Zone of the Enders Hands-On
We have the final Japanese copy of Zone of the Enders for the PlayStation 2. Click on through and check out our hands-on impressions of Hideo Kojima's mech adventure.
Few PlayStation 2 games are as highly anticipated as Konami's Zone of the Enders. Hideo Kojima's story-driven mech combat game is the first manifestation of what many have expected from the PlayStation 2 all along. With its lightning-quick graphics, tight gameplay, and engrossing story, Zone of the Enders is a game that other PlayStation 2 developers will be hoping to live up to for some time.
As ZOE begins, a young boy named Leo Stenbuck is walking through the Jupiter-orbiting colony of Antilia with a group of his friends. Suddenly the colony comes under attack by a group of large frames, and Leo's friends are killed right before his eyes. As Leo runs to avoid the onslaught, his mind flashes back to how his so-called friends ridiculed him throughout his adolescence. Leo then takes refuge in a bunker where he discovers a large frame named Jehuty--his colony's only hope for repelling the marauding frames. As Leo jumps into the frame, he is immediately attacked by an enemy mech. After taking the frame down with a few simple attacks, an extensive tutorial ensues detailing how to handle Jehuty's destructive capabilities. Once the tutorial concludes, Leo quickly takes to the skies to defend his colony against the ZOE armada and to rescue his young female friend Celvice. Leo quickly encounters Viola, ZOE's leader. After her frame named Neith is defeated in a short fight with Leo, Viola vows revenge and retreats into space.
Using the Jehuty frame, Leo must defend an entire civilization located underneath an environment-confining dome. Within the dome are towns and cities that sporadically come under attack. Once in the sky, the area at the top of the dome serves as an overworld of sorts. Leo receives SOS messages from various municipalities that require the aid of Jehuty, and he may swoop down to their aid by simply pressing the circle button. Once the area to defend is selected, real-time cutscenes occur showing Jehuty entering the area.
Each town has a set number of mech squads that must be destroyed, but you may choose to ignore them if you wish. Periodically, you will be asked to clear areas of the enemy frames while protecting the inhabitants of the buildings. It's not overly difficult to avoid casualties, because the enemy frames are more than happy to follow you out of the heavily populated areas to do battle. When you complete these defense missions, you are graded on the number of civilian casualties and the time it took you to destroy all the enemy frames. After Leo and Jehuty clear a town of enemy mechs, a quick trip to the menu system lets you leave the town and head back to the overworld to repeat the process. After a few hours, the process can become repetitive, and you're required to return to some areas several times before the plot will shift forward. Occasionally, the game pops into a first-person view inside Jehuty, and extensive text is used to describe objectives, provide advanced control techniques, or aid in plot development.
The sometimes tedious nature of ZOE's game design is somewhat remedied by its gameplay. Engaging other frames in combat with Jehuty represents some of the best times to be had playing video games in the past few years. The control is incredibly responsive, and darting around enemy laser fire to jump in for a quick sword slash is a breeze. While the control options are simplistic enough to let anyone pick up ZOE and enjoy playing it, the advanced control options provide adequate depth to keep the fighting interesting for a while. While you may slash away at enemies with Jehuty's sword, combining the boost with the attack button initiates dizzying maneuvers where Jehuty will rotate around the enemy and attack from behind. Holding down the boost button and hitting attack, triggers a spinning slash attack similar to Link's attack in Nintendo's 3D Zelda games.
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