Hybrid Heaven

"Konami should stick to Metal Gear."

I wanted to like Hybrid Heaven, I really did. After all, the premise sounds good on paper. You take the role of a guy with a seriou identity crisis who finds himself trapped in a labryinthine underground facility and knee-deep in a conspiracy to kill the president and replace him with a clone.

Your task is to stop this event from happening so the shadowy conspirators plan for world domination is ended. The game plays out, fittingly, as a hybrid of several different genres. Mainly, it's a 3D adventure game, complete with the requisite running, jumping and shooting. Meet up with an enemy, though, and becomes a turn-based battle very similar to Legend of Legaia in that you must choose specific attacks or strings of punches and kicks from menus to fight. The fights stay real-time when you are not attacking and you can move around freely during them.

So you're probably saying "It sounds pretty cool, Pat. What gives with the 4?" Well, basically the game neither looks very impressive nor plays well at all. As you well know, control and graphics are two of the most important elements in a game.

First, the graphics, even enhanced as they claim to be by the Expansion Pak, are grainy and stiff. Animation on both your character and the enemies is jerky and some feats such as jumping are downright hard to pull off accurately because of the way the camera moves and your character seems to slide around. I attempted what should have been a simple hop from a crate over to a nearby ledge about 15 times before shutting the game off in frustration.

Secondly, the control. It's at once stiff and too loose. As you're exploring, simple feats become difficult, as I mentioned above, and when you are in a fight, things slow down to a crawl.

As much as I wanted to like this game, the sum of it's parts wouldn't allow it. Maybe it's just not for me, but I strongly recommend a rent before purchasing if it you're interested in the game.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99