I-War by Imagitec Design and Atari
Everyone's worst fears have come true. The supercomputer that handles the world's information is filled with mutated databases and lethal viruses. You must enter the I-Way, clear the clogged channels and restore the system. Choose an anti-virus craft to get you through the vicious attacks, challenging puzzles and tormenting mazes. And good luck. You are mankind's only hope. Overview: I-War marks Imagitec’s first next-gen game based on their own engine. All the other games they’ve done have been ports like Bubsy, Pitfall, and Zool 2. There only other original game was Dino Dudes, and it was hardly next-generation. Well, this game has it’s strengths and weaknesses, but it’s safe to say that the game comes up just a bit short. The intro screen looks great with a spinning Atari and Imagitec Design logo. The tune here is killer too. The game offers 3 tanks for you to choose: Heavy, Medium and Light. The tanks can carry different amounts of weapons, have different armor strengths, and have varying speeds. The polygon count in these tanks is quite high, and give them a rounded look instead of a blocky look like other polygon games. There are 5 views in the game, but you’ll usually leave it in cockpit mode to keep the framerate acceptable. You find yourself in the game collecting datapods. The game doesn’t have much variety to offer. It’s much like CyberMorph’s collect the pod levels. You’ll flip switches to open doors, cross touch plates, and turn on spring/poppers that let you jump through the air, but there aren’t many more play mechanics than that. As you get deeper into the game, you have to explore much bigger levels and collect big amounts of pods. A lot of these later levels require a good deal of memorization on the player’s part. If you can’t remember which teleporter takes you where, you may find yourself going in circles. In between each regular level, there are some killer 3D virtual bonus levels. They have you flying through the datalink collecting datapods while avoiding the viruses polluting it. You ship has a lifebar in these levels, so if you hit too much of the junk floating around, you’ll die. There is an outside view, and a cockpit view. The cockpit view is great. The banking effect when you sway side-to-side is awesome. The sense of virtual reality is very good even without a helmet or anything. The shapes of these levels change like Defender 2000’s. The graphics of the game are about 90% shaded and 10% texture mapped. The shading in the game is very psychedelic. Some parts of the room just light up, and it just looks cool! The game has no pop-up except in the bonus round) which is cool, seeing that the N64 hasn’t done anything like that yet (despite their claims before the system came out.) The game has tons of colors (24 bit I’m guessing) that just kinda glow. In a way, the colors remind me of Tron, it’s weird. The explosions are a bit different that your regular poly explosions. Tons of little polygon pieces fly off of the enemy until it explodes. Big parts of the ship fly in different directions at high velocities, complete with an utterly awesome popping explosion sound. When compared to Doom, it’s considered true 3D. In Doom, there is never any structure above or below an existing one. This isn’t the case in I-War. It lacks the floor elevation changes of Doom, though. The only changes in floor height are in huge jumps to platforms above. There are no steps or anything. Also, the game would’ve really been improved if you could climb up the walls like Hover Strike. As the game is, your tank is "glued to the floor". The sound, being done by Imagitec, is sensational. This time around, they’ve done a slightly different style with some cyber-techno stuff. It’s kinda like a mix of Tempest 2000 and Iron Soldier. The music length is excellent, and there are about 4 different in-game tunes. The FX are great. Great shattering, firing, and door sounds. They did some good work in the audio department. Gameplay is pretty good besides the fact that there is no variety. There are a bunch of weapons to collect. You start off with a single laser, but as you progress, you’ll be shooting 4-6 lasers at a time! You can collect 3 degrees of each weapon: mark 1 through 3. You can get multiple missile launchers, plasma cannons, minelayers, and rear lasers. Shields are collectable for a burst of invulnerability. AI droids hover over your tank and dish out the pain to foes. An auto targeting chip is also important for shooting enemies above and below your ship. The variety in enemies is also very strong. There are 22 different enemies. You can take a look at these enemies and their stats in the defense viewer on the main menu. You’ll face some very elusive bouncy balls. Gun towers are present, and even have reflective visors! You can see the level around you in their visor! There are a ton of tanks with varying armor, firepower, aggression, and speed, and multiple missile turrets wielding mega firepower. There is a 2 player split screen mode, but you only have one combat level to play on, and the gameplay is hurt by the slowdown in this mode. The control layout is good, and maneuvering your tank is quite slick. As your ship is glued to the floor, I-War has some very unforgiving walls. Up against the walls, the control is sticky and somewhat glitchy. Other than the walls, everything else is pretty good. Selecting your weapons is done by scrolling through with one button, because the other buttons are taken up by the views and stuff. This isn’t that bad because you usually only have about 3-4 weapons to choose from. The framerate is my main complaint about this game, and is probably the point that hurts the game the most. When you fire up the game, it’s gonna be pretty fast. The later levels get bigger in size, and being that there is no pop-up, this causes some slowdown. In some rooms of the game, you’d swear that they could’ve used the engine for a racing title, but in most other big or enemy populated rooms, the framerate drops considerably, and effects the edge-of-the-seat excitement of the game. I wouldn’t care if they scrapped the texture mapping altogether! The shading already kicks some serious butt! I get sick of people saying that T-mapping is very important. Sure it’s nice, but Shading is the way to go in my opinion. The graphics only last for a while, and then players start paying more attention to the gameplay. That’s where it counts. Gameplay...higher framerates..etc. If this game had a more stable framerate, you might see me rating it up there with some of the best of ‘em. I’m recommending I-War for serious Imagitec tune lovers and big-time Jag fans only.
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