Harbinger

"Half good and Half bad make this a game that only half of you will like"

Harbringer is NOT a bad game! (I wanted to make sure that was said first) It is just not a very good game. It has potential, but ends up falling short of the mark set by other games in the genre. Lets take a deeper look into the huge spaceship known as Harbringer..

Graphics:

Graphics are good, but overly simplistic. To be fair they set the mood straight and offer a pleasent surprise every now and again. Their's not much to say about them, no fancy pixel shading effects, just a engine that offers a good enough experience that fits the game well.

Sound:

The game supports all of the latest EAX formats, so those with Sound Blaster Audigy cards will get a treat. Those still on Aureal3d cards will be glad to know that Harbringer supports the A3D 2.0 format. The sound effects are passable, but the music just doesn't work with the game. It is a bit techno in some places, and other places overly simple.

Story/gameplay:

I tried following the story, but it's just a bynch of ''do this, then do that''. Youre basically on this ''why does it have to be this big'' ship called Harbringer. Youre being followed by some robots called Verant's, and well... you get the picture. You destroy robots. Unfortuantly the game play is way to tedious to enjoy that. The game lets you pick from three different types of characters, Humans Gladiators or Culibine. All of which have different styles as one would suspect. You equip armor weapons and a helmets, then blow things up.. sometimes you get lucky and find armor or weapons with sockets, and you can use ''add on chips'' that boost attack, or speed. Leveling up is pretty cool, when you level up you get x amount of points to use on improving youre melee attacks or long distance attacks.

System Requirements:

I ran the game using a 9700PRO, AMD Athlon 2600+ and a gig of DDR400.. and the game ran really fast. I would say that any computer with a 1.2ghz or faster processer with 256meg Ram and a GeForce 3 will run the game just fine..as their are very little options to tweak graphically.

Conclusion

Harbringer is a game that you'll either enjoy or hate. I happened to enjoy the first few levels before the game became boring and tedious. I did end up continueing to play just to see if the story would pick up.. it never did. If you see the game cheap pick it up, as you could be one of the 50 percent that likes it.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/02/03, Updated 03/02/03