Skip to content
Rez reviews
Interplay
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1
- System Requirements (recommended) :
- Windows 95/98
- Pentium II 233 Mhz (PII 300 Mhz)
- 64Mb RAM
- 4-speed CD-ROM Drive (8-speed)
- 600Mb HD space
- DirectX 7.0 (included on CD)
- 8Mb DirectX 7.0 compatible 3D accelerator card (16Mb)
3 long years ago we got first looks at some new games – Force Commander, Daikatana, Messiah… Names that would become burnt into our minds as definitions of the word “slipped”. Now all three are appearing… and time is telling – Commander is terrible. Daikatana isn’t quite here, but previews and first impressions ain’t wonderful.
Messiah is also here now. Is it another Force Commander?
Well. It’s weird. The story is weird, everything has that edge, that dark edge that only Shiny and bigtalllong Dave Perry can manage.
It’s also very very good. Relieved? I was, I can tell you.
Check out the story. You are Bob. 2 foot high, blond hair, nappy and, umm, wings. Yep, you are a Cherub.
Your mission is simple: The Fathers (rulers of the city you find yourself in) have built a portal and tricked Satan into a deal that will help them finally rule Heaven and Hell. God isn’t too happy about this so commands Bob to get down there and find out what is going on.
Unfortunately Bob, as discussed, is short and fairly powerless. Against a gun he’s deadmeat. He can fly a little, but that’s it. Or is it? No. Bob can possess any “organic creature”. And this is the crux of the game.
Within 2 hours of playing Messiah, you will have changed bodies from a cop to a scientist to a cop to a radiation worker to a commander. Maybe more, maybe less, but it is so important to the game – in other games you need to find keys etc. In Messiah certain doors and locations are locked to certain people. You cannot, for instance, enter a radiation zone without a suit, and only radiation workers have those.
This way of playing demands a lot of attention and a lot of care. If you depossess, Bob leaps out the back of the character leaving them stunned. If there are *any* police around, they’ll shoot you on site – jumping into someone else won’t save you. So it’s a case of depossessing in a safe place, crawling up on someone else, getting them, doing the required action, finding the next character and so on.
It is, in fact, quite a stealthy game, almost Metal Gear Solid in style – some of the moves (particularly the unarmed combat) look like they have been ripped right from MGS! If you want FPS action, wait for Soldier of Fortune – playing in that way will get you very dead, very quickly.
Gameplay is also like MGS in a different way – both games are very based around the location idea – you have to move from room to room, each room having an objective – unlike, say, Quake 2, where you run in a line killing everything and flicking the occasional switch.
Thing is, the game is a lot of fun. It’s quite hard, so when you finally do something you’ll have quite a sense of satisfaction. I never expected it to take me hours of play to escape the first 6 or 7 locations, but it did. You make a lot of mistakes, and they can get very annoying, but you start to get the hang and start to really get into it.
Much must be made of the graphics, supporting D3D and Glide they really are something to behold. The locations live up to Unreal Tournament – but the characters and their animation… realistic isn’t the word. Wow. The motion capture is simply astounding and it’s great to stand still, just watching. Bored guards wipe their nose and scratch their ass. Scientists get fed up and get others to cover them while they have a break. Guards salute their boss. It has to be seen.
In fact, possibly, Bob is the only problem – if only because he doesn’t “fit in” in the world, he looks a little strange. But that’s correct as well. He is a cherub, after all.
Sound as well. Conversations, sound effects, sniffing, coughing, screaming, choking – nothing has been missed out and it shows. Music is slightly more hit and miss. It’s not constant, restricted to the moments of battle – and it’s by Fear Factory. If you don’t know FF, you probably won’t like them. The name says it all. But it fits when being blown away by three fat cops.
If you have any patience and enjoy a slightly dark and twisted game, Messiah will give you hours of fun. I’d also urge you to check out www.messiah.com and look at the excellent Character pictures!
So we waited 3 years for the Messiah to arrive. And now he has.
And we see it is good.
Check out Wookie’s World. It’s more than just a planet!
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.