By: Tutti
"Welcome to the Savage Arena where blood, guts,
and attitude is all that counts. Don't just beat your opponent -
destroy them. The more blood on the floor, the better."
This all seems very nice as Rage puts it, but it's
clearly not the case once you actually PLAY the game and
cease staring at a box. Savage Arena is a futuristic sports
game alright, but certain features and annoying bugs make it
seem a little out of date.
Graphics: 16/20
Visuals are excellent in Savage Arena. Rage
obviously put effort into them, and it paid off. Running
Savage.exe brought up the familiar video card selection
prompt and after choosing my VoodooČ, I watched as the main
menu used fog trails (more on these in a bit) and another
special effect involving beams that exploded into menu
options. I found this to be a very dazzling trick and a creative
way to use my 3dfx's power. During gameplay, visuals were
silky smooth with a fast frame rate (there's an option to display
it) in the 50's - very impressive for a mere Pentium 188mmx
overclocked from an outdated 166mmx. Fog trails and
amazing shadow work are both used to track the progress of
the ball itself; this is definitely the best effect the game has to
offer. The players themselves are rendered cleanly, but there
is far too much clipping and distorted polygons that become
visible at certain angles. Rage apparently didn't attempt to
combine many polygons in each model and it's quite evident
with all the boxy legs and arms on the players. The stadiums
look nice, with well-rendered cement and painted creases and
lines.
Sound: 8/15
Savage Arena's sound is tormentingly weak. Low
quality sound with a lack of effort is certainly the case in this
game. The only really decent sample was the whipping sound
of the ball traveling through the air when your player throws it.
Other than that the sound is riddled with flaws and glitches - it
sometimes blurs out and dies, then comes back. As a whole the
audio is poor and if Rage can't do any better than this, they
may be better off going out and "borrowing" some of EA's
sound wizards.
Gameplay: 20/35
Summed up in two words: annoyingly difficult.
Absurd movement clashes with amazingly realistic passing and
user-dependent accuracy. It's hard to believe how Rage could
be so right with one aspect of control and yet so wrong with
another. The passing and shooting is almost too precise, as
you have to be deadly accurate with your shots and passes. I
shot at the goalie and aimed for the upper left corner of the
goal but didn't aim carefully enough and ended up hitting the
corner of the post instead. On the scoring note, it's extremely
difficult to win consecutive games. The computer AI is
extremely high, and although many sports games leave the AI
in the box, there is a limit as to how challenging it should be.
Rage takes AI to another level. Sure, winning is possible in
this game, but doing it consistently during league play isn't.
The game itself based on a sport where two teams battle it out
and you must throw a ball and hit the other team's goal (it's not
a meshed net, but rather a force field adjoining two polls) to
score points. Anything from within the crease is considered a
power shot which you get merely 1 point for, but out of the
painted zone around the net you receive a sweet 5 smackers
under your team's name. Another thing to take note of is the
extreme violence in this game. Definitely not for anyone
younger than 13, this game offers brutal beatings and so much
blood it makes Mortal Kombat look like something playable by
little Timmy next door. A very amusing and violent feature are
the fatalities and goalie kills. After punching a player enough
times in the head, he will bleed to death and die, thus the
fatality. The goalie kills are triggered when an opposing
player gets too close to a goalie's crease. The goalie proceeds
to LOSE IT and he punches the victim into his own net. That's
right, all the way across the stadium and into *his own* net -
quite difficult to do, yet very pleasing once you execute it.
Fun Factor: 13/20
What can I say, the violence stuck my fingers to the
keyboard. The idea of throwing a ball into a net alone cannot
be too luring with all the games competing for shelf space
these days, but the great graphics and addition of gore makes
Savage Arena somewhat interesting. Boredom becomes a
factor if you take replay value into consideration, since the
blood wears a little thin after a while.
Overall Impression: 7/10
I had mixed opinions as I played this game - on one
hand, the violence and gratuitous blood make it entertaining -
but then again you can't just rely on gore to make a game(think
of all of those awful MK clones). When you take away the
violence there isn't much left. If Rage wants to keep their
games out of the bargain bin they have to learn to squeeze in
as much game depth as possible. Now enough of this bloody
mess, it's time for some white chedda macaroni if you know
what I mean!
Highs: Well-rendered graphics, bloody good violence!!!
Lows: Unclear and low grade sound, disgustingly low polygon
count, crazy movement and high difficulty levels
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