"Creature Shock" is the latest product produced by Argonaut Software. Published by Virgin, this all new action game reveals itself to be a tremendous game that could dethrone all the other year end big successes.
The story takes place in the year 2123 when faced with a delicate problem of overpopulation, mankind is forced to find other worlds to settle in space. Three space ships are therefore constructed, each having a specific destination in the solar system. The first, The Myrmidon, will be sent towards Mars while the second, The Aztec will explore Venus. Finally, the third, The Amazon will be in charge of exploring the planets Jupiter and Saturn and also their moons, which lets say could support life forms.
Near the end of his voyage, four long years, The Amazon disappears and leaves only a distress signal transmitted by the ship's probe. In order to understand what exactly happened, you must, with the help of the Lynx FTL Scoutship, go to the last known position of the Amazon and discover what has happened to the ship and its crew.
The game starts off with the introduction which could qualify as sublime. It sweeps all the previously made animation and introduction material. Of a cinematographic quality, but without digitized video, we are left speechless by the speed, quality, care of movements, view angles, in short, it is really extraordinary!
Barely finished with the introduction, here again is more cinematic scenes to explain your mission. The first action phase that follows is, I must confess, deceiving in comparison to the quality of the introduction. It is a classic shoot-em-up with a slight 3D effect, but is not sufficient enough to grab the players interest because there is nothing that is really new.
Fortunately, the next phase is so innovative and beautiful, that we quickly forget how the first phase of action was. After having found a gaping hole in an asteroid, and you enter in with your spaceship, you land on what seems to be a platform inside the asteroid.
Your first shots will be on easy to destroy creatures, just one shot is sufficient to eliminate them. Then, thanks to a first-person perspective, you will now advance inside the galleries dug into the rock of the asteroid. You will discover adversaries of all sizes, going from little crawling creatures to those of human size and finally fight those qualifying as horrible and monstrous of terrifying sizes. However, each one has a weak point and the object is to discover their weakness early on so that you can survive for as long as possible. For this you have a weapon, three bombs and a energy field. During your combats, the power of your weapon will decrease the more you use it, and recharges itself more or less when you stop firing. Your energy field is activated when you hold down the right button on your mouse and uses your weapon's power. In other words, use your energy shield only when a creature is attacking you physically, if not you will see your energy reserve disappear like butter in the sun. Finally, your bombs are activated by pressing on the space bar, but they are only effective when the weak point of the creature is visible.
This second phase of action will surprise you by the number of creatures that you will encounter and, most of all, by the labyrinth of galleries in which you will surely die if you do not think about making a plan first. Again, beautiful cinematic scenes will follow the end of the second phase, which unfortunately emerges onto another phase of the same style as the first one. This one takes place on the surface of one of Saturn's moons, Thetys, and resembles a game of 3D obstacles than anything else. Finally, after having completed this third phase that is not easy, you will discover the last two, each having different types of backgrounds than the second phase. There again, the diversity of the monsters is hallucinate and we ask ourselves how the Argonaut Software team succeeded to create such repulsive creatures and most of all, make them come to life on the screen.
The scenes, we forgot to mention, are precalculated. The mouse permits the user to select the itinerary wanted on the screen by intermediary of red arrows. Nevertheless, the speed of the animations during displacements lets us believe that we are really in the heart of the action.
If you want a strong sensation, play in an obscure area with headphones, but I do not believe you will be able to resist it for very long.
Virgin Interactive Entertainment.
GRAPHICS ------ 96% 338a Ladbroke Grove,
SOUND ------ 95% London, W10 5AH, England.
MUSIC ------ 95% Tel: +44-(0)81-960-2255
GAMEPLAY ------ 94%
INTEREST ------ 95% Virgin Interactive Entertainment.
18061 Fitch Avenue,
Irvine, CA 92714.
OVERALL ------ 95% Tel: 714-833-8710
