Andrew Fisher (697) on 11/18/2023 8:00 AM · Reply · Permalink · Report

I came across this game as an ex-rental at a local video store in late '01, so it hadn't had a long rental life, I guess it confused people being quite strange even by Shiny Entertainment's standards. On one hand it seems too silly to be a religious game, but some things are a little suspicious like the Bible references for each name in the credits. Are we supposed to look them up and find a joke? I personally couldn't be bothered. The game is fun, but there isn't much let up in the fighting and problem solving, it can be draining after a while, staring at a metal world. I couldn't quite drag myself to the finish line though I later realized I wasn't far off when I quit. I guess when you finally make it to the city and Club Kyd there's a bit of a feeling of having reached a safe zone so that you can relax a bit.

So the world is almost presented as a futuristic, Biblical Old Testament, Mankind has supposedly sunk to new depths of evil and "God" sends Bob the cherub to "clean up", it becomes clear that to progress you have to sacrifice a good few of these "assorted scum" whom I guess "God" in this mercy wants you to kill in order to save them from themselves. But while the world does seem like a cold, metallic, over-mechanized dystopia like say Mega City One in Judge Dredd, it's not filled with murder, rape and all else you'd expect from a people almost worthy of being wiped off the earth. Most of the violence is between the heavily armed police force and the separatist chots (apparently the same as "chud" i.e. cannibalistic humanoid underground dweller). Otherwise mostly you meet workers just going about their business until reaching the big city where you meet the night life, clubbers, dancers, bartenders, sex workers etc. This is where I think the game developers have gone for a traditional, Sodom and Gomorrah idea of sin, as though people enjoying themselves is the worst thing and most telling of bad humankind has become. I did like the idea that of religion being banned so that the clergy have become nightclub owners, interesting if THAT really happened. I said that Club Kyd kind of felt like a sanctuary after the constant fighting and tricky, dangerous, navigations, I guess it's supposed to be both a "den of vice" and a kind of church where mercy given to all these supposed bottom of the barrel sinners. "Satan" is just as ridiculous as "God" and grotesquely obese, reminding me of Baron Harkonnen from Dune. I think Shiny produced a weird, interesting, fun game worth playing through at least once.