Todd
Mcfarlane’s Evil Prophecy was developed by Konami’s Hawaii branch,
and I get the feeling they were spending more time soaking in the sun
and downing Mai Tai than concentrating on making a playable game.Make no mistake: Evil Prophecy is as unplayable a mess of a game
as I’ve ever seen come out of a reputable publisher.Nothing about Evil Prophecy makes it worth recommending.Much about it is mind-bogglingly bad.That should be enough of a review for most of you. For those
needing more details, read on.
The
basic game play of Evil Prophecy involves controlling four heroic
characters in battles against hordes of generic monsters.Player’s can switch between characters on the fly, which
is a nice touch.The four
characters are unique enough because of art design that
they feel
different when playing through the game, but their basic controls boil
down to the same set: melee attack, range attack, area of effect attack,
jump.
Now,
switching between characters is neat, especially because of the game’s
relationship meter which displays the level of affection between each
pair of characters.This
element is pretty straight-forward.If one character “saves” another during combat, the
relationship improves; if a character in the vicinity of an attack fails
to help their teammate, the relationship
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falters.Having helped a teammate makes it more likely you will be helped
when the time comes.This
is kind of cool, but utterly worthless since the game offers no
challenge whatsoever.It
doesn’t matter what character you are controlling or what the
circumstances, it is almost impossible to get killed in the game.
Not
only can the creatures of the game not kill you, they are so generic and
so boring and so numerous, that killing them is a chore akin to cleaning
out the stables of Augeus.Each
level features a small variety of monsters (usually two) that spawn over
and over again requiring the player to mash button after button.The game tracks the player’s kills on each level and the
numbers are ludicrous.This
wouldn’t be a problem if it was any fun at all to execute the kills.As it is, the button-mashing gets repetitive and boring about ten
minutes in.
I
wish there was something in Evil Prophecy to recommend it.I like Mcfarlane’s designs in general.I even have a full collection of his re-imaginings of the classic
Universal monsters.Here,
his design isn’t anything special, and the graphic’s engine shows
what innovation is there in a poor light.Unless you have an incredible urge to kill the same ugly beast a
couple of hundred times, stay away from this mess.