Colony Wars: Vengeance

"Another perspective on Colony Wars: Vengence"

Personally, i've always been a fan of seeing "both sides of the story" (me and Rod Stewart both huh?) so I always look at the high scores and low scores when I am looking at game reviews. However, I am simply not giving this game a low review score simply to try to balance out the high scores this game has recieved, *I honestly think this game is horrible*, and I'll tell you why.

Plot (10/25) - OK, so side A seeks retribution against side B who has seriously wronged them in the past, and you play the role of "Mr. Personal Reflection" as you follow the trail of "Navy pilot" fighting the evil "League". So maybe it COULD work as a viable storyline for a PSX game, but come on, we all know that this game is suffering big-time from "insert mediocre plot line -here- to somehow link mindless levels of flashy graphics by use of CG clips"... think back to Doom/Quake... the story was just some crappy pretense to give the levels of mass carnage some kind of cohesiveness. The cutscenes in CW:V aren't badly done, but sadly, they couldn't get me interested in the game enough to care about whether i was shooting a good guy or bad guy.

Sound (1/25) - Well... there were sounds associated with different buttons. And if there was any BGM at any point in the game, it sure wasn't memorable enough for me to rememember it, several minutes after turning the game off. Of course there's the digitized speech and such, but the voice acting was mediocre, and what game doesn't have speech in it nowadays ? And if the simple fact that it is there is any excuse to give this game's sound a good rating, then you're not going to find it here.

Graphics (13/25) - Ok, the 3D modeling and graphics are cool. And it does kinda feel like you're hurtling through space. (Hey, it kept me interested... for a whole half-hour.)

Game-Play (4/25) - Maybe I'm slightly biased against the game here because I can't get beat half of the first 8 missions, but then again, I don't see how anyone could have. Talk about a hard game man, I think Psygnosis made the first 2 or 3 levels really easy to trick you into thinking that you might have a chance at this game. The controls and everything are easy enough, but the frustration at getting nowhere in this game is paramount. And I'm pretty good at space-shooters... I got sick of this game after a night of trying to beat the same 3 missions over and over and over again.

Total Points (28/100) - I'll round up to a 3. I feel like I'm being too nice, but Beware of this game unless your standards for fun in a PSX are very low. At least rent it before you spend 40 bucks on it and commit suicide. ^_^ But then again, that's how *I* feel about it.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99