Haven: Call of the King

"Diversity vs. Repetitive Nature"

What some games make up for in lack of game play options with visuals and audio, Haven makes up for in spades with plenty of diverse game play but average presentation. One of the better games that I’ve played in a while that features a platform bouncing hero, Haven has all the makings of a sleeper hit as long as you’re willing to give it a chance. Imagine if you will, being able to play a shooter, a variety of mini-games and the ability to try and save the world while you were at it, all while being asleep. What you have in Haven is just that, with plenty of game play that you can enjoy for hours on end, all while retaining a challenge that will keep hardcore platform gamers on edge.

In order to really understand the story, you have to play through the game and ultimately collect a bell that will call forth a great King in order to dispatch the current evil ruler. Through his dreams, he sees this bell and decides that he must go after it because living with the current guy is worse than having your fingers smashed in a car door. From that point on, there are intervals of the story that keep popping up as you complete one portion of the game and move onto the next. As the story continues, you’ll get to live in the world of Haven for a while and almost feel a sense of connection with your character and his current situation just before the action starts and doesn’t stop.

Game play variety is important in any good platform game and you’ll find that there are more elements of this than you can shake a stick at. You’ll be able to run through in a Mario style fashion, clocking your enemies and bashing them out of your way to other various styles of games such as shooters and racing. When the developers of the game thought about this title, they really wanted to make sure that you got the best bang for your buck, so adding all of the different themes into one title makes for something well worth playing through. The challenge on the other hand will be the deciding factor as to whether or not you’re really going to enjoy it.

With all of the different game play functions that you have at your disposal, it really is difficult to understand just what could possibly be bad about a game that has so much to offer. The overall difficulty in the mini-games and even the platform portions of the game is set to a high curve and you’ll notice that if your timing isn’t right or you’re not doing something that you should, you’ll be out of luck and have to start over. What makes this part fun is the fact that if you’re into this genre of games, then you’ll find that if you had an easy road trip with Jak and Daxter or Sly Cooper, then you’re going to really have to work in order to beat the game.

Moving Haven through all of the different scenarios is nothing that you can’t accomplish with just a little bit of practice. Most of the platform stages are easily conquered by simply timing your jumps to be on the ball and being able to avoid getting injured by your enemies. If you were to think of the Crash Bandicoot series, then you’ll find that the same mechanics are here in terms of attacking your enemies and moving out of the way when you don’t have a good hit. All of the different games that you partake in are explained to you as you’re playing, so the need to sit and really think about what you’re doing doesn’t come to mind at all.

Where the problems start are with the way that Haven and his antagonists are all designed and the way that they look. For the most part, you really won’t be paying attention to the way that Haven’s hair is styled with the corn-rolled hair and the extreme sports outfit. The enemy designs are neat to look at, but in all reality, they are simple and after seeing them a few times, you really won’t be awed by the imagination. The game itself allows you a large environment that is constantly changing and the different locations that you travel through are all well detailed. A minor gripe that I had with the presentation of the game was that you’re seeing enemies simply appear when you get close enough to them, leading to draw in and other questionable visual problems.

The music that accompanies you has a tone to it that keeps the adrenaline high throughout all of the stages and the endless mini-games. You’ll find that the orchestrated music fits the theme of the game well and changes according to what you’re doing at any given point. Some of the sound effects are top notch, but the problem with that is once you’ve heard the effects more than once, you’ll hear them hundreds of times which can be annoying after an hour or so. In retrospect, you’ll also find that the music itself has a tendency to repeat after several stages, which you might not enjoy quite as much as the first time you heard it.

Haven has plenty of diversity to it in the game play to make it an above average platform game. Where games such as Dr. Muto failed with the game play, Haven excels past the usual suspects of platform gaming and gives you enough of everything to keep you playing. The main problem is with the overall presentation that the game gives you and the lack of visual acuity that you might be searching for with a game that could be so epic in nature. Aside from that and the fact that the stages in later portions of the game tend to be repeats of previous stages, you’ll find enough to keep you busy throughout an entire weekend of dream traveling and enemy bashing goodness.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/19/03, Updated 03/19/03