3DO

Immercenary

Immercenary is a winner on all levels. The game is tough; make no mistakes about it. The pace is fast, the enemies are unrelenting and the gameplay is intense. Definitely worth checking out.

It's not the longest or most difficult game you'll play, but when a game goes for something new, rather than rehashing old themes, it's worth noticing. Immercenary is a virtual breath of air.

The game is also kind of repetitive. There's an area in the center of the city called the DOAsys where you can go to heal and save the game, so you wind up jacking in to Perfect, blasting everyone you see, then running for the safe zone and starting all over. It's intense and has an original look and structure that pops it up a few points, but with a little more thought, it could have been a lot more than the shoot-em-up it is.

Si vous n'attachez que peu d'importance à l'esthétique, vous tomberez rapidement sous le charme. Les autres devront persévérer.

With that early flood of FPSs after "Doom," this was probably one of the first to really try something wildly different. It has some great ideas, maybe even too many. This game could've been great with just a few of the pieces, but together there wasn't enough attention paid to it all. Originality is appreciated, just not in this form.

Immercenary does feature some nifty visual effects and shapely babes, but it's mostly a slow, plodding ordeal. You're agility meter drains quickly as you run, so you'll constantly have to "rest". Resting is just like it sounds - you sit there and watch your meter recharge slowly (what genius came up with this idea?). Once you start moving, the peculiar control scheme keeps you moving forward like car, and you need to press both shoulder buttons to stop (weird!). Dying returns you to the lab, where the pissed-off scientists look at you like you've just interrupted their coffee break. The game never seems to end, even when you do poorly. Once I died on purpose, only to have a scientist at the lab say "Definite improvement in target kill ratio - that's good!", before sending my sorry ass back into this virtual hell. Immercenary tries to be a thinking man's Doom, but the payoff isn't nearly worth the investment.