ENEMY ZERO

I strongly urge you to read my previous Reader Review of Warp's other well-known FMV puzzle/horror game "D", a cult-hit that has singlehandedly made Kenji Eno a videogame celebrity in Japan and has given credibility to the Sega Dreamcast with the promise of "D2" as a second-party exclusive when the machine hits retail. And Eno is using for the Dreamcast game the same character that has become the company's walking logo, and that appeared on the spiritual follow-up to "D", the Saturn-exclusive "Enemy Zero": blond and sensitive (but tough and resourceful) Laura Lewis. "EO" may be an evolution in the gaming interface and concepts pioneered by "D", and have a considerable increase in the quality of the FMV cinemas and interactivity with the surroundings; at its heart, though, Sega knew it had a quirky and tough sell with such a cutting-edge and unique title in the United States.

Your plot is lifted straight from the 1978 sci-fi classic "Alien", with enough little twists to give the game a new feel. Exploratory biocraft Aki (read: the Nostromo) is heading back to Earth with a crew of scientists/engineers in suspended animation, kept alive and breathing via a network system that monitors neural activity. Laura Lewis (read: Ripley) is awakened by the computer when the network's emergency program detects an intruder in the ship; in the daze to be awakened so suddenly, Laura loses some of her memories and is dazed and confused. Trying to reach the other crew members through the damaged video phone directory leads to Aki's engineer Parker (read: the Yaphet Kotto character), which is suddenly attacked by a mysterious being that breaks the communication. Now Laura must venture outside the safety of her room and face...it!

GRAPHICS / VISUALS: B

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The game uses two different game engines for the two portions in which the game is divided: an updated "D" interface for exploratory segments, and a "Doom"-like interface for moving between the ship's many areas (warehouse, engineer's room, bridge, etc.) and to fight the invisible alien that cannot be seen by Laura. The FMV segments (which fill over four CD's), although letterboxed and a bit grainy around the corner, use SGI-rendered graphics that are a tremendous improvement over the Amiga-rendered graphics used for this early 3DO killer-app. The first-person shooter segments won't give the Lobotomy shooters a moment of worry (it is fast and moves at 30 frames-per-second), since it features a 'blackness' just a few feet away from you, and has a low-res look and drab colors (brown being he most prominent) that wouldn't stand a chance as a stand-alone game. The use of wire-frames for the Training level in Disc 0, though, is cool-looking and shows that the effectiveness in killing the alien depends on practice. For the purposes "EO" sets itself to achieve, both engines complement perfectly and look like Sega's answer to "Riven" (PC) and "Kwoolon's Gate" (PSX).

MUSIC / SOUND EFFECTS: B-

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A tense and subdued musical score (except for the totally out-of-place hard rock tune in the opening FMV cinema) underscores the tension and overwhelming sense of doom that surrounds Laura on her lonely quest to get out of the ship alive, and kill the alien with her hard-to-wield-and-recharge gun. Most of the sound effects are movie-quality, especially the FMV segments (some of which you get to semi-control in the "D"-like interface), although most of the time Laura's footsteps and mechanical surroundings will make the bulk of what you'll hear. The ever increasing/decreasing beeping of your VPS, indicating the location of the invisible alien, never fails to make the heart beats go faster and the hand palms get sweaty.

Voices are on the weak side, although there aren't that many voice samples from which to draw a conclusion (does Parker's scream of pain when his head is ripped-off count?) despite the ever-present Aki computer voice doing its damnest to ape the lack of emotion in the HAL2000 computer in the Stanley Kubrick sci-fi classic "2001: A Space Odyssey". Jill Cunniff, leading singer from the musical band Luscious Jackson, was approached do to the English voice-overs of Laura Lewis; after hearing the puny amount of one-liners Laura actually uses during "Enemy Zero" (and how badly Cunniff did them) you'll realize Sega of America probably used her as a marketing scheme that would allow them to use her name of the cover of the game.

GAMEPLAY / FUN FACTOR: B

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Replay value isn't a concern with this genre, since its the first-time playthrough that makes or breaks the game; "EO" is a somewhat-lengthy attempt at a sci-fi movie on 32-bit videogame form, and taken just as that, the game succeeds widely with only a handful of drawbacks against its veryambitious attempt. The bad first: it's incredibly hard, even on easy, to kill an alien being that you can't see. That ensures plenty of frustration with klutzy players, and may frustrate some early on in the proceedings and make them shelve the game permanently. Also, what's with the somehwhat-confusing control scheme of the first-person segments?; strafing left/right is a breeze with the L/R buttons, but looking up/down and making Laura move with the agility of a "Doom"/"Quake" marine is nearly impossible (not that the game demands it though). And, very much like "D", "EO" only raises the pulse every once in a while and is, for the most part, a boring and tedious exercise in click-and-search graphic adventures cliches where you need 'X' item to fit in 'Y' slot, and so forth.

Besides the above, "EO" is an evolution of "D" that takes advantage of Saturn's 32-bit processors and upgrades both the look/feel of the visual/aural bells and whistles of "D", which had its artistic vision severely hampered by its low-end technology (Amiga computers to render the graphics, and the 3DO multiplayer's archaic 32-bit chips). Kenji Eno and his Warp programmers are obvious fans of motion pictures, because "EO" has the camera angles, pans/tilts and zooms that are standard technique when it comes to film and TV productions; when an alien being runs through a steel door and breaks it in half, the pan toward Laura's face to get her reaction to the wreckage is as important and necessary (for mood's sake) as the action sequence. The new and improved "D" interface addressed the main criticism Warp's cult-hit received from gamers: it was slow, tedious and clunky; "EO" is faster, more responsive, and features plenty of macabre puzzles that disturb and keep the player inmersed in Laura's plight at all times. It isn't everyday that you must gather a dismembered finger from a deceased crew member in order to access his locker room via a finger-print recognition device.

OVERALL: B

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How did this game, along with the Saturn version of "Quake" and Squaresoft's "Final Fantasy VII" (PSX, PC) get a 'T' rating from the ESRB Association is beyond me; be warned that there are more than a handful of compromising situations in "Enemy Zero" that might be disturbing for younger gamers, one of which includes mild nudity (grrrr!). "EO" can be found for under $25 at most retail stores clearing out their Saturn inventory, and I strongly urge you to give serious thought to purchasing a copy of this underrated and atmospheric Warp title; it may be flawed, but it isn't everyday that such an alternative Japanese game makes it to our shores. Let's hope "D2" resurrects the franchise mascot, Laura Lewis, to the status of a Lara Croft or a Jill Valentine (we need more brains and less cleavage in our videogame heroines).