|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
           
|
"THE GREAT PRETENDER" Being the first bonafide "Super Mario 64" clone on the PSX, combined with artistic design clearly aimed at small children (which is a large portion of the gaming audience often neglected with token titles like "Punky Skunk") helped make Fox Interactive's "Croc: Legend of the Gobbos" a hit back in 1997. It was also a chance for European developer Argonaut to prove they were more than just the folks that created "Starfox" for the SNES. But with much better "Mario 64" clones entering the PSX market on a regular basis nowadays ("Spyro the Dragon" and "Jersey Devil", to name two of many), the gameplay and storyline of "Croc" is beginning to show it age and lack of originality. The storyline is cliche central: the peaceful Gobbos have been taken prisoners by the evil Baron Dante and his minions, and only the green lizzard with a mean tail attack (no, this isn't "Gex:ETG" we're talking about here) can unlock the cages holding the annoying Gobbos and defeat the bosses at the end of every few levels, as well as collect extra Gobbos and other power-ups. There are four islands with ten levels each: six regular levels with the usual dose of enemies, gems to collect, boxes to move, levers to pull and boxes to butt-stomp, as well as two boss levels and (if you've released all the Gobbos and cleared all the colored gems) two bonus levels. Find every Gobbo and collect every hidden gem, and you've got a secret fifth island (with another ten levels) to contend with. All fine and dandy, but is this a game worth buying when better games are just around the corner? I'd suggest that you read the following, and then consider "Croc:LOTG" when it hits the 'Greatest Hits' line-up at an affordable $19.95.
GAMEPLAY / FUN FACTOR: C Maybe I'm just a jaded 25 year-old guy who has grown bitter and disappointed with life's daily chores (which might explain why Nickelodeon's "The Secret World of Alex Mack", Şcurrently airing Mon-Fri at 6:30PM ET/PA, is a light show that calms my hypertension to manageable levels), but the ABSOLUTE AND COMPLETE LACK OF ORIGINALITY IN THIS GAME baffles the mind. Controlling like "Mario 64" but with badly calibrated analog control (way too sensitive!; stick to digital for the treacherous ice levels and floating platforms) and terrible camera angles (which, unlike Lakitu's cloud in "Mario 64", can't be moved or positioned to the player's liking), "Croc" is an orgy of ripoffs from every cartoony character-based game before it. I'm all for unoriginal games that are fun and a blast to play (like the "Crash Bandicoot" series), but Argonaut could and should have tried harder to give Croc and Co. a unique gameplay concept instead of recycling evrything that came before it. There are concepts that aren't even properly emulated, making "Croc" not only unoriginal and boring, but also a flawed exercise in badly programming other people's ideas. The ability to collect gems (get 100 and you get an extra life...Wow!) by running over them or after hitting an enemy is an 8-bit throaway, but the shoddy collision-detection when walking over a lava pit (combined with the sensitive controls and lousy camera perspective) makes the game a bitch to play. His tail attack is straight our of another game featuring another reptilian mascot ("Gex"), and his butt-stomp move when jumping pays homage (read: rips off) to Nintendo's SNES classic "Yoshi's Island". When "Croc" gets hit by an enemy or environmental hazzard and his gems spread around him ("Sonic" anyone?), he only has less than THREE seconds to run around and collect them; that is (pardon the pun) a programming croc, because the flawed programming is against you more than the enemies. Speaking of enemies, the AI and difficulty levels of the game are on the easy and forgiving (read: boring) side, with baddies that run around a small terrain and don't seem aware that you're in front of them unless you walk into their limited field of perception. And you thought "Crash Bandicoot" was an unoriginal game that stole from every game before it! Clearly aimed at youngsters or people that suck at this type of games, "Croc" decides early on that it will mask its flawed controls and camera angles with an easy challenge that will mostly consist of finding every Gobbo and finding every colored gem (red, purple, yellow, etc.). The levels consist of a series of very small 'areas' or 'rooms' in which our hero must find every gem or hidden artifact and move on (if Croc returns to an already cleared level, he'll find nothing); there are small loading times between these 'areas', so technical limitations (like with Capcom's "Resident Evil" series) forced Argonaut to design very small playfields for Croc to play in, which takes away from the open-endedness of the game (compared to the one's in "Jersey Devil" or "Spyro the Dragon"). If unoriginal ideas is what you're looking for (all tied in a neat and safe 'E' package for little kids), Argonaut has rounded them all for you; it even has the 'look around' button that Eidos and Nintendo pioneered for their respective titles in 1996. Memory card support is a welcome help in saving your progress through Croc's quest, although that goes with just about every PSX game currently in release. GRAPHICS / VISUALS: B- No FMV opening or cinemas in "Croc", which instead goes the "Starfox 64" route (which, incidentally, Argonaut had nothing to do with because Nintendo developed it in-house) and has real-time cinemas generated by the game's graphical engine. The game's resolution is average, and the textures somewhat rough and chunky compared to the detail of newer 3D 'go-anywhere' games; colors are bright and cheerful, although you'll see mostly greens (for plants and grass), bright orange/yellow hues (from the rivers of lava flowing all around Croc), brownish colors (for the rock formations) and white (the cloud and ice levels). The menu/option screens are OK, but look pretty lacking and are layed out in a clumsy fashion (you'll have to go to a sub-menu in order to adjust something, and then back a couple of more to get ready); maybe its because "Croc" is foreign product with an European flavor, but to me the artistic design and style of the fonts and characters were disturbingly amateurish and juvenile. And although the game doesn't have the traditional 'mine cart' level reviewers make fun of in their assesment of tired genre conventions, you bet there is an ice world in which everything is white and handles just a tad more slippery than in grass or rock... yawn! Polygon moels for Croc, the Gobbos, Baron Dante and the many baddies are pretty rough and basic, with bug-eyed characters that come across as chunky and unpolished 3D models. There are snake-like bosses and enemies (like the one that moves underground in a preset pattern) that are nothing but a series of interconnected polygons without limb joints and/or shape; that worked for Ubi Soft's 2D masterpiece "Rayman" in the early days of 32-bit gaming, but they look badly dated in today's 3D field. Argonaut even pays homage to fellow European developers Eidos Interactive by giving their main character a small backpack and running shoes, a clear visual reference to Lara Croft; the reptile even has a couple of moves (like holding from the edge of a platform by his claws) straight from "Tomb Raider", which won't be noticed by the target audience that "Croc" is aimed at. The game even has a few unique graphic effects of its own, like the transparent Jello-like trampolins in which Croc gets to propel himself higher; I'd like to see Ms. Croft try to throw herself in gelatin that is this good-looking in her damn games (and I'm sure millions wouldn't mind it too... he he he!).
MUSIC / SOUND EFFECTS: C Cuddly and harmless animal chatter between Croc and his fellow Gobbos will delight kids to no end, since they sound like the chatter of the furry creatures in "Gremlins" before the midnight snacks kick in (lots of 'Guaaa' and 'Yipee' yelps and cries). Sound effects are minimal and seem to be preset at a very low volume, because you'll have to make an effort to hear the doors opening, the crocodile's footsteps and the well covers breaking up (the big gong that Croc gets to smash at the end of a level, though, is a cute touch). Musical score = tragedy of the highest order, because these are tunes that seem composed on a keyboard by memebrs of an inspired child care establishment trying to keep an unruly baby on the verge of sleep boredom; some (the Christmas-like tunes with heavy emphasis on bells) are better than others (the 'Addams Family' theme meets the theme from Joel Schumacher's 'Batman Returns' in the underground caves), but overall the audio package in "Croc" is poor and lacking IF YOU'RE NOT A TODDLER WHO DOESN'T KNOW ANY BETTER. OVERALL: C+ I didn't like "Croc" when it came out in 1997, and I definitely don't like it now that I've played great games like "Gex:ETG", "Crash Bandicoot 2", "Jersey Devil" and countless others. The only reason I can see someone going for "Croc" instead of a polished game like "Spyro" (which I'm completing as you read this) is the affordable price of $19.95. I read on NGOnline a while ago that, in a survey of children that sampled several games for the CBS Morning News show, "Mario 64" and "Croc" were the only games that appeared on the top ten lists of both girls and boys. So take this Reader Review with a grain of salt: the child in me thinks that "Croc" describes itself pretty accurately, but the youngster in your family might feel more comfortable unlocking the caged Gobbos than mowing down animals in forgotten worlds with Uzi machine guns. To order Croc, click the order button
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
