Krazy Ivan

Who's got complete control over a 70-ton mechanized warrior, loaded to the gills with all kinds of deadly weaponry? Why, Ivan does! AND HE'S CRAZY!!! This is a beautiful, fluid game that is just a bit too short, sadly. Give it a try!

The planet Earth is under an alien invasion by mechanoid life forms and expanding energy fields that are demolishing everything in their reach. These energy fields are situated in five widely populated areas of the world and are found in Russia, Japan, Middle East, USA, and Europe. Many people are being held captive on board the mechanoid life forms and need to be rescued. Only one deranged person is determined enough to vanquish the enemy and that person is Krazy Ivan!

Krazy Ivan is an entertaining game that will hold your attention. It has good replayability, a quick learning curve and mindless entertainment. The graphics are decent, the sound is great, and it has a true arcade feel to it. However, I was never truly immersed in the world of Krazy Ivan. While the computer AI sometimes made things challenging, the story and gameplay were simple -- almost too simple at times. Features that make other games memorable seemed to be missing in Ivan. An outside view of your 'bot, more weapons, and more story could have all improved the game, giving it a higher score than Gamezilla's rating of 79.

A revised mech sim for players seeking more action and less role-playing, Krazy Ivan supplies players with five levels with clear-cut mission objectives. Unlike many other mech sims that let you wander mindlessly, this title features between scene cinemas as well as in-mission info to keep you well informed about your mission objectives. Mech control is quick and battle is always fun with the handful of effective weapons that have little trouble ripping through the enemies.

And anyway, he found Krazy Ivan unbelievably sluggish in responding to command inputs: a 180-degree turn seemed to take an age, as did just about anything else. The graphics weren't a great help either, with severely restricted forward vision inducing 'fogged pop-up'. He was getting hammered due to no fault of his own, and was becoming dangerously frustrated. He knew that this game had been raved over by the PlayStation press, but found himself unable to understand why. What would have been a perfectly enjoyable blast 'em up was being hampered by lack of the two things it most needed: speedy response and a distant horizon.

As 3-D games go, this one's a little shallow in the gameplay department. While Krazy does sport the single best opening I have ever seen and some truly spectacular visual effects like a transparent FMV heads up display, in the end it's just a lot of running around shootin' stuff. Also, it's first-person play with only one available perspective. Hey, for a lot of people that's enough. And for those I recommend this graphically intense game.

Krazy Ivan ist genau die richtige Medizin, um einen überhöhten Adrenalinspiegel wieder auf sein Normalmaß zurechtzustutzen: rasante Action mit flüssiger 3D-Grafik, tollen Explosionseffekten, spannendem Soundtrack und teilweise durchaus "intelligenten" Gegnern. Allerdings dürfte Ivan kaum dazu motivieren, den Befreiungsschlag gegen die Aliens mehrmals durchzuspielen.

The scenario of Krazy Ivan is nothing but banal. Earth is threatened by an alien force and is being slowly destroyed by expanding force fields located in five different zones on the globe. As you take the role of Ivan Popovich, a Russian soldier known for his schizophrenia, hence explaining his nickname Krazy Ivan, you will be ordered to destruct the five Zonal Shields Generators, and at the same time save the humans imprisoned inside the robots that are guarding the zones. Even though the scenario is not what makes a good shoot-em up, Psygnosis has us used to richer stories than that, and in general to better games than Krazy Ivan.

Krazy Ivan has some problems, but it stands tall above it's Saturn counterpart, Ghen War. Only the most finicky gamers won't eventually enjoy Krazy Ivan's absorbing gameplay.

So, what we have here is a game that is somewhat fun to play, with passable graphics, an unoriginal story line, and some pretty good game play that lasts for a short, short period of time. But since the game is already relegated to the bargain bins, it may be worth the $10-$15 you'll pay for it. But if you're looking for the best, go Mechwarrior II, and let Krazy Ivan remain in the psych ward.

The game is incredibly well animated, and every stage is half blanketed in fog, which initially looks cool, but really only serves to hide the draw-in. And while the stages are set all over the world, they're all laid out relatively the same. The one-player mode is easily beat in just a few hours, but the two-player mode, which supports the link cable, can be very entertaining. In the end, Krazy Ivan is a good, solid game. It's just a little too short.

This giant battling 'mech game from Psygnosis has surprisingly brief gameplay and little depth.

Unfortunately, even if this game had drop-dead graphics and sound, it couldn't mask the fact that it is way too easy, shallow, and short. Although Psygnosis' fast-paced shooter might offer PC gamers a taste of console arcade action, the only thing really big about this game is the size of Krazy Ivan's robot.

Krazy Ivan stands uneasily at the edge of the robotic exoskeleton genre. Its complement of giant metal warriors suggests it should be judged alongside the likes of Mechwarrior 2 and Shattered Steel, but in fact it's a rather shallow shoot-'em-up that merely looks like something more.

Dieser Ivan treibt mich beinahe in den Wahnsinn: Das viele Grün in der Grafik ist ja zu verschmerzen, aber spielerisch wäre etwas mehr Abwechslung schon wünschenswert gewesen.