Publisher: ARUSH
Ages: teens & up
Parental
Advisory:
Violence and blood
For those who savor violent first-person shooters, ARUSH Entertainment's Devastation delivers the action-packed, teamplay-oriented goods. It's impressive in scope but marred in execution.
On a future devastated Earth, powerful, corrupt corporations rule what's left of society with their brutal pacification squads. The only hope comes in a small group of resistance fighters made up of gang leaders, mercenaries and ex-military operatives. As the leader of the resistance, players have to assemble an army and travel the globe, and restore peace and sanity. And, as you would expect, this results in lots and lots of fighting.
Devastation offers an objective-based single-player campaign that ask players to use stealth, surveillance, hacking skills, and sniping, as well as brute, violent force. The game features 36 levels with 22 single-player and 14 multi-player maps that are set in four different environments. Multi-player games are quite good and include head-to-head and teamplay activities with individual and team deathmatch, capture the flag and more. There are more than 40 weapons that include machine guns, swords, handguns, sniper weapons and "rat drones," which allow players to "become the weapon."
The title was designed to provide innovative computer-controlled characters. In theory, this would allow computer-controlled enemies to exhibit heightened awareness and strong and logical reactive abilities, while teammates could offer smart cooperation and assistance. In execution, however, computer controlled characters often react in odd ways. For example, computer-controlled teammates can run straight into danger or become stuck.
The game looks great. Devastation relies on a next-generation Unreal engine that serves dramatic visuals and realistic object physics. In particular, we were impressed with the gritty and detailed urban settings and movie-style explosions.
Interestingly, there are lots of objects that may be used, destroyed or manipulated. For example, players can use broken bottles as weapons or toss chairs down halls to distract guards. While the number of objects that players can interact with are impressive, often, it's sometimes hard to get around objects because they move and block the way.
As you would expect with a first-person shooter, the game is violent and bloody. Also, noteworthy, in our testing, we experienced a number of game crashes. At press time, ARUSH was releasing patches to fix problems that we assume will include crashes.
In all, Devastation is an ambitious game that delivers on some counts. But despite the detailed physics engine, computer-controlled characters and great graphics, it has some rough edges, as if, perhaps, it was released sooner than it should have.
5/1/03 www.daytrum.com Editorial Staff
