Restricted Area

[B4UTRUST]

If any of you have perhaps seen this disgrace on the shelves at the store and thought about picking it up based on the back of the box or the fact it's a cyberpunk rpg, don't.

A quick summary of the game Restricted Area is to imagine that a German game company took a look at the American computer and pen and paper gaming industries, trolling for two of the most popular, came up with Diablo II for the computer RPG and Shadowrun for the PnP game, made a videogame that is an unholy union thereof, removed whatever goodness survived that unholy union, took a shit on it, and then injected an extra helping of suck while they were at it.

If you want a more in depth review of this crapfest we'll do it by the numbers so to speak.

Graphics:

This game toutes what it refers to as the propriatary IRIS graphics engine designed and developed exclusively for this game. It offers dynamic lighting, rain, dust, explosions, fire, smoke, fog, etc. The whole nine yards, enchilada and a bag of chips rolled into one. And I do admit that overall the graphics quality for the environment was indeed pretty good.

However, one you get past the basic environment, it goes all to hell on the express elevator ride to Purgatory. The game is suppose to be set in 2083. Yet for a game that has taken two years just for the graphics engine design and a game that's set so far into the future, every fucking weapon that is produced by these many and diverse companies of the far future look exactly like those of today. The pistols all look exactly like modern day berettas, colts and walthers, the submachine guns all look like H&K mp5s and m-16s. The rifles? Spas-12s and Remmingtons.

To press on from that, the game uses sprites. This is 2005, so correct me if I'm wrong but...sprites? This isn't classic doom here...

And speaking of doom, the monsters look right out of it. That or quake. No originallity. Zombies carrying knives, zombies carrying guns, fat men with knives trying to stab you, chicks with katanas...very repetative and unoriginal. And lacking in detail immensely.

Sound:

If you enjoy listening to your character walk around and fire his gun and go "oof" when he gets hit, then the sound of this game is off the charts. But if you're like me and actually enjoy listening to some for of environmental background music, well then this aint for you. The game states that it's suppose to have not one, but two entirely different musical scores, an orchestral and an alternative. I heard neither.

And the voice acting. Oh dear god. This is the worst voice acting I've heard outside of dubbed anime. And for those of you who happen to watch anime, you can probaby back me up on this that most dubs are horribly bad. This is worse.

Storyline:

Ummm...I'll have to get back to you on that one. I searched and I couldn't find one. I think it's a hidden item in the game somewhere but only if oyu beat the game in less then 30 minutes with the worst character on the hardest difficulty while holding the ring of ultimate crap or something...

Seriously, the box claims that the game is in the same vein as the matrix or bladerunnner. This is of course to pull attention away from its real source of plagurism. Shadowrun. But only the worst parts thereof.

Gameplay:
Dry, boring, repetative, crap.

Integrity of the game:
Even with the latest patch the game still glitches hard. Monsters will get trapped in solid walls, you'll get trapped in solid walls, you'll not be able to move, you'll move without clicking... ah yes, the joys of this game never cease.

Replayability:
None. I didn't want to beat it the first time except to see the ending. But considering within 20 minutes of playing the game I knew there wasn't a storyline I could have saved myself the headache and hassle of this and just done something else with those few hours I wasted. Like masturbated. It would have been more productive. And if not productive, far more enjoyable.

Overall Score: 2 out of 10

[Josh]

Well, to borrow one of those bad anime dubs...

"That's a real pain in the shitter."

Thanks for the warning. I might've geeked for this one if I'd seen it.

[Ace Pace]

I'm locking this and asking you to repost in the game review thread, helpfully located Here.