THE EXPLOSIVE REVIEW

Story:
The story pretty much follows the plot of the movie. Someone has stolen the N.O.C. files which contains the names of every agent in your organization. It is up to you, Ethan Hunt, to find it before whoever has it sells it to a criminal organization who can get you and your teammates killed.

Graphics:
Although not exactly clear, these are some pretty cool Nintendo 64 graphics, it has nothing on “GoldenEye 007″ but it’s almost at that point. They may be a bit blocky at times, the characters may not resemble their film counterparts here and there, and you may come across a couple of glitches and bugs in some parts of the game.

Controls:
Sub-par but responsive, to say the least. You’ll be using the C button a bit too much and it may prove to be a pain in the butt when having to put on a face-mask if you’re in the middle of engaging in a gun fight with bad guys. The controls left much room for improvement here, but they’re not terribly bad.

Gameplay:
The game focuses on completing tasks undetected or disguised while assuming the identity of Ethan Hunt. There’s a wide variety of weapons and gadgets. You get to use pistols, automatics, explosive gum, C4, smoke generators, infra-red contacts, gas injectors, fingerprint scanners, computer disks, and even the Face-maker.

Aside from being a shooter, you must exercise great caution and care while completing mission objectives. Some missions look down upon the use of violence that is done outrightly. You can easily fail a mission when shooting someone whom you’re not supposed to shoot. There’s a lot of stealth in this game as well, requiring you to infiltrate and sneak around areas from the movie. The levels are quite fun to explore and play through although they could have added on a few extra missions.

Overall:
“Mission: Impossible” can get addictive, although not as much as say “GoldenEye 007″, but more than some would assume. The game is a challenge with difficult puzzles and a reliance on stealth and caution. Some levels are just simply fun to replay again as you get to use the face-maker and do all sorts of crazy things. I could probably live with the graphics, but if only they had improved the game’s controls, man, this would have done a hell of a lot better than it initially did. Overall, this is a neat spy/espionage third-person shooter, one of the more realistic ones out there.

Rating: ****

Story:
If you’ve seen the movie, then you know the plot here. James Bond loses his agent friend, Alec Trevelyan, on a mission at a Russian nerve gas station where everything goes wrong. Ten years later, a new organization called ‘Janus’ arises whom are suspected to have something to do with a stolen Pirate Helicopter and seem to be in command of a fearful EMP disrupting satellite known as the GoldenEye. The leader of this organization turns out to have a personal vendetta against James Bond. 007 joins forces with Natalya Simonova (a spy and programmer who is the token Bond Girl this time around) to battle Janus and bring them down.

Graphics:
The characters resemble their realistic versions from the films, it’s like walking through the Wax Museum in Times Square and looking at all of the celebrities. The levels never fail to satisfy as they are breathtakingly astonishing and resemble many of the sets and scenes from the movie itself. Last but not least, the textures here are way ahead of its time for a Nintendo 64 game.

Controls:
The controls are very suitable, especially the default mode which is basically where the stick aims and moves you forward and backward, meanwhile, the C buttons strafe you left and right. If this is not your cup of tea, then there’s several other configurations to select from. You’re bound to find one of them that works best for you.

Gameplay:
You as James Bond will gun down plenty and plenty of evil terrorists throughout the game in first-person shooter style. This may not be a smart tactical first person shooter like “Rainbow Six”, but it is far more entertaining and fun in a different way. But you also have to use some strategy here as just simply running down the hall with guns blazing will surely get you killed. All of the bad guys react astonishingly realistic, more so than say “Doom 64″, they will know when something’s not right once the guard next to him drops dead from a sniper shot.

You can shoot enemies in different body parts which will cause different reactions and movements. Your arsenal consists of about twenty-eight varying weapons - Explosives, laser guns, rocket and grenade launchers, knives, pistols, rifles, fists, uzis, remote and proximity mines, and even a tank. They have the Golden Gun here as well, also Bond’s favorite PP7 which comes in black, silver, and gold.

Aside from dispatching bad guys, there are objectives on every level which you must accomplish and they don’t always include killing everyone. The objectives are pretty much straight out of the movie (i.e. copying the key to the GoldenEye satellite, disarm bombs, etc.). There are eighteen main levels and two which need to be unlocked - Most of them are from the movie while a few have been added on. There’s plenty of variety in the levels (jungles, trains, boats, missile silos, train depot, and runway just to name some). Each area is as fleshed out as can be with absolutely excellent level design.

Overall:
This game has one of the highest replay values in both single player and multiplayer modes. Single player because the game has three levels of difficulty to choose from, each adding more objectives to the levels and smarter enemies to tackle, there’s a whole book of cheats and multiplayer maps to unlock by completing certain levels on a specific time frame. You can unlock levels and characters from previous Bond movies as well.

Multiplayer mode is a blast with options that are named after previous Bond films, some of which speak for themselves: You Only Live Twice, The Man With The Golden Gun, License To Kill, and The Living Daylights. Bond fan or not, this game is loads of fun; released nearly ten years ago in 1997, the game stills holds up its replay value to this day. “GoldenEye 007″ is a game to add right next to “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas”.

Rating: *****

Story:
After a virus wipes out most of the female population on Earth in 2001, countries engage in battle over their own quarantine zones, leading to full scale nuclear war. The last females are held captive by gangs. You play as Griffin Spade whose fiance, Madison, has been abducted by the U.S. Government.

Separated from his wife, Spade claims a tank and travels across war-ridden America to find and rescue her, fighting off any gangs he comes across.

Graphics:
Well-detailed explosions. The tanks are well designed and each contain their own abilities and weaknesses. The developers really went to town with the levels with plenty of things to destroy within huge, wide open areas that are unbelievably long (hey, longer the levels, the better they are).

Controls:
Controlling the tanks is very easy and realistic. The controls feel very responsive with no difficult movements, making it very fun to play. There’s no need to feel around for a button while you’re focusing on the screen.

Gameplay:
You can select from three tanks - a Moto Tank, M1A1 Abrams MBT, or the Goliath. You will control your tank through seventeen levels in the single player campaign and battle enemy tanks all throughout. All of the levels are set across the United States including New York City, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Chicago. Each environment is fully destructible and interactive. The game has multiplayer as well where you can team up with 2-4 players. There’s four multiplayer games to choose from: Battlelord (a variation of capture the flag), Deathmatch, Family Mode, and Annihilation.

Overall:
Blow up as much things as you would like in this game - Tanks, walls, streets, buildings, heck why not nuke the entire city!? Totally doable here. This game contains strategy, adventure, action, and free-roaming fun. Every level is complete with enemies, shortcuts, and fully destructible environments. “BattleTanx” contains high replay value, especially with its multiplayer options which has all sorts of weapons and goodies to mess around with.
Armor up, lock and load, and pop “BattleTanx” into your Nintendo 64. It’s going to be quite a while before you get bored with this game.

Rating: ****

Story:
Hulk’s arch nemesis, the Leader, is up to causing mayhem once again and the Hulk makes it his goal to stop and destroy him.

Graphics:
Everything looks like it was right out of a comic book or cartoon, excellently done. The developers took great care to add little detail like the flexing of Hulk’s muscles when he’s running or climbing, even the wind blowing his hair.

Controls:
The game hits its downside right here. Sometimes you will experience response delay when pressing a button and expecting The Hulk to act, jumping is yet another problem altogether. When you tackle the Abomination, you’ll really start to realize how sucky these controls are because the boss is about the same size as you and is able to act far quicker.

Gameplay:
The game only has five levels ranging from alien landscapes to city skyscrapers. You’ll do battle with classic Marvel villains for bosses such as The Abomination (who is actually a sub-boss on each level), Rhino, Tyrannus, Absorbing Man, and the Leader. It’s a rather short game with very few secrets. The controls really bring the gameplay effect down, especially since health power ups are not close enough to each other.

Overall:
“The Incredible Hulk” may seem fun the first time around, but you won’t want to play it again, there’s really very little reason to do so. It may look pretty, but the controls certainly aren’t. This is simply an average 2D side-scrolling, beat ‘em-up plat-former. You’re better off renting than buying.

Rating: ***

Story:
You have crashed on Isla Nublar aka Jurassic Park and must collect the eggs of seven species of dinosaurs scattered around the park. You have a real-time twelve hour limit in order to accomplish this.

Graphics:
The graphics are top of the notch for 1993. Movie-like quality, tons of detailed frame speed, solid pixels, the ability to pan in 360 degree motion, and smooth moving images. The graphics suit it well, from your movement to the reactions and attacks of the animals themselves. Visually, this game is much more well put together than its Sega Genesis counterpart which was a totally different animal in of itself.

Controls:
It’s a point-and-click adventure game, it’s rather easy to get the hang of here, even if you have never played a point-and-click game before, you’ll pick up on this long before you tune into the mechanics like use of items and battle options. Overall, no complaints whatsoever. Point-and-click games are really that hard anyway.

Gameplay:
Although it’s a point-and-click game, it has a lot of focus on action sequences with split-second timing. You must work your way around the park, collecting dinosaur eggs under a real twelve hour time limit (ala “Prince of Persia”). You play from a first person perspective with a panoramic view of your environment and surroundings, you have plenty of tools to interact with it as well as weapons (a stun gun, gas grenades, and tranquilizer darts), none that are exactly dangerous but most of the combat here is often disguised as a puzzle of sorts, so you’ll have to do a little more than just shoot in order to survive.

The game has mixed difficulty, you may find yourself taking up to an hour in one area of the park. You don’t have all the time in the world here, you only have twelve hours to accomplish all of your objectives which range from collecting dinosaur eggs, fixing areas of the park, restoring power, and avoiding bad guys who eventually show up.

Overall:

 This is a very enjoyable game as long as you complete your objectives and do what you need to do. The game also makes several references to characters and events from the original book by Michael Crichton; I think it’s somewhat like a precursor to “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” in some ways.

“Jurassic Park” also has a eerily creepy vibe to it as well - You’re all alone in a park with all these dinosaurs, there’s no dialogue, you’re on your own, and there’s bad guys on their way to the island who will show up in the later hours of the game (trust me, when you see that helicopter coming in and landing somewhere beyond your horizon, you will feel a lump in your throat). It’s too bad Sega CD didn’t come out with more games of quality like this one.

Rating: ***1/2

Story:
In an apocalyptic 2029, the Earth has been ravaged by a nuclear war brought on upon by self-aware AI, resulting in a Humans vs. Machines war. The AI in question, Skynet, sends back a cyborg (they’re called Terminators) to the year 1984 terminate Sarah Connor, the mother of John Connor, who will grow up to become the leader of the future resistance. At the same time, a rebel named Kyle Reese has been sent back to 1984 as well to protect Sarah from Skynet’s Terminator.

Graphics:
It’s a 2D side-scroller and much of the graphics may appear to be cartoonish, but hey, what else can you expect from this era of video games? The graphics do get the job done for the most part, I’ll give it that. It’s not “Super Mario Bros.” graphics, but it does work.

Controls:
The controls are very tight, you are able to jump and control basic maneuvers very easily. There’s nothing here that interferes with this aspect of the game.

Gameplay:
Well, the first couple of levels have absolutely nothing to do with the film itself, it takes place in future Los Angeles 2029, you play as Kyle Reese and you have to jump buildings and even take out a fighter jet in order to reach Sarah Connor in 1984. The rest of the levels stay true however. This game does a have a fairly high amount of difficulty associated with it, you must survive every level without losing any of your lives or else you’ll start over from the very top. For the most part, the gameplay is half action-packed and half-snorefest.

Overall:
Just to clarify, the Sega CD version of “The Terminator” is not just a straight Genesis conversion with enhancements here and there (which most Sega CD side-scrollers are widely known and criticized for). There are ten brand new levels, new backgrounds, animations, cinematic intermissions, and they even gave it a new musical score.

This isn’t the best ‘Terminator’ game out there, but once you start playing it, you may just feel like following through to the very end just to see what comes out of it for you. On a personal note, however, I kind of felt like each time I played it, it seemed more worse than the last as things just became uninteresting. If you’re a hardcore ‘Terminator’ fan though, you just might play it through for a second time.

Rating: ***