hint of ingenuity and negative a million for not finishing it... Weapons are fun to use when they are made available. Without that nice machine gun I dunno if anything could save the fighting problems. Blade also has a neat ''Bloodlust'' bar that unlocks the use of the sword once you've killed enough baddies, it becomes available at some of the best times, too, I've noticed. Also there ARE at least a darned few interesting scenes between the start and finish, noticeably the death scenes can get pretty gruesome and the disco part of the game is pretty cool. However it's so slow and un-Blade-like I don't see how it could tickle anyone's fancy. For cryin' out loud the vamps don't even explode into a yellow splendor like on the movie, they die like humans (not to mention you don't have to whack their heads off, either)! Okay so the framerate is decent, only because the game barely utilizes the hardware on the PS2. To say the very least, the gameplay is a real bore.
Difficulty: Blade II can get extremely difficult if one doesn't use the ammo sparingly. Even with a gun on hand it can get hairy at times, so it's in one's best interest to use that special ''Save'' feature in between levels. The bosses are pretty much in the bag if you have your weapons, though, but the real difficulty comes from making sure you pick up all the ammo the baddies leave behind...
Game Mechanics: Some interesting movement features include multi-directional jumps and attacks. Jumps are executed by holding down SQUARE and letting go when the left analog is pointed in the direction you want to jump. The right analog controls the direction Blade attacks, but these attacks don't change in each direction so they become...lame. The left and right triggers bring out the beast in Blade by using the ''bloodlust'' bar, and that about sums it up. For such a fan of the theater presentation as I am, this game is extremely disappointing. I don't recommend it to Blade fans or fighting fans, I hesitate to say it's worth the rent, but it is most definitely best left on the store shelf...
-Goat, GameVortex Communications AKA Brandon Arnold
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