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Product description
Doomsday is steadily approaching the planet Earth; it is a time of war and hatred, a time where madmen rule the streets
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The madman in this case is the Reverend and his Four Horsemen: Death, Plague, War, and the Beast
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Together, they have initiated a reign of terror upon the world, glorifying and helping the planet's demise
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The question is who the heck is going to stop these terrorists? Players assume the role of Trey Kincaid, a nano-physicist played by Hollywood action star Bruce Willis
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And darn it if he isn't the world's only hope; he has been called upon to defend the world, destroy the Four Horsemen, and thwart the Reverend's plans.
Review
Apocalypse is an ambitious project
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Activision set out to make a shooter with a very action movie-like quality
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Figuring that they'd need a big action-movie guy involved to really make it fly, they got Bruce Willis on board
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His face was scanned, and his voice was recorded for the project, the theory being that Bruce would star "in" the game
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The original plan was to have Bruce play your sidekick, a guy that would run around and back you up while you shot up the place
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But as the development time dragged on, the conclusion was drawn that people don't want to be alongside Bruce
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People wanted to be Bruce
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So the sidekick idea was scrapped, and instead you take on the role of Trey Kincaid, scientist-turned-outlaw
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The game's changed perspective may have been a good idea at the time, but it also caused the game's main problem
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Since all the voice work was written to work with Trey as your sidekick, it all sounds like he's talking to someone that isn't there
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Plus, what was left in really isn't very good
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Most of the phrases really lack feeling, and they're mixed horribly
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It sounds like they just trapped Bruce in a bathroom with a mini-tape recorder and got him to read the script
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Also, the lack of variety (you'll hear "Open up a can of whoop-ass" and "Ooh! I..
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feel..
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gooood!" more than a few times) leads you to believe that most of the voice work was unsuitable after the transition
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And since getting Bruce back in the studio was probably impossible (hey, Bruce is a busy guy), we're left with whatever quotes they could salvage from the existing audio
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The gameplay is surprisingly fun for a shooter of this type
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The controls are set up in a Robotron or Smash TV-like setting (analog is a must here), but the game has a running and jumping atmosphere more along the lines of ASC Games' One
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For a 3D game with a lot of jumping, the camera does a pretty nice job of presenting the action in an easily viewable fashion
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But it isn't perfect
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The White House level is the biggest offender
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The perspective gets in the way of your jumping quite a few times in that level, causing more than a few deaths when you think you're judging the distance properly but miss a platform by a long shot and die in the lava
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But overall, the gameplay is really intense, although the game as a whole is really quite easy
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The last two levels of the game are reasonably challenging, though
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The game has got a nice graphical look to it, with occasional panning cameras and nice perspective changes
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It really gives the game a very dynamic feel
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The game's frame rate tends to fluctuate a little bit, but it remains fast enough throughout the game, right up until the final boss
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The final boss stage has some serious slowdown problems, which in turn cause some poorly judged jumps, which in turn cause needless (not to mention extremely annoying) deaths
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Other than the poorly executed Bruce Willis speech, the game's sound is nice
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The fire and explosions give the game the feeling of a real battlefield
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The whoosh of the flamethrower is especially nice
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The music is also well done, including a track by Poe (that's how long this game has been in development
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When they first announced Poe's involvement, it was a reasonably big deal), who also plays the part of Plague in the game
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Overall, Apocalypse is a really fun shooter with a great concept, but portions of it are poorly executed
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All in all, the developers really wasted Bruce Willis' talents and missed an opportunity to do something extremely cool
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If they had set out from the beginning to make Apocalypse a one-man game, none of the major problems with the fragmented storyline and poor speech would even exist.--Jeff Gerstmann--Copyright © 1998 GameSpot Inc
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All rights reserved
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Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited
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-- GameSpot Review
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