Customer Reviews

Dark Angel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Just to start off-I loved the series and that is what made me buy this game. It has a tendency to be a bit on the easy side...then again, I haven't finished it yet. (I just bought it two days ago). The fighting is awesome and it is just a fun game to get involved with. Sure it's point a to point b and could have gotten more intricate, but it still has an amazing entertainment value. I think if you are a fan of tomb raider and games like tomb raider you will like this one too...I do!!

To cut right to the chase, how much you like this game will depend on how much you liked the show. If you're expecting it to be a continuation of the plot, you'll be disappointed too. The plot in this game makes no sense in context of the show - It's supposed to take place after the fall of Manticore, but there's no period in the show where it could have happened. Anyway, all that aside, the game itself really could have been great, but it seems to have suffered from a rushed schedule. There's a lot of fun to be had here, the fighting engine is suprisingly deep, and there's a lot of options with stealth. The missions themselves aren't very imaginative though, and neither are the level designs. It's your basic point-a-to-point-b design. As you get later in the game, stealth is required of you and being seen at all is game over. On the down side, it suffers from a funky camera system, and somewhat muddy graphics. The control can be funky at times as well, and the bosses are a snore.

There's a good number of extras though, a photo gallery of (mostly) Jessica Alba, interviews with various cast members, and a 'coming soon' promo video for the DVD Release of Season One in North America.

This is such a great game! There are objectives and many different opponents. You don't just punch and kick, you can fly off walls and throw enemies into barrels. There are many other moves, too! This game is one of the best games ever made! This is the last memory of Dark Angel. I will never forget James Cameron's Dark Angel series!

Pros:
- Fancy Matrix-style moves.
- The game is severely discounted.
- Voice talent is from the TV series.
- Frequent save games.
- Simple controls to pull off a variety of moves.

Cons:
- Very very repetitive.
- Uninteresting storyline between sequences.
- Pulling off the fancy moves doesn't really get you much new.
- AI is poor. Far too easy to stealtily take down the enemy.
- Game world is far too constraining. There is far too little to do.
- When fighting the boss you lose the ability to use your weapons and health packs.

This one I don't get. The developers of this game took the time to license the actual theme song of the sorely missed TV series, gets the actual actors Jessica Alba and Michael Weatherly to do the voices for the characters, which lends a great degree of authenticity...and manages to come up with a horrible, horrible game.

There's nothing wrong with the look of the game, and the Dark Angel franchise fits the popular genre of stealth/espionage games quite well.

But I noticed one thing amiss right off the bat: Where's the tutorial level? Every game I've ever played which involves stealth, like Metal Gear Solid, Syphon Filter and Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, gives you a tutorial mission because in a stealth game, not only do you have to know the controls, you have to get familiarized with them within a gradual learning curve so that movement of your character becomes second nature; in a stealth game, no good player ever "remembers" the moves -- he feels them. But Dark Angel has chosen to forego this step, and the result is that the controls, already not hugely responsive, are all but alien to me. I figured out some things on my own -- the manual is scanty and poorly written -- but nothing can replace the all-important tutorial.

There's also no radar, a must in a game of this type, and looking around is laborious and risky. Most of the time the camera prevents you from seeing what you need to see to sneak through the missions effectively. No maps, either -- and added to the fiddly mission layouts, I spent so much time running around missions trying to find things that the gameplay just slowed to a crawl. To slow things down even more, the loading times on this game are incredible. Even the "Replay Stage" command, when you're trying to stop your current mission and start from the top, takes about a minute to load. Awful.

I don't like the proportions of this game -- too much environment and not enough of the character. It makes moving around seem more sluggish than it should be, and when you're fighting, it really spoils much of the fun factor. I'd rather have had a character-screen proportion closer to Syphon Filter or Jet Li's Rise to Honor. And whoever came up with the idea of using a Matrix-style "bullet time" while you fight obviously doesn't know how to design fighting games, because it makes fighting a bore. You can't control when the slow-motion occurs, so you end up having to wait before you can execute the next move. This feature basically takes your in-game control of your character away from you randomly -- something that should *never* happen in an action game.

I am tremendously disappointed, because the TV series, the wonderful character of Max, the setting...everything was just perfect for a video-game translation. And they had taken the effort to get Alba and Weatherly, put James Cameron's name on the box, and get so many of the stylistic touches right (good one-liners in the dialogue) that it's a shame that the game is mechanically unplayable. Seems like they spent all their money and time on aesthetics and forgot to test out the mechanics...no wonder this game is now widely available second-hand for less than six dollars, less than a year after I first saw it available. I will probably sell mine soon.

When this game came out, I was a little wary...not sure if i wanted to be disappointed, but unable to NOT rent it. Sigh. Difficulty confirmed. Even when you get the hang of things, you never really do. Everytime you think you have it, the next scene has MORE and bigger, badder enemies. That would be fine if there had been some training in the beginning, something to tell you how to fight combo, sneak successfully. It's pretty straight forward; you follow a path, climbing and burning your way to your goal. Which of course you can't see very far ahead. That's everything wrong without the stiff, mechanical gameplay, nothing new story, and speedchanges.
Really if you must try this as a fan, rent it. By the time it's due back, you'll be plenty frusterated. It's games like this that make GOOD "games like this" never get made. I guess we'll never get Veronica Mars the game?

I recommend the BUFFY game instead! -major Buffy fan

I'm a big fan of the TV show, especially season 1, which is what led me to purchase the video game, too. The game itself is not particularly well-designed, the stages are very repetitive and the camera angles are just awful at times! The camera angles are particularly a problem because you must use stealth at times to defeat enemies and the camera angles will make it nearly impossible in some places to do what you need to do. Plus the characters seem so small. The whole game looks small, like you are playing some old-style arcade game. Then again this was a 2002 release for the ps2.

The graphics are so-so. It's not particularly detailed and the sets are often basic, but I thought they did a nice job with some of the research lab areas in the I-corp stages. The enemies are pretty boring - guards, police, x-7 genetic soldiers, some research lab people and a few genetic mutants. But the detail isn't really there to make it interesting.

The story is almost non-existent and the missions very unimaginative. They did get Jessica Alba and Michael Weatherly to do the voice over - I liked Jessica's voice but Michaels inflection is off most of the time! Like he was just reading from a cue card and not really aware of the scene. I would have rather they brought in someone else frankly, to do it better. I especially found all the break-ins to the game with his cyber messages a tad annoying! Sometimes they were helpful hints, but it would have been nice to mix in some text at times rather than always have him come in with some cyber bulletin. The game was sorely lacking variety on a few fronts.

The music tracks are a high point I think. Some of the cuts sound really good, very hip and techno, like you'd expect from the TV series. And some of the martial arts moves that Jessica's character does are great! The slow-mo and the burst of speed are excellent...and really make the game playable in my opinion.

Overall, the game is a bit of a disappointment but still playable and if you liked the TV show you will probably have a few fun times playing this game.

(Added May 10, 2009)

I would like to edit the fun ranking and give it 4 stars rather than 3 stars, but apparently I can't edit this feature! Despite the games flaws, it's fun and there is some replay value in it.

It took me about three days to beat this game, so I classify it as short. The story isn't that great and has hardly anything to do with the show. The camera angle is annoying sometimes, but R3 can be used for that. The game does not allow very much freedom, and there's not a lot of strategy. The graphics are good. This and the action and moves are probably the best things about this game. If you feel you need to play it, rent it because if you buy it it will just lay around gathering dust.

This game is awesome! It has great graphics and is different every time. When you are fighting and do a really cool move it goes into slow motion and is very cool to watch, for example, when you do a wall kick (run up wall, turn and kick enemy in face)it slows down and you even see the guy fly back and hit a dumpster (which makes a pretty cool sound!) There are so many different moves that i can't figure out what i pushed to make max do it! Everything looks so real which is great since most fighting games are just one big blurr. I bought this game last night and have been playing ever since! Overall this game is an A+, 101%, awesome game!

The graphics are good, even though they make Jessica Alba look more like Jennifer Garner from Alias. But the fight scenes between the guys get your adrenaline pumping! Buy the game and you won't regret it! There are a ton of levels and after you beat the final level theres a suprise ;-). Thank you for supporting Dark Angel.