James Cameron’s Dark Angel – PS2 – Review

James Cameron is well known for his colossal
movie: Titanic. After this movie he decided to create a TV series, which he
entitled Dark Angel. The premise of the show was to get an extremely gorgeous
woman that has super powers, and a mysterious past, to figure out why she is the
way she is. The show did really well, but was canceled after a couple of
seasons. Since the show was a story of action, Sierra thought it would make the
perfect game. Were they correct in this assumption?

The plot for the show, and the background for the game, is like this: it is the
year 2009; terrorists unleashed an electromagnetic shockwave called the Pulse,
upon the United States. The Pulse decimated the United States in every form,
government, economic, and everything else, making it a third world country.
Several years pass, and the government started to experiment on children to
create the perfect solider. Max is one of these prototypes, who escaped from
Manticore, the organization that created her, with eleven other children after
they saw one of their friends murdered. Max went to Seattle; this city could be
likened to what people would identify as the Wild West or what it was like over
a century ago. Since her escape she has tried to find a way where she can
identify herself as a normal human, and not just a killing machine.

As time progresses she becomes obsessed with finding the other children that
escaped that night, since she can best relate to them. At a fateful encounter,
she meets up with Logan Cale, a journalist, who wants to expose the corruption
in Seattle. They came upon a mutual agreement, she will help him expose the
sleaze in the city, and he will locate her eleven friends. Eventually they
destroy Manticore, but they find out that another place was doing the same cruel
experiments on children, the I Corporation. The I Corporation wants to capture
Max since she is a perfect specimen to examine, but she wants break in, so she
can find out more information on her past.

The TV show has Jessica Alba performing amazing moves, which translated decently
into the game. Players will have access to all of these moves, weapons, and
other things she possesses. The problem with the gameplay is players are
continually thrown into the same situation over and over again during the entire
course of the game. The only thing different from the beginning of the game and
other levels, is the amount of enemies she fights and how much health they have.
Once players defeat the enemies they will pick up a key, or a tool that will
allow them to go to the next set of enemies to repeat the progress. The gamer
has to continually fight hordes of the mindless AI, and the coolness of her
moves wears off, after they see it for the five hundredth time. Besides
fighting, players will have to sneak around, a lot like Metal Gear Solid, but it
is not as fun or as in-depth. The enemy AI is exceptionally stupid, and it seems
like they will not see you till you punch them in the face. The game just falls
short on the fun factor, and becomes a chore to even play.

Max is modeled to look like her TV counter part, Jessica Alba. Sierra did a good
job with the model, but it has an extremely low polygonal count and is not
textured very well. The game looks decent, but it is not something players would
want to show friends trying to convince them that the PlayStation 2 is a
graphical powerhouse. One good thing is that the load times are not awfully bad,
and I never came across any slow down while in the heat of battle.

Sierra decided to use the TV actors to voice over the characters in the game.
This works out great, since players will get the sense that they are watching
the TV show in a way. The bad thing about this is the scriptwriters gave some of
the worst one-liners for Jessica Alba to say. Every time she beats an enemy she
spurts out some lame quote, which gets annoying quickly!

James Cameron’s Dark Angel is rated T for Teen
for violence. It will take up to 170kb on your memory card.

Gameplay: 4.8
The level design is one of the weakest parts in the game, it becomes
redundant and in turn will make gamers regret ever playing it. It seems like the
level designers ran out of ideas when developing the game, and decided to use
the same formula for every level. It is a shame that they did this, since this
game could have been a success.

Graphics: 5.6
Dark Angel offers above average graphics, but it is not pushing the
PlayStation 2 in any way. The character models and environments are basic and
get the job done, nothing more and nothing less.

Sound: 4.9
Whoever decided that the one-liners Max says after she beats an enemy was
cute, was grossly mistaken. That is one of the worst features of the entire
game, mute button here we come!

Difficulty: Easy
See enemies, beat them up, pick up key, unlock door, and repeat. The game
repeats itself on each level. Plus it has no strategy at all, making each enemy
extremely easy to fight by just mashing buttons.

Concept: 5.0
This game tries to be Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider, and The Bouncer, all in
one package. The game has a been there done that feeling, with good reason. It
would have been great if Dark Angel had been fun and worth the time to play it,
but it is not.

Overall: 5.1
Stay away from this game at all costs, if you see it in the store, turn and
run away now! James Cameron’s Dark Angel shows some real potential, but it ends
up relying on its brand recognition more than its gameplay. If you enjoy playing
games that are fun, look for Metroid Prime, Mech Assault, or Ratchet and Clank,
because they will be worth your money!