Game Over Online ~ Abyss: Incident at Europa

GameOver Game Reviews - Abyss: Incident at Europa (c) SoundSource Interactive, Reviewed by - Rebellion

Game & Publisher Abyss: Incident at Europa (c) SoundSource Interactive
System Requirements Pentium 90, 24 MB RAM, 4x CD-ROM
Overall Rating 29%
Date Published Monday, September 28th, 1998 at 04:38 PM


Divider Left By: Rebellion Divider Right

Hmmmm just after I got reviewing one game using a movie license, another one gets dropped in my lap. Well for starters, I haven't seen the movie this is based on, so I can't REALLY knock it for loosely following the movie, but there's plenty else to knock it for. Now I don't normally rate games much below 50%, since I feel most developers had good ideas flawed by minor glitches or other letdowns to the game. This one I'm still trying to figure out why the hell it even came out in the first place. Well on with the review...

The story serves as a "sequel" to the movie. There's an underwater complex named Deepcore and various scientific experiments were being performed there. Some sort of "virus" infected the crew and turned them in mutated zombies. Your job is to go down and find out how to cure this virus and bring Deepcore back to the surface.

You might now be thinking, yep just another first person shooter. That's what I thought too. Especially when I started playing. Then I realized I had no weapons, so I was at loss for the point of the game. Ah hah! I came upon a Stun Gun and thought yep now it's time to go hunting for baddies. Doh! Wrong again. I've got a "weapon" with three shots and it only knocks the monster down after the second shot and doesn't kill it. Ummm well so much for a gory kill fest. I then realized I was supposed to shoot the monsters and then run by them so I could "explore" the "world" further. It turns into an "adventure" game if you could call it that much, where you search for parts to bring the power back online and get Deepcore ready to go back to the surface.

This is the abomination of graphical skill in 1998. Duke Nukem 3D looks better than this game. Come on people, how hard would it have been to license the Quake engine or, hell, even the Build Engine is better than this. There's no Direct3D and there's DEFINATELY not any 3DFX. You've got two graphics modes, low res (320x200) or high res (640x480). Um any modern game's low res is 640x480. The game runs pretty smoothly... until I went in the one area that goes underwater. My PC couldn't carry a frame to save its life. At least there's not much in the way of underwater excursions. I don't know why, this engine looks like a challenger against Doom for graphics in 1994, but alas it's 1998.

I don't know who'd want to play an adventure game like this anymore. In addition to being ugly, it's small. It "boasts" 100+ rooms. Um... Unreal had LEVELS bigger than this game. The levels aren't huge enough to get lost in so I guess that's a good thing. It also doesn't take a long time to get around in either. I guess you could look at those as perks. You also have to stick in access cards every time you want to go through a secured door, even if you've already opened it. It's a pretty mind numbing experience.

Now I do have to say Abyss has one decent thing going for it. The sound is pretty well done. It's creepy and it seems very spatial. It has directional sound so you could figure out where something might be by listening for it. It has speech to inform you of various things happening. All in all it does a great job of setting the environment. Unfortunately, when paired with pixelated junk someone called graphics 100 times 0 still equals zilch.

Do not get this game. I repeat DO NOT GET THIS GAME. It is total junk. If you want to see something like this, spend the four bucks and go rent the movie and pretend that it's interactive. You'll get more for your money.

Highs: Hey look! I got 160 megs back! It's got pretty good sound too.
Lows: The ENTIRE GAME

 

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29%
 

 

 
 

 

 

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