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Minority Report

Score: 4.0 / 10

Movie-to-game translations are endemic to gaming nowadays. A few examples include the Harry Potter Series, Reign of Fire (exception), Black Hawk Down, Blade II, and Spider Man. Unfortunately, the ratio of successful games to craptacular ones is really small and sadly, Minority Report (MR) does nothing to improve the ratio.

The year is 2054 and you play John Anderton, leader of an elite police force that predicts and arrests murderers before they commit any crimes. Anderton believes that the system is perfect, until the division comes after him. You constantly find yourself fighting for your life to prove your innocence.

The game tracks each event of the movie closely as you start off working for the special agency before you are on the run. Throughout a few of the levels you are deployed along with an AI teammate who provides much needed support against relentless enemies. One of the biggest problems is that in some missions if your teammates are killed the mission is a failure. The enemy AI is hard enough at times and attempting to protect your teammate adds more difficulty and frustration. MR contains basically two modes of combat, which includes hand-to-hand and weapon combat.

 

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One area in which MR must be applauded is its great hand-to-hand combat, which contains a variety of combos. Some of the cooler combos include grabbing your opponent and throwing him through glass and so on. While the hand-to-hand combat is great, the weapon combat is just plain boring. MR features a small arsenal of weapons, which include a concussion rife, riot impact shotgun and a high-speed energy blaster. Many of the weapons can either be found in-level or bought 

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off the black market using money earned throughout the game. Jetpacks are also kicking around and can be used to take out enemy forces in a blink of an eye. The jetpack adds some much needed spice to a struggling line up of options.

There is only one word to describe MR’s graphics and the word is ugly! The game looks like an old Nintendo 64 game. The character models are ugly and the cut scenes are horrendous.

Some of the disappointment in the graphics is blunted by MR’s great interactive environments. Almost everything can be broken. Another cool feature is a blur effect, which occurs when certain weapons such as the riot impact shotgun are used. Luckily, with all of the graphical flaws the game still manages to maintain a steady camera angle, which shouldn’t cause to much trouble to whoever is playing the game.

The sound is hit and miss. There is good voice acting but there is a very poor musical score. One noticeable problem throughout all the cut scenes is how the sound does not even come close to matching the mouth movements of the characters.

The controls are straightforward and for the most part are easy to pick up and play.  For instance, there is an auto lock-on but it’s difficult to switch on the fly between multiple enemy forces.

While the movie Minority Report may have been enjoyed by some people, many fans will surely not enjoy the game. Activision’s game is too clogged with flaws, which hold it back from being a serious competitor. Minority Report is another perfect example of poor movie licensing. I highly recommend avoiding this game – a rental for hardcore fans of the movie only.

- Siddharth Masand

(December 21, 2002)

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