A wasted Bruce Willis, dosen´t stop this fun and intense shooter.
Bad: It might have Bruce Willis, but he´s underused, too short,
little story, where´s the points you normally get for killing enemies?
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Neversoft is known for the great but lately troubled Tony Hawk series, and the good but short Gun, but before all those games, they made Apocalypse.
An old-school shooter that (wait for it) includes Bruce Willis! That´s right, Bruce Willis starred in this old PSone game, providing his voice and face. So how does this game fare? GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is a nice throwback to the old days of Smash TV and Total Carnage, which means you run with the directional buttons, and shoot with the X, circle, triangle, and square. X shoots south, triangle shoots north, circle east, and square west. You can also control the game via the analog sticks, where you walk with the left stick, and shoot with the right, which is much better than the d-pad and symbol buttons. Along the way you collect various power ups, such as rip-laser, homing missiles and grenades. Your first weapon is a machine gun with unlimited ammo. It dosen´t do much damage, but it´s a good choice nevertheless. There´s also some boss battles but they are mostly easy. In fact most of the game is easy, expect for the last level, which takes place in the white house. The game has 10 levels: Prison, Sewer, City, City Boss, City Rooftop, Graveyard, Graveyard Boss, Factory, Factory Boss, and the White House. The level variety is big but the gameplay isen´t. But that´s actually not a bad thing. The gameplay is very intense. It´s fast paced, and full of action, so there´s never a dull moment when playing. The only complain i can think of about the gameplay, is the lack of a score system. You don´t earn any points from killing enemies, or completing levels. You only get to see how many you killed in the level, but that´s it. There´s no reward in the game whatsoever, but the game still has good replay value, due to the intense and fun levels.
GRAPHICS
For a PSone game, the graphics are good. The levels all have different looks, and the top down view dosen´t ruin that. The game isen´t top down view the whole game through though. There´s a very cinematic feel to the camera angles in the game, and actually, they are almost never in the way, when you have to jump from platform to platform. The only time the camera is bad is in the White House level, where it leads you to die more times than you like. The cut-scenes are all CG, and they look ok. You can´t really see that it´s Bruce Willis though, that´s a bit hard. The CG cut-scenes look good, but are actually bad if you compare them to the likes of FInal Fantasy VII. The character models in game look fairy good, so there´s nothing to report there. One of the impressve things for the the games release, is that the background sometimes, shows full motion videos. It is notable however that this engine was later used for Tony Hawk´s Pro Skater.
SOUND
This is where the Bruce Willis part fails. In the beginning of the development, Bruce Willis´s character was supposed to be a side kick, but then the developers began to think, and found out that, people would rather play as Bruce Willis than, getting help from him, so now, you play as Bruce Willis. The problem with that is, that they found out about this, late in the development, so they coulden´t call Bruce back to record some new dialogue, so they had to delete the original main character, and make him the new main character. This can be heard in the cut-scenes, where it seems like he´s talking to someone, that´s not even there, and it´s not cool to hear or see Bruce Willis talk to himself. But even the parts recorded for good old Bruce Willis aren´t so great to begin with. His one liners are good, but some of them are taken from the likes of Duke Nukem, and some of them aren´t well acted. There´s also voice acting from Poe, which some might know from her first success, and second flop album, or from the electronic band, Conjure One. Her role dosen´t matter much, but they have been nice enough to include her music. In fact the music is on of the parts where the music really shrines. There´s a total 6 songs from System Of A Down, Poe and others, which they have edited, and put into the game, which helps building up the intense feeling of the gameplay. The music is simply just awesome.
LENGTH
The game takes is sadly over too soon. 3-5 hours is all it takes to complete the game, and there´s no reward doing so, so it all depends on if you like the levels or not, which isen´t hard to love.
OVERALL
There´s one thing i haven´t talked about, which is the story, but it´s so bad that it dosen´t really matter. But overall, Apcoalypse is a good fun game. Getting Bruce Willis in the game was a good idea, but sadly his talent was wasted, and the game is too short, but that dosen´t stop the game from being worthwhile. It´s hard to find a game that´s this fun and intense. It might not bee the longest game, but it´s some of the best fun i ever had.