When I heard that Namco was making a making a stealth-action game starring Nina Williams, I immediately figured, "Licensed garbage!" Then I saw it at E3 2004, and I figured it was pretty much just that. Even the t-shirts they were handing out for the game were fairly lame.
I figured I would never be touching this game again. But then I got some hate mail about my Star Wars: Episode III review. The writer took offense at some of the wording I'd used in the review, and said that this game shouldn't be looked upon as "besmirching video games" because this game wasn't the worst thing out there. Compared to games like Death by Degrees and Devil May Cry 3, he postulated, Star Wars III would look like a 10, and not a measly 4.5.
I responded that I hadn't played Death by Degrees yet, and therefore I hadn't reviewed it, but I assured him if it was worse than Star Wars III, I would have something unkind to say about it as well.
So, get ready for some unkind words.
Story
The game starts out by introducing you to the phenomenon known as the Bermuda Triangle, describing an event involving the main bad corporation your group is infiltrating, and then quickly moves to its star power...Benicio Del Toro! (Seriously.) If you don't think Enrique looks (minus the scar) exactly like Benicio, you work for Namco and are hoping he never, ever sees the game so you don't get sued.
Shortly afterwards, you see the heroine of the game show up, and she's busy kicking the crap out of people in a fighting tournament on the boat. After she wins, she's sunning herself on the Greek ruins that happen to be on the cruise ship (I'm also not making this up) when a bunch of thugs interrupt her bikini time by rudely getting their faces kicked in.
Then Nina gets word that the agent she was backing up is missing, and now she's the point man. Good luck; you probably won't need it.
Gameplay
Namco borrows a page from Rise to Honor, a game that had a control scheme that I hated. It's not any better with someone else at the helm. It's like if Michael Bay remade Ishtar or if Jerry Bruckheimer redid Battlefield Earth. There just isn't enough talent in any of these scenarios to cover up the inherent flaws of the source material.
The right analog attack control is a bad idea for several reasons, the main one being that it severely limits what you can do. Dynasty Warriors has gotten by just fine by just having you point your character in one direction, and then attack with the buttons. This works, I think mainly because PEOPLE ARE NOT SO RETARDED THEY CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHAT DIRECTION THEY'RE FACING. But, apparently, Namco and Sony see it a bit differently.
So they decide to tie up your left hand with movement, and your right with attacking. But what if you need to hit a button? Then you're freaking hamstrung. Listen. The PS2 controller's the way it is. You can't change that, folks. Don't try to slap some kind of innovative new control scheme that isn't optimal for the button layout, because all it does is ensure that less people like your game. The amount of frustration a player has with the controls is directly proportional to the likelihood of the player chucking your game back in the case and never playing it again.
To make matters even stupider, Namco has a run button in the game. Moving the left analog joystick in any direction causes Nina to WALK in that direction. To make her run you have to hold down O. WHY?! This bothers me to no end. If I have to pick up the phone, or grab a drink, or adjust my glasses, now Nina moves at glacial speed across the screen. Why is the walk mode even still in games? People like, for the most part, to move their characters on the screen in the fastest possible manner. If walking is in a game, it is the LEAST fun part of every game out there. Who wants a mode that makes their character move slower than normal? Is there a huge demand for this that I am out of touch with? I'm going to guess the answer is no. SCRAP THE WALKING.
As for the rest of your buttons, Square brings up the map, X is your actions, left and right on the d-pad cycles through fisticuffs, melee weapons, and ranged weapons. Up and Down on said pad cycles through the various implements in that class that you own. L2 will execute your bone breaking attacks, and R1 grabs.
If you get far enough, occasionally, you'll run into a Honeycomb lock. These are my favorite parts of the game. They're like those jumble puzzles where you slide around panels to try and get everything in the right order. Only these don't move in uniform directions, and you only have the exact number of moves you need to figure out the scramble. I found them to be intriguing, and in fact, my favorite part of the game. Please let this be the ONLY thing that you carry over from this game in any way, shape, or form, Namco.
All in all, the game does a pretty shoddy job with the controls, and also gets slightly better marks than the UI crew over at GlyphX get for their work on Advent Rising. (Only because this game doesn't have vehicles.) As a result, combat breaks down to you trying to find the most efficient way to kill everything on the screen with the least amount of potential attack failure on your part. You probably won't delve into trying to use any of those combat moves you've purchased with Nina's skill points, and you won't care what level your character is. You just want to get combat over with so you can get to the next area. (If you're a reviewer, that is. If you're playing the game, you're more than likely just giving up, and taking this game back to the rental place.)
Graphics
About the only nifty thing this game does visually is with Nina's unlikely outfits. Get into a few scrapes, and you'll start seeing battle damage on her outfits. A neat idea, especially since Nina spends most of her time fighting in impractical clothing. This calls to mind something that I think was pulled from Sun Tzu's The Art of War: "If you go to battle wearing a halter top, you'll wish very quickly that you didn't dress like an idiot."
Aside from that, there isn't much to write home about. Visually the game isn't stunning, and it isn't totally awful. A lot of the rooms tend to look the same, and broken environmental items don't stay broken. The only things that look like they weren't done by a cheap dev house are the pre-rendered cutscenes, and if you can't do those right, you're not going to be a big company for long.
Audio
Points for Enrique using some actual Spanish. Big minus points for Lana Lei sounding like she's an airheaded mallrat. Bryce and Lukas are done badly, too. Nina and Alan, for the most part, refrain from sucking, but it's performances like these which mean you are openly pulling for the SAG actors to end up with significantly less than what they're asking for voiceover work.
The effects aren't done too badly, but much like the music, you'll be hearing them often. Given that they aren't particularly good, this gets old pretty quickly.
Gripes
What is up with the tunnel crawling? Why did you bother including this part of the game if you were going make it the worst representation of 3D I've seen pre-1990? Death by Degrees' tunnel crawling mode puts you in a square tunnel, and has you crawl forward one tile at a time. This is basically what Tunnels of Doom was like...and that was on my Texas Instruments 99/4A...circa 1982. There shouldn't be ONE sequence like this in the game, much less many of them. I hope the people that did this were either out of their element, or are currently looking for jobs in another field.
Why did the designers even have a figment of your imagination dedicated to hoping that the two analog joystick combo system was going to work? Who in their right mind is going to spend time trying to figure out how to properly work a combat maneuver like "Tap left Analog left, Hold Left Analog Right, tap Right analog Up, tap Right analog down", and hope that it doesn't move them outside of the target's attack range? How do you even expect anyone to pull that off without being hit repeatedly? There are SO many things that should have thrown up huge red flags on the way to this going out the door the way it got shipped. And yet, there it is, sitting in the bargain bin, red flags completely unheeded.
The game gives the player the option between Walk and Run, and yet no option to invert the Y-Axis for sniping? What do you think you're designing games for? The Speak N' Spell?!
What's with the Critical attacks? When you're "focused", you can zero in on parts of the body to specifically take a whack at. All this does is more damage. You crack a guy's skull open only to have him withstand more shots to the head...from a gun. You break a guy's legs and immediately afterwards he's using it to plant for a roundhouse kick at you. I would have rather Namco just kept the Tekken unblockables in the game, rather than resort to this wannabe-stylistic schlock.
Overall
Star Wars guy was right. Star Wars III is better than this game. (But it doesn't make Star Wars III any better.) It is games like Death by Degrees that make the public shun games and dismiss them as the trifles of a child. Overt sexual overtones, but no actual nudity, and gameplay that consists of an insipid story combined with shallow, random acts of nigh-impossible, pseudo-heroic violence. Sounds like something aiming straight for the 12-15 year old demographic to me.
Nobody thinks that hardcore sex is going to make Death by Degrees a quality game. Nor would more graphic violence. Yet this is the direction we see these awful games trending towards. More flesh! More fatalities! Jiggly breasts! Spooooky blood! No progress in terms of story, still the same shallow gameplay. And dev companies want to talk about how tough it is to make a hit selling game. In this case, all the team had to do was take all their instincts and industry experience...and do the exact opposite. Why don't you guys ever try learning from your mistakes? Everyone knows you have tons of them lining your in-house game libraries just waiting to teach you.
