CANNER
Games and Internet
PLAYSTATION
Forsaken (Acclaim) £39.99 r: r. t
Forsaken: ear-bleedineg tough
Descent was the first to add full 360‘ movement to the Doom genre and, as Successful as it was, few have followed in its path, Forsaken does, and has the player hurtling around the burnt-out crust of the Earth on a flying bike whilst plundering salvage and av0iding other scavengers. Power-ups collected on the way add the necessary armour and weaponry to combat the multitude of foes, and bOy are they necessary Although combat is fast and furious, it lacks the ’dog-fight' feel of G-Po/ice and SurVival is usually decided in a short hail of graphically impressive explosions. This is all down to the unforgiving control system that causes the sort of right brain/left brain actiVIty that has blood trickling out of yOur ears after about ten minutes.
Although the graphics will keep you playing, this is one tOugh game. The complex controls combined with the kind of overwhelming odds that were last faced by Butch 'n' Sundance put this shoot-’em-up out of reach of the casual player. (PO)
Wayne Gretzky's 30 Hockey 98 (GT Interactive) E29.99—£34.99
it it 1.-
In a bid to make the hockey sim more
appealing to an apathetic public,
someone over in PlayStation land has
Soldiers At War: For you, spotty teenager, ze var is over
106 THE lIST ll—ZS Jun I998
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PLAYSTATION Men In Black (Gremlin) £44.99 tr * You would think that protecting the Earth from the scum of the universe would be more fun, wouldn't you? But Men In Black is an infuriating, difficult and poorly-realised proposition. GoldenEye proved that if you're going to do a movie tie-in, it’s best to spend time making sure you get it right. Men In Black, the blockbusting kill-all-aliens movie of summer 1997, had the potential to be an even more satisfying conversion than the Bond film. Three cool central characters, a catchy theme tune, an array of incredible looking monsters and more advanced weaponry than you can shake a photon blaster at presents an
awful lot of possibilities, none of which have been
exploited to the full.
Men In Black the game is a third-person action- adventure along the lines of Tomb Raider or Resident Evil. You choose to play Agent 1, K or L (Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones and Linda Fiorentino) — mysterious black-clad government agents dedicated to sending illegal aliens back to Mars with their tails between their
legs.
Starting off as an ordinary cop on New York’s run- down streets, you progress through a series of increasingly difficult missions taking in all four corners of the globe. Between missions, you pop back to Men In Black HQ, a 705-style exercise in retro-futurism,
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where you can choose increasingly fearsome guns and indulge in a spot of target practice.
This is all sounds great, but the simple truth is that Men In Black fails to live up to its premise. The control system is unwieldly, the fighting sequences more a matter of luck than skill and — especially in the initial stage - the environment so cloaked in ’atmospheric’ shadows that it's genuinely difficult to see what you're meant to be doing.
The game does have some nice touches — the cool range of aliens, the actor voiceovers and the 505 cartoon-style live sequences — but Men In Black is flawed, rough and an unwelcome visitor to the games market. (Peter Ross)
3".)
had the bright idea of removmg some of the more arcane rules. So, no off- sides, no substitutions and no fouls of any kind. NO klddlflg.
Ice hockey can be a brutal game at the best of times, but take away the rules and you’re left with something that w0uld have hardened Vietnam vets WinCIng in horror. At first tactics go out of the window as yOu hack through the opposition in a bid to get
the puck in the back of the net, but good play is rewarded, and the one- twos and special Power Shots can combine to spectacular effect Unlike preViOus ice hockey games for PlayStation, the clear, uncluttered graphics convey every slash of stick brilliantly
The lack of strategy robs this of the depth necessary to make a truly satisfying one-player game You can play a't entire season if you want, but it's a bit pomtless when none of your players are gOing to get llilLlled Oi‘ suspended. The multi-player option, however, is a Joy — Mortal Kombat on ice. (PO)
Mortal Kombat Trilogy (GT Interactive) E20 air it * tr
Newly released on the PlayStation’s Platinum range, Mortal Kombat Trilogy is the opium suppository of beat-'em- ups — the perfect cheap fix while you wait for Tekken 3.
For those unfamiliar with story, the premise runs thus. yOu enter the bloody Mortal Kombat tournament On Outworld in order to save the Earth from destruction However, premises are rather by the by when you can choose from an enormous range of 32 diverse characters, including everything from Money Mark look-alike Liu Kang to Motaro the savage centaur
Essentially 20, despite i'atl‘ei' 'i fty character animation, ii'l/lorta/ Kombat Trilogy iacks the polygon punc" ness of, say, Soul Blade, but l'Ol‘kW‘S one of the most gruesome titles ever to *‘it the sl‘e ves People are always g()l":q on aboci'. Bushido Blade bel'lg bloouthirsty, but you can’t ()lSt‘“elt‘.bE?' someone th a special move ice you can in this game
Mortal Kombat Trilogy has its drawbacks, 0‘ came Spec:a' moves and combos are tricky to pull off and many of the ciiaracters are a b t too simlar But for twenty (.llllCl, .t's better than a KICK in the teeth iPRr
Spawn: The Eternal (SCEE) £34.99 a The signs \.'.'e."en't good a game based on a move that coiiidi": be more dead :n the water if it was a zombie duck UnSurpriSingly, Spar/n The Eternal is unlikely to thrii anyone other than the most rabid fai" of Todd McFarlane's original comic COO-c
You guide Spain/n, a rather satanic hero, thrOugh eighteen levers divided between three tirhe periods and eight levels in the Tower of Hell The :dea is that you ultimately confront yOur nemesis, Malebolgia
This follows the Tomb Raider model of actiOn-adventure, but doesn’t really stand comparison math the feeling of