Dark Arena

"A Solid FPS with a few minor drawbacks"

My guess is that you are reading this review for one of three reasons:
1) You are thinking of getting the game and want an opinion before you lay out $40

-or-

2) You already have the game and want justification for how you feel about the game.

-or-

3) You are bored and just looking around.

Hopefully, this review of Dark Arena will be informative no matter what category you fall into.

Dark Arena is a new first person shooter (FPS) for the Gameboy Advance. But you knew that. The question is: Is this game fun, cool, worth the $$$. As usual, the answer is yes and no. First things first. After first turning on Dark Arena, I immediately had a feeling of deja vu, and I had to double check to make sure that I was not playing Doom. Dark Arena looks and plays (and sounds) quite a bit like Doom. This is neither good nor bad. In Dark Arena you play a lone human trying to fight your way out of a complex filled with genetically altered people. They have been engineered to be the ultimate killing machines, and now their target is you.

The Graphics
Dark Arena looks pretty good for a handheld FPS. The levels have good variety of textures as well as both inside and outside environments. The monsters are very pixelated up close, but they still look okay, and there is a fairly good variety of creatures to kill. There are also a couple of different weather effects in the game. On certain levels, it snows and rains. These weather effects do not have any effect on the gameplay, but they look cool nonetheless. The graphics engine does a good job of keeping everything moving along at a quick pace. I don't ever remember experiencing any slowdown while I was playing. My only complaints about the graphics is the monsters - they are not animated very well, and they have virtually no ''dying'' animation. You shoot them, and it looks like they fall over. No blood by the way. While the graphics are not jawdropping, they do not take away from the overall experience of the game at all. If this is what the first generation of FPS games look like, I cannot imagine what developers will be able to do in a year.

The Sound
Sound effects are nice, but nothing special. All of the guns have a unique sound, and the ambient sound effects are pretty cool. You can sometimes hear monsters through the walls and this adds to the suspense of the levels. I was not thrilled by the music - it is the standard action game fare. Not bad, but just not my taste. There is an option screen where you can turn the music off.

The Gameplay
This game pretty much is non-stop action and exploration. The GBA is set up surprisingly well for FPS games, and I had no trouble jumping right in on the controls. The framerate is consistently screaming, and rarely (if ever) stutters. The game just feels good to control. The controls have a somewhat ''floaty'' feeling that adds to the reality of the game. Also, when you walk, there is a slight walking ''bob'' that is also a nice touch. At its core, Dark Arena is a key based game. You walk around the levels, killing enemies and searching for up to 3 key cards that will open various doors that will allow you to complete the level. The level designs are fairly well done and the levels are challenging without being frustrating. After years of playing PC FPS games, it was somewhat frustrating to not be able to have a ''free look'', but short of making a motion sensitive cartridge, I don't think that will be happening anytime soon.

The Bad Stuff
I had some problems with Dark Arena, and while these faults do not make it a bad game, they definitely made me score the game significantly lower.

1. No battery save. What is up with that? With the state of games as they are, there is simply no excuse to not have a battery backup (well, other than cost). Worse yet, you only get a password at the end of a level - there is no way to ''save'' you game in the middle of a level. Some of the levels took me 10-15 minutes to complete - so it is a real pain to not be able to save in mid-level. GBA is a portable system - it gets real old to have to write down passwords all the time.

2. Did I mention this game has no battery save? This is such a distraction I felt I had to mention it twice.

3. No weapon continuity. At the start of each new level, you begin armed only with a laser gun, regardless of how many weapons, etc you collected in the previous level. There is very little incentive to conserve your ammution since you know that you will start from scratch on the next level. What good is a guided missle if you never really get to use it?

4. The so-called auto map feature. To me, auto map means the game maps for you as you go along. Not so with Dark Arena. There is a map in each level, but it is not accessible until you find it. Worse yet, the maps on many levels are hidden in secret panels and unless you spend a great deal of time looking for them, you'll never find them. Not only is this frustrating, but it is also misleading since the box clearly says that this game has an auto map feature. Once you find the map, it is somewhat difficult to use because you have to hit ''Start'' and then choose the ''map'' selection. I'm not sure of better way to do it, but checking the map is fairly disruptive to the gameplay.

5. The box also says full motion video. I'm not sure where the full motion video is unless you call panning over pre-rendered pictures full motion video. Maybe I'm missing something, but I sure did not see any video.

6. Did I mention there was no battery save?

Dark Arena also includes multi-player deathmatch, but since there is no one in my office with a GBA, I don't even own a link cable. Maybe another reviewer can comment on the multiplayer aspects.

Dark Arena is a pretty good first person shooter and is a solid game. It is just sad because it could have been so much better - my guess is that the development cycle may have been a bit rushed. It is certainly worth a rental at the very least.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/16/02, Updated 01/16/02