There is something about porting a
game over from the Playstation to PC that
guarantees the game will fail. The game, if in 3D, is
assured to have muddy textures,
marginal sound and control that just doesn't
translate well to the computer. There are
exceptions of course such as Final Fantasy VII.
Crime Killer, on the other hand is just an
enforcement of the above stated rule.
Crime Killer is set in the far future
where society has digressed to the point
where martial law is the only way to rule the
streets. Sounds somewhat familiar? Yes, it's the
plot that has been used in over thirty games this
year alone. You play the
role of policeman 88 and it is your duty to keep the
streets clean. I probably should have
been warned by the highly stale plot that this game
would be terrible. Despite the fact, I decided to
play on and give it a chance. Bad move on my
part...
Graphics:
The graphics are supported through
Direct3D only. Unfortunately, the only
aspect of
the game that shows what a 3d card is capable of
doing, are the weapons. The weapons
you fire are the standard 3d hardware globes. You
know, the balls of colored light that
are fuzzy on the outside and really bright in the
inside. It was a cool effect, up until every
game decided to use it. The game takes place at
night so your car has it's headlights on.
The headlights are merely pointy sprites that poke
out from the front of the car. The lighting
is absolutely terrible and it is very possible to see
tears in the sky texture. The car models are
so blocky that it appears as if your car is driving
on square wheels. As far as explosions go, they
are somewhat nice, but really nothing special as
the car you just blew up disintegrates into a million
pieces which disappear as they hit the ground.
Sound:
There are three or four sound effects in
this game. All of them are bad and very
poorly recorded. The sound effects are not only
poor but they also sound bland. There is
very little bass or treble and I got the impression
that the money I paid for my high priced sound
system was being wasted. Much to my surprise,
3d sound is not supported.
Multiplayer:
Multiplayer is not supported but should
be. This game could have been somewhat fun in
multiplayer mode against a couple of friends.
Gameplay:
The gameplay in Crime Killer suffers
from several inconsistencies. First off,
the control is very poor. The car has a strong
tendency to understeer greatly even on mild
turns at low speeds. In spite of this understeer,
your car is somehow able to pull off a 180
degree spin on command with no skidding.
Amazing isn't it? As you can tell, this game is also
not
very heavy on the options. Besides an inability to
change any of the graphics settings, it is
also impossible to change the difficulty of the
game. This really isn't that big of a deal
because the game is amazingly easy, but it would
have been nice to have. All of the enemy cars
follow a preset path around the city and even
attempt to pull off the same evasion maneuvers
time and time again. In order to avoid being killed,
all you must do is not follow directly behind the
enemy car. Besides the poor AI and easy difficulty,
the physics in this game are also extremely
corrupt. Overall, Crime Killer contains some of
the worst gameplay I have ever seen in a computer
game.
Fun Factor & Overall Impression:
This game is not fun. I highly recommend
not picking this game up and deleting it
off of your friends computer is probably also a
good move. This game might have been fun with
multiplayer but since it doesn't exist, I wouldn't
know. Crime Killer is simply terrible.
It obviously did not survive the port from
Playstation very well and I recommend staying
away from this title like the plague.
Graphics: 5 / 20
Sound: 3 / 15
Gameplay: 4 / 30
Fun Factor: 2 / 20
Multiplayer Play: 0 / 5
Overall Impression: 3 / 10