Zone of the Enders Hands-On

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.

Jehuty also gains sub weapons like the javelin, the halberd, the phalanx, the bounder, the geyser, and the comet that may be used by pressing the circle button for trajectory attacks. Pressing the circle button while close to the enemy makes Jehuty grab the enemy and deliver a solid punch that will send them flying into buildings or other frames. Following in this relative-to-distance attack scheme, using Jehuty's sword while far away from the enemy will send a blue projectile attack spinning in its direction. Once you get the hang of ZOE's controls, battles quickly turn into aerial ballets full of attacks, parries, and retreats.

There are several bosses included in the game, and fighting them is handled in a traditional fashion. Each boss has a weak spot, and finding the right weapon to use on said spot is normally half the battle. Memorizing the attack pattern of each boss also comes in handy later on in the game. One boss requires that you blast away a protective shield so that you may target its head, and another asks you to perform an endless stream of item collecting before you have the items required to defeat it. Most of the bosses have two forms, with the second taking effect after half its health is depleted.

After you complete the game, a versus mode is unlocked that lets you and a friend battle head-to-head. There are five mechs and the majority of the one-player environments to choose from initially. If you defeat the game a second time, two more mechs and the remaining maps are opened for play. Considering the combat system is ZOE's forte, the multiplayer mode is good for plenty of abuse and also aids in perfecting your combat skills.

Graphically speaking, Zone of the Enders is stunning. The game moves so quickly that it sometimes causes vertigo, and the effects from weapons often fill up the entire screen with an array of dizzying colored lights. Heat blur is often used to illustrate the power of certain weapons, while particle effects, dynamic lighting, and motion blur are also used extensively. It's sometimes almost too much for the senses to handle, but the Emotion Engine keeps up just fine. The mech models that Shinkawa created for ZOE are incredibly detailed to the point where small landing skids drop down when they approach the ground, and bolts of energy course through a network of tubes that cover the casing of the frames. The high-resolution textures are some of the best yet seen on the PlayStation 2, though they tend to repeat fairly often in the terrain. Another impressive graphical feat achieved in Zone of the Enders is the fully destructible environments. Every building, vehicle, and antenna may be dismantled into a pile of rubble while emitting realistic smoke and flames.

In PlayStation 2 games developed by less talented companies, all this eye candy normally comes at the expense of the frame rate. But not in ZOE. Everything zips along at a staggering pace, crowning ZOE as the most visually impressive PlayStation 2 game to date. Despite the superfluous pace of the game, the camera always manages to keep up with the action. This is no doubt the product of the Z-lock feature first seen in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64. By pressing the left shoulder button, you may cycle through the enemies and change your locked-on target. This lets you concentrate on your fighting strategy instead of wrestling with control issues.

ZOE is not perfect, though. There are just three different types of enemies outside of the bosses, and fighting the same frames over and over can become tedious after a couple of hours. ZOE's visual appeal could also benefit from some anti-aliasing, as there are plenty of jagged edges on the buildings and trusses that make up each environment. Backtracking is a fairly common requirement, as you're often asked to return to previously vanquished areas to retrieve discs, abilities, and other special objects.

ZOE is a technical marvel. Its incredible graphics, gripping story, and tight gameplay make it difficult to stop playing this game. But like many of the high-profile PlayStation 2 games released thus far, it comes to an end rather quickly. Thankfully, the two-player versus mode helps give Zone of the Enders some replay value beyond repeating the one-player missions. ZOE will ship in North America with a brief demo of Metal Gear Solid 2 included, so the relatively short length isn't as big a deal. Zone of the Enders is scheduled for release on March 27. Look for our full review of the North American version next week.