Xena: Warrior Princess

"Pretty fun while it lasts"

Xena: Warrior Princess is an attempt to adapt the television series of the same name to the Playstation format with mixed results. I should warn you that I'm a fanboy, so I'm probably biased. That cuts both ways though. Here's goes:

The game is broken into 21 levels in 7 sections. It's is mostly a 3D adaptation of the hack-and-slash genre, which was itself a minor variation on the side-scrolling beat-em up, but it has some platforming and puzzle-solving elements thrown in as well. The puzzles aren't horrible, but they aren't incredibly obvious in most cases either. It's one of the game's better elements.

The platforming aspect mostly comes up in Hades' domain, and there is thankfully only one really difficult jump to make. Other than that, there's a bit of jumping around on platforms, but nothing tricky if you line it up first. However, you'll be having to manually position the camera a lot.

In fact, as in so many other 3D third-person games, most of the control problems can be blamed on the camera. Sometimes, it gives you an obstructed view. It swings around while you're moving, and control is camera relative, so you often end up going where you didn't want to. If you're running or jumping, this can be fatal.

Fighting mechanics aren't deep at all, but they do the job. The face buttons are assigned to jump, kick, punch and block and there are a few combos available. The most effective thing I could come up with was running toward the opponent while mashing kick and punch, and blocking when they attacked. The thing that hurts this most is the lack of any aerial attacks. Aerial attacks are a big part of the show's choreography, and I'm surprised to see them left out.

The highlight of gameplay (and the only original element) is the chakram. When you hold down R1, you get a view behind Xena's head somewhat akin to Tomb Raider's look function. Tap X, and Xena throws the chakram. The camera goes into to chase mode, following it wherever it goes. You can steer it in the air using the D-pad or analog stick, and it ricochets off solid objects and enemies, eventually returning. This makes for a decent simulation of the amazing chakram tricks from the show. Great for distance attacks and scouting.

To put it politely, this game does not look nearly as good as its contemporaries. There are depth-sorting problem here and there as well as lo-rez textures, simple world geometry and horrible jaggies.

The characters are basically recognizable, though hardly good likenesses. Ares looks right, but Gabrielle and Xena's faces are a bit off. The women are built nothing their muscular TV counterparts. The models remind me of strongly of Tomb Raider 1. They have Lara's buxom stick-figure body, low poly counts and highly visible joints. Xena even has the dangerously pointy breasts.

The FMVs look okay. There's nothing remarkable about them except perhaps the bad character models, which are smoother versions of the in-game ones.

The sound effects are pretty good, but again, nothing special. Everything sounds like it should or an exaggerated version of the same.

The music leaves something to be desired. For those of you not familiar with the show, the music is excellent there. It won an Emmy for the second season in fact. Here, some of the songs are standard action game music, some are bastardized version of the show's soundtrack and all of them sound like something out of the 16-bit era.

The acting is the worst of it though. Xena sounds nothing like Lucy Lawless, the actress who portrays her on television, nor does Ares sound like Kevin Smith. Gabrielle sounds reasonably like Renee O'Connor, but no one is nearly as good an actor. It's bad enough that none of the actors are credited. There isn't a whole lot of dialogue. I would think EA could have afforded a morning's work from the regular cast.

The save system isn't very good. You can return to earlier levels, but if you save after beating them, you lose everything you've done since. It doesn't warn you about this. It's also easy to accidentally miss saving at the end of a level, and there's nothing you can do short of beating the next level.

It's also worth nothing that the game is quite short. It took me two hours according to the stats at the end, and even if you count all the stuff that took several tries, I doubt it took me more than six hours.

In summary: Xena: Warrior Princess has a lot wrong with it. The story would be more at home in Hercules, the acting in a B movie and the character designs in Tomb Raider. Between the music, the graphics and the camera problems, Xena seems like a first-generation game. But it isn't. It was released in October of 1999 when the Playstation had been available in America for more than four years. There isn't much excuse for that. I would recommend it for hardcore Xena fans or the casual player who wouldn't mind getting a cheap game to rip through in a day or two. The rest of you might find it a good rent, or bargain-bin purchase.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/15/01, Updated 02/15/01