This game, if it works for you, will make you angry and sad. This is what a game company going bankrupt looks like.
This game still makes me really angry. I imagine it makes the developers angry as well. You see, Midway was dying at this game was coming out, so rather than get it polished and finished they ended up just wrapping up as many dead points as possible and got it out the door. It made a little money on people who made the mistake of getting it before the reviews. It also helped seal the fate of Midway.
This WOULD have been a really great game if they'd have time to finish it. The story concept was good, the layout of the game was potentially fun. There was a lot going for it. I enjoyed some of my play time through it. The thing that stopped me from really enjoying it is seeing just home much promise this game had when they stopped it.
Here's an example, your in a back yard, you move to one side of the house and their is a whole in the world. No polygons, nothing, just the end of the world.
Another example, you're standing on the top floor of a house under construction, if you look to the left you can see there is no world. They just never had a chance to fill that area in.
The game is like this in various areas, some feel pretty finished, others just aren't done. It feel like much of the world is living in temporary texture waiting for the set dresser to come in to try and fill the world out. It's a sad end for a lot of hard work by a lot of people.
One more example, saving is broken, sure you can press f5 for a quick save and you get a message that says it saved, but thats all you get, if you die right after that, you're back at the last check point.
After all the post release patches, I was able to play the entire game though in about 8 hours, that's with trying to explore every square inch. I did not have any crashes this time, but I was lucky, look at the forums and you'll see a lot of people had and still have issues.
Buying this came is a gamble. You might get lucky and have a few hours of fun, or you might end up with black screen and no way to start the game much less restart your computer.
Bottom line, get this in the bargain bin or used. Understand you may not be able to play it. Realize that the reason you are getting it is that you have NOTHING else to play or replay.
---- original review ----
After loading the two dvds, downloading the patch and updating, you're ready to go. This process takes around an hour. It's painfull, but it's the best part of the game.
The loader had goofy music, it sounds like someone made a mistake in the looping, but it might have just been bad design work. You also get about 10 or so pictures to spoil what you're going to see in the game.
Turns out those are the best parts of the game.
Once you load the game you get a black screen with a white cursor. Your goal is to see how long you can move the cursor around before becoming board. After that you'll need to find a way to reboot your machine.
Next you'll consider how much money you spent on this dog while you uninstall it.
Shame on Midway. The game wasn't finished, not by a long shot and still you put it out to try and get some money from suckers. I hope it was worth it, because no one who spent money on this is going to ever considering spending money on you again.
Guess we've already seen that with the layoffs though haven't we.