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- Decent FPS for Playstation

- Good selection of weapons, strong level design

- Complete objectives list makes things easier

- Should have used voice actors from the TV series

- Looks grainy, pretty weak graphics

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Platform: Playstation

Developer: Runecraft

Publisher: Infogrames

Genre: First-Person Shooter

MSRP: $30US

ESRB: T (Teen)

Released: 4th Quarter 2001

Men In Black The Series: Crashdown

Score: 7.0/ 10.0

Remember back when Will Smith sang? Me neither. His second big movie, Men In Black spawned a frightening amount of hype and material ranging from lunch boxes to action figure to the requisite animated series. The animated series took the basic characters from the movie and somehow amplified their personality traits (Jay as a raging moron who always misunderstands the present situation and Kay as his stone-cold monotone partner). Taking the animation and story lines from the animated series, a FPS was generated. I’m not going to get into how late this game is coming out – sending out this little title in this age of gaming against the likes of the PS2, X-Box, and Gamecube really forces you to try and forget how good gaming is getting if you’re going to remain objective. It really can’t be done, I can’t compare this game to Halo or Max Payne it just isn’t in the same league.

Crashdown is broken down into 26 levels. You are given a series of mission objectives to accomplish and you must do so while blowing away aliens (the objective list is easily accessible during the game – a must considering the number of objectives for some areas). You switch between controlling Jay and Kay (not that it makes any difference other than the picture of the person’s face in the lower right of the screen) in the field while dutifully following the orders of Zed, the head cheese. Most of the time your orders are generally blow everything away and find these pointless things while you’re out there. It’s not terribly genuine, but I must admit to being impressed by the variety in level design. Difficulty is not traumatic, most hardcore gamers will fly through the levels without any trouble – seeing as the game is designed more for the pre-teen crowd. The number of weapons and tools that can be used during the game is impressive – someone really had a field day designing all these things. The nicest addition to the game is an in-game encyclopedia of all things MIB. You get to see what all of the aliens, vehicles, weapons, and tools look like and in some cases how to use them – which is really important considering that some of the tools uses aren’t obvious.

The biggest weakness in the game has got to be the graphics. I can’t recall a game where the backgrounds looked worse. All textures have this black fringe, which is really annoying when you’re near a wall because the fringe can actually smear into your field of vision during the game. I guess you can chalk that up to Crashdown being a PSone game, but I can’t recall any other games with this problem. Countering this problem are some great FMV sequences – it’s like night and day. The FMV sequences are done in some pseudo-claymation textures that look really good and do justice to the animated characters. The sound is decent, not too aggressive or annoying, just right for an FPS. The voice acting is decent, but it would have been nice if all of the voice actors from the animated series could have reprised their roles. (It’s annoying when you’re expecting to hear a specific voice and you get someone else.)

The game is a decent FPS for the Playstation, but really does lack when compared to the new breed of games coming out these days for other systems. It’s geared more for kids, so don’t expect any blood or gore. All in all, a decent FPS that pales in comparison to the latest and greatest.

- Tazman

“A Banana-rama tape without a case. Now there’s a real big score!” – Carlos the Elf