Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.2 for Windows

It would be funny enough if this game were just based on the Heavy Metal band Kiss itself. Actually, it is based on a comic book staring the members of Kiss and written by Todd McFarlane. I was not really a Kiss fan before I played this game, but I do remember them at their makeup peak, somewhere around 1978 when they had a made for television movie called ?Kiss meets the Phantom in the Park?. I didn?t learn too much more about Kiss by playing this game through, but since I really am not an expert, I'm not sure if being a fan of their music would make the game better or worse.

Surprisingly, I thought that there was no Kiss music in the game at all. However, reading an online hint guide, I guess the jukeboxes in the game are playing Kiss songs, but I didn?t recognize any of them.

This game relishes in the fact that it is trying to get back to the simpler roots of the first person shooter like Doom was. The makers enjoyed the non-stop action of that game rather than the adventure puzzle RPG nature of some of the more recent shooters like Half-life, System Shock 2 and Deus Ex.

There is a story, but it really only serves to bring your characters through to the next level. In this game you play each of the four Kiss band members: Beast King (Peter Criss), Demon (Gene Simmons), Celestial (Ace Frehley), and Starbearer (Paul Stanley). Each character constitutes a ?stage? and each stage involved what I believe were five levels in each. You start with each character looking fairly normal, and your goal is to collect six pieces of armor, each of which make you look more like the band member in his all-out full makeup self.

The four different characters do play somewhat differently. Each has the same chaingun, shotgun, whip and grenade launcher, but then each gets two unique weapons that make them play differently. I was a little disappointed that there weren?t any secondary modes of firing since most games have a larger selection of weapons, but I understand that the designers were trying to keep the game less complicated, and the weapons are pretty varied as is.

The game uses the Lithtech engine, and does a good job at what it was trying to do, which is to be able to throw more monsters at you at the same time than any game before. I think Serious Sam (about six months later) probably matched it, but most first person shooters try for more impressive and interactive environments rather than more enemies. This game?s engine instead handles lots and lots of enemies attacking you at once. More than any other game I can remember since the final levels of Doom 2 six years earlier.

The game is definitely more Quake than Half-life. There isn?t a lot of thinking to do in each level. The only strategy I used was trying to take out the monster generators as soon as possible. These generators are reminiscent of the old top down arcade shooter, Gauntlet. You can focus on the enemies, but there is an endless supply of them coming out of the generators, so you will run out of ammo if you ignore them. Most of the time I simply decided to absorb damage as I waded through the monsters in order to take out the generator, and then focus on the remaining monsters. Facing off against multiple generators is especially difficult.

The monsters are varied, clever, and seem original. There are floating evil clowns, some small but voracious spider things, and even a monster whose legs are replaced by a unicycle. Fortunately, many of them don?t have ranged weapons, but the ones that have to make contact with you to hurt you can easily overwhelm you. My initial response with those is to keep backing up picking them off as they get closer to me. Considering the monster generators, you really have to keep pushing forward through them.

The monster AI seems very rudimentary. They never seemed to dodge my attacks, or work in any sort of groups. One thing I really liked was something I haven?t seen since Doom. When enemies accidentally hit one another, they attack each other until one of them is dead, or you interrupt them.

I do want to point out however, that as good as the monsters are, the band members with all the pieces collected look scarier to me.

There is almost always a monster coming at you from somewhere until you clear out a level. In other words, there are very few times to study and enjoy the atmosphere, or solve a puzzle based upon the map instead of just multiple creatures. This may be why the maps don?t look very interesting, or are laid out very cleverly.

This is also one of the game?s weaknesses. The game feels redundant fairly quickly because there never is that much different happening as you play. Just lots of monster corpses. Seeing each new monster is the high point of the game.

The game?s interface seems at first very similar to other games, but actually has one major difference. This interface shows health bars for several enemies you are facing at any time. This is kind of like Diablo 2, except the health bar isn?t over the enemies, but instead on the right side of the screen. I couldn?t always tell which enemy was almost dead versus barely wounded. I don?t know if they could have given us the bar on or over the enemies, but it would have been nice to be able to tell their condition from a visual change in the enemy.

I haven?t been able to play this multiplayer, but I doubt the weapons would work well against human opponents. The weapons really seem to be aimed at handling swarms of creatures rather than pinpointing individuals. There is only basic multiplayer deathmatch. There aren?t any special mods like capture the flag or assault.

There are some nice touches throughout the game. I especially liked the flyby before each stage. It is a nice touch, but doesn?t really help you anymore than the Half-life tram ride did in the beginning of that game. And the Gene Simmons (The Demon) levels were clearly my favorite. However, I reluctantly cannot approve buying the game today simply because there is better out there. But this could fill your time for a while.

As an added bonus, type in ?Chasecam? at the console to get chase cameras that rotate between five different angles.