Review By

Gene Park 2.5 RATING

Galerians: Ash starts out intriguing enough, questioning the role of gods and their creations. In the year 2528, humans create a sentient supercomputer named Dorothy. Its creator tells the computer of the existence of God, and Dorothy begins to wonder about her self worth. It then creates its own super humanoids, children with telepathic powers call Galerians, and wages war on humankind.

If a person's creation is bound by the laws of nature to obey its creator, like Ash suggests in its plot, then all videogames would be critically-acclaimed works of art. But the reality remains that games are created by humans that are prone to error, just like the creators of Dorothy were. Ash's many flaws reveal to me that the creators had a very difficult time knowing what they wanted. It's almost as if the developers played The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time for 15 minutes, read the back of the Akira DVD, flip through an H.R. Giger art book while on the john, forgot everything they learned and then got to making this game.

You need to take drugs to play this game, at least within its context. Vials of colored substances fuel Rion's powers. Combat works similarly to the Z-targeting system pioneered by Ocarina; while holding one shoulder button to focus on an enemy, you're able to strafe and circle around it and attack it. Ash gets the shoulder button thing right. Unfortunately, all you can do by means of dodging is a roll to the side that looks more like a pounce for some loose change than anything else. And as for defenses, you can use a 'psionic shield', but you won't be able to move while using it. It's almost as if Rion is using too much energy on his shield to even walk a couple of steps to the side. Each psychic attack is just as cumbersome to execute. All you can do to attack is hold the button down to power it up before unleashing it onto an enemy or a group of enemies. But the same principle with the shield applies here. Powering up renders Rion immobile until you unleash your attack.

And there's really nothing else as exciting as the battles, which isn't saying much. The levels are huge chunks of nothingness, peppered with battles and inane puzzles that are nonsensical even in the context of the game's wacky premise. Too often you'd be stuck wondering what to do next, until you find another group of enemies that you'll disperse rather clumsily, then go find the other batch of enemies. There's a whole lot of running around and examining, and the environments get pretty tedious looking after awhile.

The stygian Giger-inspired locales wear on you after a long while, especially with the ridiculous camera system in place. There's no manual control of the camera, except using the right analog stick as a first-person look feature. However, even that is implemented poorly. Moving the stick will swing the camera around wildly and make the player unsure of where exactly his character is facing. Instead of facing the direction the third-person camera is pointing to, the game will switch to wherever the character is facing. And for anyone who's played a third-person videogame, that's not always forward. The battle cameras sometimes left my character off-screen. Sometimes it'd only be Rion on-screen. Sometimes I'd use the right analog stick to reorient myself, only to completely destroy what little sense of direction I had left.

If there's anything good to be said about the game, it might be the plot. However since the game picks up almost immediately after the first game, it's difficult to comprehend the characterizations, motives and theme of the game. The graphics move at a crisp 60 frames per second consistently and the cutscenes look nice, even though the lip-syncing and voice acting are both way off.

There's definitely something to be said about a game that compels one to drink before playing. But that's exactly what Galerians: Ash did for me. I tried playing sober for the first few times, but I just couldn't get into it. It took a bottle of wine and a few shots of Southern Comfort to inspire me to play long enough to come to the conclusion I've come to with this game: Galerians: Ash feels like one bad hangover.

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