D2

by Sega Of America, Inc.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000488VR
• Item Weight: 8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: August 22, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,291 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Editorial Review

The long-delayed cinematic adventure game D2 has finally surfaced on the Dreamcast. Despite several years in development by innovative Japanese game design team Warp, D2 seems to suffer from a lack of solid gameplay. Fortunately, the gaming environment is stunning to look at.

D2 offers gamers a curious combination of adventurous exploration and first-person shooting. Gamers assume the role of airplane crash survivor Laura (not to be confused with game icon Lara Croft of Tomb Raider infamy). The game begins with Laura embarking on an airplane flight that soon goes horribly wrong. The plane is hijacked by a handful of terrorists--but that effort is foiled when a meteor crashes into the plane. Laura emerges as one of the few survivors of the plane wreck, which has occurred somewhere in the mountains of Canada. Laura must try to survive the icy elements by routinely killing and cooking cute bunnies for food as she travels through the snowy terrain. Animal activists might object to the casual nature of these deaths, which are essential to winning the game.

Several tentacle-wielding creatures attack Laura frequently during her travels. When this occurs, the game immediately shifts from third-person to first-person perspective. While these point-and-shoot segments are challenging at first, they soon become tedious. It is impossible to travel more than a few feet without being attacked--and Laura must travel quite a bit to advance the game. Despite the presence of impressive graphics, these action segments amount to little more than a glorified version of the mass-market PC game Deer Hunter.

Still, the ambitious world of D2 is worth a look and a listen. This game is highly stylized in design, including several artistic cinema sequences that will keep you riveted. A stunning new age-meets-opera soundtrack accompanies the title screen, while creepy instrumental music adds tension in all the right places.

With an awkward balance of both adventure and action elements, D2 ultimately succeeds more as a curiosity than a remarkable gaming coup. --Brett Atwood

Pros:

• Art-house appeal for eclectic gamers
• High-quality animation

Cons:

• Awkward gameplay
• Tedious and repetitious action sequences

GameSpot Review

Originally conceived and even partially developed for 3DO's ill-fated M2 console, Warp's D2 has been in the works for more than three years now. While the name would indicate a sequel to the eponymous D (originally released for the 3DO, Sega Saturn, and Sony PlayStation), the only relation it bears to its predecessor is the main protagonist, Laura. While the original concept for D2 put Laura's unnamed son in the lead role, it is Laura once again who basks in the game's limelight. According to Warp impresario Kenji Eno, D2 is to be Laura's last appearance as the main character in one of Warp's games, and what a game it is: part CG, part FMV, part real-time third-person adventure, and lastly, part first-person shooter. While Warp's previous games (with the exception of Real Sound) all touched on these various features, D2 makes the ambitious leap into combining all of these disparate elements into one highly anticipated stew. In this pseudosequel, Laura is a passenger on a plane flying high above the Canadian mountains, which, as fate would have it, is moments away from being skyjacked. Once the onboard terrorists reveal themselves, all hell breaks loose - conveniently displayed in computer-generated FMV. As if the chaos wasn't enough, a meteorite blows a hole through one of the plane's wings, causing it to plummet to the ground, making a wreckage of the plane and its passengers. Of course, Laura survives, along with Kimberly Fox and young Jannie, two other passengers on the plane. After a short opening sequence, which sets up the plot and introduces Parker Jackson, another pivotal character, the game begins. Strangely, despite every character having loads of things to talk about, Laura herself says but three words throughout the entire game. The bulk of the gameplay revolves around a few basic functions: walking around and exploring, watching extensive chunks of FMV, and shooting things. The walking around parts can get rather tedious, because unlike the shooting parts, the exploratory bits are handled via a third-person (think Tomb Raider) perspective. While this was probably an aesthetic decision based on the desire to bring Laura into full-on 3D, it adds almost nothing to the gameplay. Since you spend the majority of the game walking or running from place to place, but have no other abilities except using items (first-aid spray) and rudimentary hunting (shoot bunnies for food), you get all the foibles of 3D gaming (awkward control, bad camera angles) without any of the benefits. The control is awkward because D2 adopts a Resident Evil method of control (push forward to move forward, press left and rotate left, etc.). While this may be of use in a Tomb Raider type of game where alignment and positioning are important, in a game where running is your main task, it proves virtually useless. A Super Mario 64-like movement scheme would have solved many a headache in this game. Another source of extreme annoyance is the random battle elements. For every ten to fifteen virtual feet you walk, anywhere from one to three monsters will pop up out of the snow-covered landscape and "surprise" you. These monsters are all plant-mutated folks who have caught something a bit worse than influenza and as a result would like to kill you for breakfast. While these appearances may come as something of a shock when you first see them, nine hours later they are merely predictable and aggravating. While each successfully completed encounter adds a few more points to Laura's experience meter, and in time raises her levels, the only effect this has is to raise her hit points and steady her aim. This could have been better achieved by fewer random encounters that were a little more challenging and worth more points. When these creatures appear, you automatically switch to a first-person mode that allows you a better, more detailed view of the monsters. This is one thing that initially seems to work well since it provides an easy aiming interface. You can't move or strafe but instead you must keep your opponents in view by pressing the X or B buttons and then shoot with the X. The monsters fly around, burrow in the snow, or just move around, making it necessary to pivot on the spot. Shooting these guys up close results in green blood being splattered all over your face, making it difficult to see, so you must keep your eyes open for the X or B prompts that indicate where the enemy is at all times. Another thing that D2 suffers from is back-and-forth syndrome. Instead of giving you a clear-cut idea of what you're supposed to accomplish next, much of D2 is spent running back and forth to various locations on the map (a building here, a cabin there), all seemingly at random. Rarely does anyone say, "Go to the cabin with the old woman in it," and this makes your success in D2 an exercise in trial and error. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that almost all of this is done on foot. Sure, there's a snowmobile that you get to use, but you only really get to use it at length on disc two (D2 spans four discs). For about 75 percent of the game, Laura is found hoofing it through 30 virtual miles of barren snow-covered Canadian landscape in stockings and heels. Even when you get to use the snowmobile, all that does is speed up the random monster battles. --James Mielke
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Game!!!!, December 19, 2001

By 

Corey Robben (U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: D2 (Video Game)

This game is not what I expected, an I mean this in a good way.I really enjoyed this game.The storyline is superb. The graphics are great! I found myself playing late at night. I couldn't put the game down! The Movies in the game are what surprised me most of all some were heart melting, Scary, Sad, and funny, but all were Awesome. The ending was worth the 4-disc wait! To all Resident Evil fans (like me) I would buy/rent this game. At least take a try at it. If you buy it its worth the money. The only thing that I would con about is that when you return to a spot were you had just killed a monster, they come back, no matter where you are or, how many times you return! Overall I think this is the prefect Dreamcast game!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a decent game but..., August 16, 2001

By 

"shanhan" (Seoul South Korea) - See all my reviews

This review is from: D2 (Video Game)

Well, let me tell you this first. Those ppl @ WARP are great. They know how to tell a great story. And their games are almost always unique and new. Now having said that I would like to add some comments on this one.

First of all, why the hell did they pull out that tentacle sex scene from the original Japanese D2? With a heroine like Laura(who's also been the heroine of WARP's other game like D and Enemy Zero), it's a shame that they've taken that out. Besides, isn't this rated mature already? Who would get offended by such small scene? At least they left the shower scene intact in Enemy Zero.

Now the second thing I didn't like about this one is that the voice and the cinema is not really synched very good. I don't think it's due to the traslation from Japanese to English but it was a merely some oversight of programmers. Wish they could patch this so that the voice and the movie go together.

One more thing about the movie is that Laura is muted in the cinematics... Except a brief grunts and uh?s and ummm...s she remains silent throughout the game. So basically, your heroine doesn't say much... or none as a matter of fact.

And the actual gameplay part is somewhat weaker than the other two games from WARP. All you do is stand still, aim, and shoot. Enemies are not too strong and since you can easily replenish your health by eating meat or applying first aid spray, it's very unlikely that you are going to die. Speaking of meat, you'd get meat by shooting some animals, a la Deerhunter style. But after shooting down some hundreds(you don't need to but I did that only for fun of it) or so, it gets boring quickly.

Now some very good part of this game.

Well, it's got very good graphics and very well choreographed cut scenes. Voice acting isn't too bad and the story it unfolds is truly a masterpiece. Also eerie music is simply top notch except the fact that some of piano pieces brought me all those painful memories from Enemy Zero... After playing Enemy Zero, the piano isn't my favorite musical instrument any more.

In conclusion, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone but to dedicated WARP fans or any one who has finished RECV and waiting anxiously for Devil May Cry or Silent Hill 2. Or anyone with time and patience who likes to sit back and watch movies( a long one) and playes games occasionally. Thanks to Amazon.com you can get this one for very good price and even if you are not one of those ppl mentioned above, with that price you should give this 4 GDs a spin or two.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Strange, July 12, 2008

By 

A. Griffiths "Adrian" (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: D2 (Video Game)

D2 didn't wow the world when it came out. It's long gone now but here's my review anyway. You play as Laura Parton, survivor of a plane crash in the freezing wastelands of northern Canada. There are a few other survivors but unfortunately some of them have mutated into green plant type monsters. You need to find help, avoid monsters and work out what caused that plane to crash.

Playing D2 is like watching a very, VERY slow movie. It's really one long interactive cut scene with breaks when you need to do something to start the next one. All Laura really does is move about in 1st person mode and press a button to interact with something in front of her. Every interaction causes a little cut scene to play. This could be picking up a healing aid, looking at somebody who is asleep (and not going to answer you), or opeing a door. It looks daft, and after the first 5 minutes it gets quite tiresome. This is how the game plays out in nearly every inside environment. Outside, things change a bit. We leap into glorious 3rd person view and watch Laura trudge around the snow. Now, the mountain landscapes you have to cross are actually pretty amazing. They do make you feel cold, and the sound of snow underfoot is wonderfully realistic. Unfortunately Laura also has to fight monsters outside and this is a bit more clumsy. Again, we go back to 1st person for fighting and it's very, nay almost impossible to fight without getting hit, because Laura does not MOVE when she's in a battle! Luckily healing items are plentiful and seemingly infinite.

There are bosses that are quite fun. And there are some gruesome sights to see, some of which are very adult orientated. But sadly, some of the cut scenes are EXTREMELY long, with lots and lots of spoken dialogue. The lip-synching is diabolical, so these can become quite a chore to sit through. What's really daft is that Laura herself never speaks. She has all the other characters babbling straight at her, and merely grunts, sighs or makes little tuts or intakes of breath in response. If I had to talk to someone like while trapped in freezing cold cabins surrounded by monsters that I would be ready to slap them round the face after the first hour.

But all in all, I enjoyed it. Laura does have a real mystery to unfold, and some of the sights you will see are pretty unbelieveable - just wait until near the end where you have to destroy a super computer that talks to you with a female voice...you'll know what I mean. Talk about sexual imagery!!

Anyway it's all very ponderous and mysterious. Probably far too serious for it's own good. But at the end, I did feel like I had been asked to follow a very personal journey dreamed up by he game producers. They certainly had a unique take on gaming. D2 might be slow and cumbersome at times but it does have atmosphere and a heart.