Dark Angel

There's nothing wrong with the look of the game, and the Dark Angel franchise fits the popular genre of stealth/espionage games quite well.

But I noticed one thing amiss right off the bat: Where's the tutorial level? Every game I've ever played which involves stealth, like Metal Gear Solid, Syphon Filter and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, gives you a tutorial mission because in a stealth game, not only do you have to know the controls, you have to get familiarized with them within a gradual learning curve so that movement of your character becomes second nature; in a stealth game, no good player ever "remembers" the moves -- he feels them. But Dark Angel has chosen to forego this step, and the result is that the controls, already not hugely responsive, are all but alien to me. I figured out some things on my own -- the manual is scanty and poorly written -- but nothing can replace the all-important tutorial.

There's also no radar, a must in a game of this type, and looking around is laborious and risky. Most of the time the camera prevents you from seeing what you need to see to sneak through the missions effectively. No maps, either -- and added to the fiddly mission layouts, I spent so much time running around missions trying to find things that the gameplay just slowed to a crawl. To slow things down even more, the loading times on this game are incredible. Even the "Replay Stage" command, when you're trying to stop your current mission and start from the top, takes about a minute to load. Awful.

I don't like the proportions of this game -- too much environment and not enough of the character. It makes moving around seem more sluggish than it should be, and when you're fighting, it really spoils much of the fun factor. I'd rather have had a character-screen proportion closer to Syphon Filter or Jet Li's Rise to Honor. And whoever came up with the idea of using a Matrix-style "bullet time" while you fight obviously doesn't know how to design fighting games, because it makes fighting a bore. You can't control when the slow-motion occurs, so you end up having to wait before you can execute the next move. This feature basically takes your in-game control of your character away from you randomly -- something that should *never* happen in an action game.

I am tremendously disappointed, because the TV series, the wonderful character of Max, the setting...everything was just perfect for a video-game translation. And they had taken the effort to get Alba and Weatherly, put James Cameron's name on the box, and get so many of the stylistic touches right (good one-liners in the dialogue) that it's a shame that the game is mechanically unplayable. Seems like they spent all their money and time on aesthetics and forgot to test out the mechanics...no wonder this game is now widely available second-hand for less than six dollars, less than a year after I first saw it available. I will probably sell mine soon.


This Game Doesn't Live Up To Any Of It's Expectations   June 22, 2004
 1 out of 5 found this review helpful

Don't Judge A Game By It's Cover.

This Game Impressed Me For Like 3 Minutes When I Started Playing It And I Passed Levels Fast But Then It Started Getting Boring And Matrix Styles Is Gettin Old, Enter The Matrix Is Better Than This I Even Give IT (Enter The Matrix) 5 STARZ. This Game Is Crappy And I Realized That I Wasted A Perfect Good Solid Ten Buckz Of Buying This Piece Of Crap Instead Of Going To A Movie, So I Traded This For Downhill Domination.

(Always If You're Going To Buy A Game That Just Came Out- Ask Somebody That Played It, See The Reviews On The Internet, Or A Game Magazine.Learn From UR Mistakez People!.)