Kileak: The DNA Imperative

"I've seen worse. Spacehulk anyone?"

Introduction
I don't know much about this game... but I know that it's better than that piss-poor excuse for a game called Spacehulk! Okay, I know that I shouldn't be ragging on another game like this. If you like 'Spacehulk' that's fine by me. I just didn't grasp some of the things concerning the game's gameplay. Anyway, on the subject of 'Kileak: The DNA Imperative': This game is a first-person-shooter similar to the style of the aforementioned 'Spacehulk' or even Zipper's 'DeathDrome'.

The game's story is set pretty far into the future (2038 to be exact). A whole 43 years ahead of the time the game actually came out. So, what would life be like then? According to the Kileak development team things are quite advanced. You and your team are sent to to the South Pole to rescue an undercover agent. Things don't go as planned, your ship is attacked, and you make a crash landing. Thanks to the very evil Dr. Kim you're now stranded. Your job is to stop Dr. Kim from carrying out future contamination plans, thus saving the human race. That's a lot of weight on your shoulders, no? I thought so. Get in there and be quick about it.

Graphics 5/10
The surprising thing about this game is that it's a closed-off 3D shooter that was released for the PSX in its earlier days and yet there's little use of sprites. I was impressed that Kileak's team didn't make the mistake of making the enemies made of sprites. Instead they're full polygonal 3D models. You will, however, see sprite pickups such as keycards and healths.

On a not-so-good note the wall textures generally do suck and are overly used. As you progress in the game the textures change, yes, but they seem as they're getting worse. That's just how I felt about them throughout the course of this game.

The level design is very boring and repetitious. The game looks as if it were rushed and the map maker never got turned into anything useful. In other words when the level designers were laying out the maps it looks like they never had a plan in mind. Lay a piece here and another there. Hey, let's make every single level symmetric----they'll like that!

Sound 4/10
These days I don't expect to much out of games as far as sound goes. With the arrival of CD's & DVD's has also shown the laziness of developers. Sound effects and music that just plain suck is the case here. The sounds of the guns old quick and will just anger you to were you want to mute your television set.

Gameplay (7/10)
Control (8/10)
The highlight of the game is its controls. Moving around is very easy and even using the d-pad is painless. Sidestepping helps quite a bit and performing other actions like shoot are pulled off effortlessly.

Mechanics (6/10)
While Kileak's gameplay is nothing that will blow your socks off I did manage to get some enjoyment out of it. Like I said, it wasn't as bad as similar style FPS like this. The enemies are all 3D and alright to battle with. I never felt discouraged to go down a certain hallway until later in the game. Things became bland after about that tenth level. There's 15 total I believe. This blandness, if it comes to you, will do so give or take a few levels. In which case, that isn't bad.

Replay Value (5/10)
The fact that it's a FPS levels automatically makes the replay value high. You usually want to go back into the levels to screw around with things since there's stuff that you don't have to get in order to complete a level. However, the lack of two-player mode and the gameplay being only average kind of discourages you.

Conclusion
Definitely a try-before-you-buy game. But then again you can't even rent it anymore. You could pick this game up for three to eight bucks depending on the place you get it. It's not all that bad of a game. And it's fairly impressive for a first generation PSX game. If you like these types of FPS games, then this instantly becomes a must buy since it stands out with great control and okay graphics.

So the final score is a five out of ten. With me that's average since the game isn't that bad at all.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/15/03, Updated 04/15/03