There are a certain number
of things one should expect when booting up a new game. You’d expect it to play
well, providing hours of fun, or at the very least, playable. It’s also not so
much to ask for graphics on par with that of an average game on the system.
It’s also important that a game is easy on the ears, with good sound effects and
a solid background score, or at least custom soundtrack support, assuming it’s
an Xbox game.
Stake seems to completely
disregard most of the qualities that you can find in a good game. The basic
idea is this: you pick a character, jump into a big, open level, and brawl with
a number of enemies. It’s a little reminiscent of Power Stone, except there are
too many problems to have any fun. These problems arise immediately. The menus
aren’t very nice looking, with ridiculous white fonts on bright, yellow-ish
backgrounds. The character designs are pretty generic; you have your big,
muscled warrior, your ugly, green monster, your busty, scantily-clad gypsies,
and so on.
When you actually start
playing, though, you’ll probably find that staring at the character models would
make for a more entertaining experience. Controlling your character has an
incredibly sloppy feel. Jerky movement, stiff jumping, and pretty much no
physics whatsoever make for a game with a bland, unfun feel. Combat is
performed with three buttons, but you won’t find much depth. One button is for
basic attacks, one is for strong attacks, and yet another for a super attack
that requires magic points. You can press each button a number of times to
perform different combos, but you can’t mix buttons. It lacks any sort of flow
or depth, making for shallow fights.
One thing Stake seems to
like to boast about are its big interactive environments. While they are big,
they lack good design. There are a number of themes, from the lava-filled area,
to a grassy hill with a temple on it, to what is apparently a haunted house.
Each of them are so big you’ll get lost, but there’s really nothing to do on
them – they’re usually just filled with a bunch of open space or repetitive
terrain. Not helping matters is the constant clipping that goes on, leaving you
stuck in many areas you wish you weren’t.
The camera is equally bad.
You can use the triggers to make it zoom in or out, but that’s basically it.
You can’t even rotate it, which is incredibly unfortunate. It’s simply stuck at
a fixed angle the whole time. Zooming out won’t even help you see what’s going
on, as Stake employs some kind of strange blur effect, making it almost
impossible to see anything but movements. The camera also becomes troublesome
if you’re inside a building with a roof on it – you have to adjust the camera
every so often, or you’re stuck staring at the roof. This area of the game
needed major improvement.
The graphics are so
unimpressive, you’d swear this was a Nintendo 64 game. The environments are
rigid and lack many interesting sights. Textures are incredibly blurry and
repetitive, making it easy to get lost. Character models are the best looking
part of the game, but that’s not saying a lot. They sport clunky, jittery
animation and lack much detail. Between the camera and the lackluster graphics,
you’ll be hard-pressed to actually understand what’s going on half the time.
Sound is probably one of the
best parts of the game, but that’s only because the game offers custom
soundtrack support. Even, then, though, the way its implemented feels cheap:
you have to scroll through an incredibly long list to get to any particular
song, and it repeats throughout the whole match instead of moving on to the next
track. If you want to select the next track, you have to scroll through the
whole list again to get to it. It’s simply not practical. Sound effects aren’t
too impressive either – many of them seem out of place or just plain silly.
Stake hasn’t received a lot
of hype, but that’s understandable – the game is really disappointingly bad. It
feels like it could have used a lot more time in development, despite being
delayed several times. It wants to be a fun brawler, but instead, is a clunky,
boring game consisting of running around and mashing buttons. I advise you to
not spend your money on this game.
Gameplay: 3.0
To put it bluntly, Stake is
no fun to play. Control is very stiff, with jumpy movements and poor
animation. The fighting system is shallow and becomes stale within minutes.
Level design is poor, as well. There’s not much incentive to play here.
Graphics: 4.0
The graphics are glitchy,
with a lot of clipping going on. Character models are okay, but pretty simple
in comparison to other games. Animation is junky and abrupt, though, and the
environments lack any kind of interesting points. Textures are extremely
blurry, looking downright pathetic. Cover your eyes, folks.
Sound: 3.5
Sound effects are ludicrous,
voice samples are super-annoying and monotonous, and the background music will
get on your nerves after a few minutes. Although the game supports custom
soundtracks, it does so in a very unappealing fashion. Work that mute button.
Difficulty: Hard
It’s not really too
difficult to defeat an opponent – you basically just mash the attack button
until your foe is dead. Of course, frustration immediately sets in as you are
killed by many hazards unknown to you, or trapped in an endless combo from an
enemy.
Concept: 4.0
At best, Stake is a rip-off
of the Dreamcast classic Power Stone. At worst, it’s a stripped down,
un-fun version of Power Stone that looks like its part of the Playstation’s
library from 1995. Either way, any good ideas apparent in Stake are executed
quite poorly.
Multiplayer: 4.0
There are only two
uninspired modes, deathmatch and team deathmatch. Absolutely no gameplay
problems are resolved in either mode – the game is still no fun.
Overall: 3.6
I honestly cannot understand
why Metro3D approved this game’s release. Though a decent idea on paper, Stake
has poor controls, pathetic graphics, a terrible camera, and sound that even
makes your custom soundtracks seem lame. The entire package just seems like it
needs a lot more work. I hate to say it, but to be quite honest, you will not
want to play Stake for more than five minutes or so – I think it’s around that
time when the realization of just how weak this game really is kicks in.
