Krazy Ivan - PC Review - Coming Soon Magazine

The scenario of Krazy Ivan is nothing but banal. Earth is threatened by an alien force and is being slowly destroyed by expanding force fields located in five different zones on the globe. As you take the role of Ivan Popovich, a Russian soldier known for his schizophrenia, hence explaining his nickname Krazy Ivan, you will be ordered to destruct the five Zonal Shields Generators, and at the same time save the humans imprisoned inside the robots that are guarding the zones. Even though the scenario is not what makes a good shoot-em up, Psygnosis has us used to richer stories than that, and in general to better games than Krazy Ivan.

Inside a 41.5 feet high Steel Cossack Powersuit that weighs no less than 42 tons, you will control this heavily-armed robot, equipped with the latest technology in weaponry and energy sources. The embarked weapons are kind of impressive ranging from 30mm guns to missiles and laser beams, with special weapons being added as you pick them up during the game. This huge firepower won't be in vain as you will have to destroy any alien force you encounter in the sectors that compose a zone. When you blow up an alien robot or ship, the human prisoners that were inside will be freed. The more of them you save, the more points you will collect, and the sooner the better as the alien units won't give you a break.

On the screen, a small radar will provide you with useful data allowing you to mark the difference between drones, sentients and humans. Also visible is the damage status. Even if your Powersuit is protected by an energy shield and a strong armor plating, you are not invincible. Should one of the eight parts of the armor be destroyed, you will fail your mission. Fortunately, the various items you can collect when you destroy sentients will help you in your task. Besides Energy Cores, you can find pickups that re-arm guns, missiles and special weapons, as well as some that render you invincible for a short time and boost or reduce your speed at the same occasion. Collecting the energy cores released at the destruction of alien robots will also permit weapon upgrades and armor repairs, that are quite necessary if you want to get rid of the Zonal Shield Generators.

There are various sorts of enemies in Krazy Ivan, from easy to catch tank-like units to the hard to kill deadly Black Knight robot. Some units will even fly and shoot at you before you can see them on visual, which makes the radar your best friend in this game. The Black Knight will only appear if you are not fast enough to accomplish your mission. A timer on the screen indicates how much time you have left before it arrives, however, if you destroy one sentient robot, the counter will be reset.

The landscape on which you battle is like Magic Carpet, real-time generated with textured graphics. Still, they can't stand the comparison with the beautiful graphics of Bullfrog's hit. Except for a few trees and mountains blocking your way, the barren landscape is desperately flat and doesn't offer much to interact with. You can move freely around in any direction, look up and down, but you can't climb on the surrounding heights indicated in bright red on the radar. Compared to the version on the Sony PlayStation, the graphics of the Windows 95 version are less than appealing. From the three possible graphical modes (320 by 200 full screen, 320 by 240 and 640 by 480 windows), only the second one is really worth trying to have fast graphics. If you have a Pentium 133Mhz or faster, you can always try playing full screen for a better visual comfort, but don't expect the graphics to look better, they are rather worse than in the small windows. The only thing that is visually nice is the introduction of the game, mixing computer rendered animations with live video. What a pity that the graphics of the game are not as good as those found in the introduction!

The eleven CD audio tracks of the game, composed by CoLD SToRAGE and Stasis, while being better than old MIDI songs, are not really transcendental, and can become repetitive after a while. On the other hand, the sound effects and voices of the game are well digitized, and prevent in part the player to fall in monotony.

Conclusion:

Converting Krazy Ivan from the PlayStation to the PC was maybe not a good idea. The game shelves are already crowded with titles of this kind, and quite frankly, most of them are better made than Krazy Ivan, and offer a much deeper experience.

Click here for screen shots.

Ratings:

Graphics:	70%
Sound:	85%
Music:	80%
Gameplay:	70%
Interest:	60%
Overall:	71%

System Requirements:

A 100% Windows 95-compatible computer system (including compatible 32-bit drivers for CD-ROM drive, video card, sound card and input devices),
486 DX2-66 MHz or higher,
Min 8MB memory,
Windows 95,
Hard disk with 3Mb free,
Double speed CD-ROM drive or faster,
1Mb SVGA video graphic card (PCI or VLB recommended),
Microsoft mouse or 100% compatibles,
Microsoft Windows 95 compatible sound card.

Requires your system to have the latest Windows 95 drivers that can fully support Microsoft's DirectX.