"Five miles out is an understatement"

When I saw Immercenary sitting in a bin of old 3DO games, neglected, unwanted and unloved it jumped out at me as a game that at least sounded fun. The subtitle “Combat in a Digital World” gave me hope that this game would be the 3DO game I was looking for. One that I could spend hours on; one that I would absolutely love and play over and over and over again; one that would make me feel like the 3DO was in fact worth all the money they wanted when it came out. What I didn't realize is that it is a complete rip off of the Matrix - four years before the movie came out.

Ok, so maybe they couldn't rip the Matrix off since the movie didn't exist in 1994, but there are some similarities that are very interesting. The basic premise of the game is that in the future, virtual reality has taken over the world. Every person who logs into the this virtual reality world is stuck because there is a bug in the system that allows only one person to turn it off. That person is Perfect 1. The warriors of this futuristic virtual reality world must, for some unknown reason, get a warrior from the present time (that time being 1994) to log in and defeat Perfect 1. Through a complex system of killing polygons shaped as humans, you become stronger and can eventually take on the Perfect 1.

The game plays as a first person shooter. After you view some full motion video clips where people sit you down in a chair and probe every orifice of your body, you land randomly within the virtual reality world. Almost instantly you get mobbed by guys called “Goners” who look like piles of dog crap strung together. The world is free to explore, in all of its glory. Quickly you will learn that this game works sort of like Diablo II or Everquest, except in a stripped down, single player version.

There is a neutral zone where you can hide and talk to other “players” who are trapped within the game. Some have been here so long they think it is actually real while some just want out and as quickly as possible. Sometimes the bosses appear here too. Since it is a neutral zone, you can actually talk with them and discover information that is useful in defeating them.

Every person in the world is assigned a rank, based on how many people he or she has defeated. The bosses start at rank fourteen and go up to one, for Perfect 1. You start out at rank 256 and have to climb your way up. Goners with extremely low ranks flood the game and will almost always be shooting at you, even if you are ranked one. Finding anything other than these ranks is very hard to do and you can't progress further unless you do find them. The game leads you on sort of a wild goose chase that kills you if you aren't careful.

By talking to people in the game, you discover locations of better weapons and power ups. As you run around you come across these power ups in the forms of pool balls (billiard balls if you prefer). I don't understand exactly how pool balls can be used as a nuclear device, but hey, whatever floats your boat. Just don't try and strike it with a cue ball though. It'd make for an interesting game, that's for sure.

As you progress in the game, you can utilize the save feature to record your progress. The game keeps track of a wide variety of statistics, including how much damage you've taken and dished out as well as the amount of time you have spent in combat. The game does suffer from some 128 and 256 limits in some categories and cannot record more than one hour of combat time in a single play session (it rolls over to 0) but will record several hours for the overall time.

Graphically, the is pretty good. There are quite a few polygons, but you can't expect much from this system and the time period. This is one of the best games, graphically, I have seen on the 3DO. The world is very large and does not experience and slow down as you travel around. The buildings look different from one another and the world as a whole looks very nice. There are forests, cities, lakes and grave yards. Everything moves fluidly. While the Goners are palate swaps of one another, the higher ranked people all look the same. The bosses all look different except some of them seem to be two dimensional while some are three dimensional.

As you are approaching buildings and other structures, you first see the grid the game uses to build them before you actually see the building. In the distance there will be a jumble of yellow piping that suddenly has textures mapped around it. This is probably because the 3DO couldn't process things fast enough to have it happen instantaneously but is odd and feels out of place. Once you get close enough it goes away and all you can see is the building, but when you first start the game, you wonder why you can't find that yellow building you saw in the distance.

There is a random boss fight on a football field for some odd reason (that's American football). The football field feels really out of place because the rest of the game is dark and slightly morbid. It just seems to me that in a world, even a virtual reality one, where everyone is killing everyone else, football would be the last thing on peoples mind.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of the game is the control scheme. While everything is responsive, to a degree, controlling your character (or it is actually you?) is tough. When you press up to go forward, you start running and don't stop when you let go of the button. You keep moving until you either crash into a wall or press the down button over and over again. The more you press down, the slower you go until you finally stop. If you press down from a stopped position you begin running backwards and don't stop until either up is pressed or you crash into a wall.

Pressing left or right doesn't move you in that direction but rather rotates you so that as you are running uncontrollably you can try and turn 90 degrees and hopefully, with some luck, miss the wall in front of you. The player will find this control scheme very frustrating and might make you want to give the game up fast. However, if you give it some time, it does get a little more bearable. Perhaps a saving grace for the control scheme and the game entirely is that you can set the A, B, and C buttons to fire whatever weapon you choose (assuming you picked up that billiard ball).

During boss fights you will find the best way to do anything is to actually back your self into a corner and fire wildly. The game will automatically lock onto a target for you if it is within your cross hairs so all you have to do is repeatedly fire. This would be rather simple and almost childish if it didn't lock onto targets through walls. While you can only see a wall, the game will look right through it and lock onto something you cannot hit. Unless something comes closer or you run away, you can't remove the lock on. Fortunately, the enemy that is two walls away will also lock onto you and will attempt to shoot at you through the wall and won't move round to get to you. While it is a minor glitch, it is a rather annoying one. I got stuck in a stalemate for 20 minutes during a boss fight because of this glitch. I had to slowly strafe around a corner (strafing is difficult and basically useless because it moves so slow) in order to over come it.

Musically, the game is lacking. While there are some tunes during the game that change from time to time and even three different songs for the final boss, depending on what version you get, the music is dull. A lot of it is a piano playing with strings in the background. While it is fitting to the mood of the game, I just never caught on to the actual music. At times the songs pick up and have some drums but quickly die back down into the back ground and almost disappear all together.

Another thing that hurts the music is the fact that the sound effects are loud and obnoxious. I always use my headphones when playing the 3DO since there is a jack directly on the controller. The sounds from the lasers firing over and over again drown out the music a lot of the time. The sounds are done very well when examined by them selves. Stereo sound is used so when someone on your right shoots at you, the laser noise only comes out of the right speaker.

The worst part of the game, and I don't think anyone can disagree with this, is the acting in the full motion video clips. While it is typical that these types of games don't have good acting, this is so far below the standard for the industry that I think a talking parrot would have done a better acting job. When you beat the game, the people are so unenthusiastic that the world is finally saved that it actually feels like they are crapping all over your efforts. When talking to people in the game, they give so many one word responses and aren't too excited when they do. When you ask about The Garden (the in game name for the virtual reality world) they say things like “it is all around us” or “it is everything you see” and don't get into it. They are supposed to be trapped here and that is enough to make me think they would be a little more excitable when talking about it.

While there are a several people to talk to at any given time, you only hear two or three different voices. The voices are the same for every character that looks a like, whether or not there are multiple people in front of you. The bosses each sound good and will actually say more than just the answer to your question. You even get propositioned by one of the female bosses, but cannot take her up on her offer to go home with her.

Alright. So in the end, is Immercenary that game that makes the 3DO a must own system? Not really. It parallels the Matrix in ways that makes me feel like they ripped this game off and successfully did it since it is a game no one has really played. While it is a decent game, it does leaves a lot to be desired. It feels like it is ahead of its time by a few years. Perhaps if this were a Playstation 2 game, this would be a different story all together. While graphically it is superior to anything else on the system, it lacks depth. With only the one city to explore and ten or so bosses, there isn't a lot to do. There is some replay value because of the three different versions of the final boss that are seemingly chosen at random but not enough to make it the end all to beat all for the 3DO. If you own the system and find the game for less than ten bucks, it may be worth the purchase. Just don't let the frustrating controls and terrible acting ability of the below B movie stars turn you off. You will find an enjoyable game underneath it all.

Final Score 7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/12/07