|
 |
DEVELOPER
SCE
PUBLISHER
SCE
AVAILABLE
Now
MEDIUM
CD Rom
PLAYERS
Two
| | |
|
 ight gun games have been around since the days of the NES with games like Duck Hunt, so the gameplay formula of aiming and shooting at a moving object, and doing so with an "interactive" gun, is quite an old concept. Donning the label "Guncon Required", should SCE's Elemental Gearbolt be considered any differently? Innovative titles like Time Crisis were a milestone because they introduced new levels of interactivity by creating the "duck" feature. From that point on, one would have thought that the insipid Duck Hunt days were well and truly gone. Elemental Gearbolt certainly lives up to that expectation, but not in the way you'd expect.
With one or two players, Elemental Gearbolt puts you on a quest to rid the land of evil by travelling through the countryside, shooting down all the baddies, and releasing any fairies that have been imprisoned. Your weapon is the Elemental Gearbolt, a weapon of fire, lightning, and water, each element having different properties to exploit.
|
Graphically, Elemental Gearbolt is well above average, moving at a constant rate of 30 frames per second, but with horrible slowdown in 2-player mode.
|
|
The weapon is set to the fire element by default, which allows you to shoot powerful blasts, but not in rapid succession. Pressing the A button will change the weapon to lightning, which produces a scattergun effect that has less power than the fire elemental. The final weapon is the water elemental, which shoots like an automatic machine gun, but does bugger all damage. Despite the weapon variety, the entire game can be finished with the fire elemental - which isn't a good thing.
The innovation of Elemental Gearbolt is the fact that it is played out like an RPG. You have life-points that must be preserved within the game, and as you pass each level, you can gain experience and earn promotions in your class of warrior. At the end of each stage, you can even make a trade-off between your points and your experience so that
you can progress at the rate that you want. More experience equates to a lower high score, and vice versa. While this sounds like a good gameplay dynamic, it actually does nothing for the gameplay. To many people, high scores are worthless, and the "experience" you gain doesn't affect the power of your weapon in any noticeable way.
The two other notable features are the combo system, which measures the number of hits you can register without missing a shot, and the anime cut scenes that are littered throughout the game. The combo system, firstly, is more a test of skill and concentration. It really makes no difference whether you have good combos or not since you can finish the game just as easily either way. The anime cut scenes, secondly, are not as good as many have touted. Some have said that the quality is close to Macross Plus and X, but do not be fooled by the screenshots that you
see: the anime cut scenes are devoid of any dynamic movement or intelligible dialogue. Plain boring to watch. But then again, it's no different to reading a girlie magazine. Save for some of the character designs, it is frankly insulting to even compare this to Macross Plus.
You'll note that this is where the innovation stops. The actual meat of the game is a very uninspired affair. Graphically, Elemental Gearbolt is well above average, moving at a constant rate of 30 frames per second, but with horrible slowdown in 2-player mode. The environments are a construct of 3D structures with nice textures with some occasional heavy pop-up in certain areas. However, the baddies you are meant to kill are all sprite-based, sporting an average of 4 measly frames of animation each and looking very choppy and pixellized when they are up
close. The baddies aren't that difficult to shoot either - most of them just sit there and you have to shoot them before they shoot you. The rest of them fly at an embarrassingly slow pace.
|
The innovation of Elemental Gearbolt is the fact that it is played out like an RPG.
|
The only thing really going for Elemental Gearbolt is the atmospherics. Despite the fact that the game is on rails, the camera angles are very cinematic, and the environments do a fantastic job in creating the fantasy atmosphere of the game. However, the job is mostly done by the music. In fact, Elemental Gearbolt has some of the most tasteful and beautiful music to ever be heard on the Playstation. The music is entirely orchestral with a great variety in styles between levels. The haunting yet rich choral ensembles and the sweet singing qualities of the woodwind pieces are some of the most memorable of the game.
In the end, however, presentation and music can only go so far. Elemental Gearbolt sadly fails to satisfy in the gameplay stakes, which is really the most important aspect of the game. Certainly go for it if you like the presentation and so on, but the so-called innovation stops at the presentation and nothing is done to enhance the gameplay. I'm one of those crazy people who plays Virtua Cop 2 with both guns to myself - the novelty of doing so in Elemental Gearbolt wears off in about 12 seconds. If you like the fantasy genre of games, you might like this one. But in a single sentence, my feelings for this game are: this had better not be the shape of things to come for the Guncon.
-- Kevin Cheung
|
