Somewhat of a cult classic animation film, Heavy Metal is more of a cartoon movie for adults than anything else, and has gone on to spawn a rather large following that turned into a magazine all its own, and now a brand new movie. Ritual found its way to get the rights to produce the game rights based upon Heavy Metal FAKK2, and so here we are. The question is, however, for as much promise as Heavy Metal FAKK2 has, can it make up for the disappointment of SiN? You betcha.

Years ago Julie used all of her strength to defeat the powerful tyrant Lord Tyler and drive him from the Holy Land. Since that event, Julie has embarked on an epic journey that would take her from the Holy Land to the Galaxy of the Twin Suns, and eventually her home planet of Eden. During her travel to Eden, Julie picked up some unfortunate individuals who had no place to call home, and brings them with her. On Eden, Julie and the others discover the water is special; it is able to preserve their age, and have thus been the same age for a number of years. In order to make sure that no one invades their new world, they set up a defense shield to give the planet the appearance of desolate destruction when viewed from space and a FAKK2 (warning ships to stay away) satellite. One morning, though, the world awakens to a violent series of rocks hitting against their shield and disrupting their daily lives. Is this nothing at all, or the start of something more?

Right off the bat, Ritual is able to claim one feature no matter what: Heavy Metal FAKK2 is the first commercial title to be released using the Quake III: Arena engine from id Software. The use of the Quake III engine has allowed Ritual to create some of the most beautiful environments, characters and weapons ever seen in a video game. In a word: Wow. The first time that I booted up the game I was simply floored by what Ritual had been able to achieve. And the world of Eden is definitely and interesting one; the environments are quite a departure (in a good way) from what’s normally seen in first person shooters these days (too much emphasis on futurism). With the graphics being so utterly impressive, it would seem that you’d have to have one killer machine to run it at a decent rate, but that is not true. If you can run Quake III: Arena decently, you can do the same here. Heavy Metal FAKK2 is a bit more demanding, but not by a whole lot.

And since the movie is full of sexuality, the game has done this – even if it is to a much lesser extent, as well. For example, in one of the earlier stages there is a piece of architecture designed in the way that the two legs of a women would be. After you beat a nearby mini-boss, the “legs” will spread apart and reveal the door to the next area.

Managing your weapons is one of the most intriguing aspects of Heavy Metal FAKK2. Instead of pressing one, two, three, four, etc. on the keyboard to switch between nine or so different weapons, the game has over twenty weapons, shields and items that can be collected and used. The unique idea is that you can place them in your right or left hand. Thus, you can create various combinations with one hand holding onto a melee weapon or gun, and the other using a shield to deflect incoming attacks. You still switch between them by hitting the number keys, and therein is one problem. During a battle if you need to change from one weapon to another, you have to press a number key to open up the menu and maneuver to the weapon, right or left click and there you go. The problem, however, comes when the menu sometimes refuses to close. You then have to, in the middle of battle no less, smack the escape key, which is a high annoyance and can easily result in death.

So far the latest from Ritual has been full of goodness, but like any game, there is some bad and Heavy Metal FAKK2 has its fair share of it. The two most frustrating have to deal with the load times and platforming elements. The former is a bit puzzling. I did the most complete install that was available in the installation, and yet there was an excess of over a couple of minutes before I was able to start the game. Needless to say, it is extremely frustrating. Once into the game, loading up previous saves does not take quite as much time, but the initial boot takes so long that even though my computer seemed to be doing something, I ended up shutting it down thinking it had frozen.

Secondly, since this is a 3rd person adventure there are bound to be some platforming elements, and Heavy Metal FAKK2 has them in both good and bad areas. Most of them I had little problems with, but mostly dealt with me becoming accustomed to the movement patterns. The rest of the time was filled with moments of wanting to tear the screen out and toss it upon the ground. These areas had me reloading the sequence time and time again, and if I was able to pass them it seemed like magic. Heck, once I passed an area only because of a glitch. Fortunately, the frustrating areas are not numerous.

One downfall that is particularly disappointing is that Ritual decided against putting time into creating a multiplayer mode for Heavy Metal FAKK2, despite the Quake III engine’s great networking code. And the game is already fairly short as it is, so it doesn’t help with the longevity factor. Oh, and thankfully, a much better bug-testing job has been done with Heavy Metal FAKK2. I still ran into an occasional crash that dumped me to the desktop, but nothing overly terrible. There have been worse bugs reported through the ‘net since the game’s release, but Ritual is all over helping those with complaints, and it seems things are well under control.

When it comes down to it, Ritual has certainly redeemed itself with Heavy Metal FAKK2. It has some of the most incredible graphics in a PC game thus far, and despite some of the nagging problems with the gameplay, the positives are able to shine through all the negatives to reveal an extremely fun action adventure that is destined to please.