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Zero 5 was in trouble the moment it was revealed that gameplay would
consist of 3 distinct sub-games. You may be thinking the exact
opposite, however. After all, if there are three games on one
cartridge, there's a better chance that one or more of them would
be enjoyable, right? You see, that's precisely the reason that
three games ARE included; none of them fail to stand on their own
as an individual game. What the developer should have done is to
lavish attention on one of the play modes and try and perfect it.
Tron it is not.
The first game mode is the gunnery mode, where you control the
guns of the HIT-PAK to wipe out your foes. Unfortunately,
this play mode is flawed from the start. The radar map only
tracks the horizontal coordinates of your ship without
informing you of your vertical position relative to other objects.
A radar that is similar in concept to Star Raiders would have
helped the gunnery mode immensely. As if that wasn't frustrating
enough, control is imprecise; more often than not it was just a
matter of sheer luck that I managed to blow up an enemy object.
The second game has you zooming through a tunnel (a-la Nanotek
Warrior or STUN Runner) at breakneck speeds, and the object is
to shoot enemies (what else?) while avoiding them. While this
simple enough formula could have been something special, flaws
abound yet again. The tunnel is far too narrow, and given that
your ship is traveling at an incredible rate, it makes for a
frustrating experience that only those with knee-jerk reactions
can enjoy. Too often you will felt that you lost a game by virtue
of Zero 5's poor design and not as a result of a mistake on your
part.
The intergalactic dogfight mode is described by Telegames as a
"3-D, 360 degree space dogfight." They are only partially correct.
Think of it as a 3-D version of Space Wars (without the ability
to thrust) or Space Zap (Bally/Midway)and you wouldn't be far off.
The object is to steer (rotate might be the more appropriate term
here) your BAMBAM toward the direction of your enemies and shoot
and destroy them. Since you view the action from a fixed third
person persepective and the enemies are always the same distance
from your ship, you really get no sense of movement or control of
the action.
It's too bad that each of the sub-games are flawed in one way or
another, because Zero 5 is embellished with some of the best
graphics and sound ever seen on the Jaguar. Beautiful
gourad-shaded polygons (with a touch of texture-mapping) are
better still than Iron Soldier 2 or Battlemorph, the hitherto
cream of the eye candy crop. The music is of standard shooter fare,
meaning that a generic techno tune will be pumping in the background.
A dose of voice samples add to the futuristic feel of the Zero 5
and rounds out the impressive repetoire of audiovisual delights.
Make no mistake: Zero 5 is a quantum leap for the Jaguar in terms
of making the most of the 64-bitter's hardware abilities. In
comparison, however, each of the sub-games has fundamental
shortcomings such that only the very skilled and patient Atariphiles
will experience the triumph of conquering this intergalactic
blast-fest.
Graphics:
Sound:
Gameplay:
Overall:
-- Keita Iida
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