Zone of the Enders

Orbital Frame stand still, hand raised overhead, as it creates a blue energy ball to through. The way the energy courses through it and gives off a small incandescent glow are fantastic. The frame rate is also very smooth with no slowdown to be seen allowing the speediness of the action to really sink its claws into the player. The smooth, speedy action feels like something straight out of Macross, especially when combined with the streaking lasers and streaming missiles. One last nice touch comes in the environments. While relatively similar, allowing for some of the uniformity one would expect from a game that takes place in an isolated part of a space colony, how the game keeps track of environmental damage is impressive. If a building gets blown up it stays that way no matter how many times you revisit the area, unlike some games where the gutted building would mysteriously reappear without a scratch. A weak point in the game’s graphics comes in its cutscenes. While the rest of the game looks absolutely fantastic, the characters all lack detail, looking rudimentary by comparison.

The gameplay too is actually quite simplistic, but certainly not rudimentary. Moving Jehuty around is straight forward even in the heat of battle since the controls are very responsive. Your primary weapons automatically switch between ranged and melees depending on how close you are to the target you have locked onto. Charge attacks are easy to launch at all times, and there are a bevy of secondary weapons that can be gained over the course of the game. Unfortunately acquiring them feels more like a series of "Fed Ex" missions that try to extend the length of this already very short game. The grading system for rescuing civilians is one area that will keep players busy as it is tempting to try and get the best possible score in these situation, by keeping damage to buildings at an absolute minimum while saving as many colonists as possible. But at the core of ZOE’s gameplay it comes down to the fact that it is a fast and furious experience that stays very exciting that makes it worth playing. It’s too bad that this excitement also indirectly leads to problems, because of the game being so short, the experience is fleeting, leaving the player wanting more.

While the length of ZOE is disappointing at least it means that we don’t have to deal with the game’s hideous, hideous voice acting. Every single character in the game is mind-numbingly irritating every time that they open their mouths. Everyone is over acting terribly, and it is very hard to take any of them seriously. Do yourself a favor and keep the volume off when there is dialogue in ZOE and just stick with the subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Musically speaking the title consists primarily of techno tunes, fast becoming the sonic staple of the giant robot genre. They add to the atmosphere and shift between being more passive when simply traveling to stepping up the tempo when engaged in battle. Sound effects here are quite what one would expect from such a game with the whirs and whizzes of lasers to the very convincing shutters of the explosions the effects are all very good.

Zone of the Enders is pretty good, not really good, just pretty good. It has great graphics and fast action that make for a very exciting experience. Unfortunately the shortness of the game and the supremely aggravating voice acting hurt the title just enough keep it from being a marquis member of the Playstation 2 library.

- Mr. Nash

(June 2, 2001)