Hardline
Review by Al Giovetti, 10/04/96
Price: $50
Genre: interactive movie game
Release:
Developer: Cryo
Programmer:
Music:
Art:
Producer:
Publisher: Virgin Interactive
Phone: 714-833-8710, 800-874-4607
Website: http://www.vie.com
Requirements: 486 DX, 66 MHz, 8 MB RAM, 1 MB Hard drive space, 2X CD
ROM drive, SVGA Graphics, mouse
History: Cryo is the company that did Dune, which was an animated graphic adventure which had elements of a strategy game. The original Dune was a fun game and sold well, and when it was followed by a re-release of the game which incorporated full motion video, Cryo started on their odyssey with this medium that has lead them to this point and perhaps even this game.
The plot: There are a lot of moving cardboard cut outs of people that have invaded this very brown building. You must kill all the cut outs while they jump all over the screen while shooting at you and throwing hand grenades. The animation is very early Terry Gilliam without the humor. This game like most of us, takes itself far to seriously.
Game play: The screen is pretty simple with people popping up in the first person perspective as you move through the buildings. You put a cursor on your targets and fire killing them as you go and dodging the bullets and grenades. You pick up health packs, ammunition and weapons as you move through the maze of rooms. Basically the game works like Doom, or Mad Dog McCree. Two bars graph like bars which come up from the bottom of the screen indicate how much ammunition and health you have. The cross hairs of your weapon blend with the rest of the screen making aiming and surviving difficult.
Graphics: The game has what looks like cardboard cutouts of people in full motion video that was digitized and now appears animated with that pasted on look over three dimensional scenes that may have been produced with full motion video film. The graphics I saw had an overabundance of browns, yellows and black shading with some green mixed in for variety.
Animation: The animation is blocky full motion video filmed like a movie. The video is descent the cinematography is uninspired, like the nude sex scene between Ted, our hero, and his girlfriend. Blood spurts from the dead and dying until both disappear off the screen, eliminating the inconvenient and messy bodies, just like the older games. Interesting.
Actors: No one recognizable is in the game, and the acting is on the wonderfully bad side, since the writers did not seem to get with the program. In some ways this title misses the boat because it takes itself so seriously, there was real potential for comedy here.
Music score: Passable
Sound effects: Passable
Multiplayer: Not a multi-player game.
Utilities: The mouse control is imprecise.
Reviewers: Mike Davila has pointed out that the helicopter which takes off in the beginning scenes has the main character, Ted sitting in the right side of the helicopter when it takes off and the left side when it lands. You can almost hear the continuity person screaming, "Cut - Continuity - Cut." Continuity is one of those things that you cannot mess up when doing any type of filming. We constantly have our talent or interviewee’s with their coffee changing hands multiple time during a shoot, we use an old transporter that paramount lost after canning the original Star Trek show. It came complete with a set of Vulcan ears for $1.95 and in 1968 that was expensive.
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References:
Mike Davila, Computer Player, volume 3, number 5, October, 1996, pg. 66.
Colin Williamson, PC Gamer, volume 4, number 5, May, 1997, pg. 109, 24%.