C3R14L.K1L4
Reviews
Carnivores: Ice Age (Windows)
Only if you love hunting (and all the related activities), else keep away from it.
The Good
Two good things in this game:
-
The fact you have to worry about wind, camouflage, hiding and trying to carefully hunt down the animals. It's a pure hunting game!
-
The sound helps you to locate your preys, if you are making too much noise, the wind (and it's direction), getting nearer the coast, etc. It's localization is in 3D. However, some of the weapons have realistic sounds, others not (for instance, the bow sounds more like an air gun, but OK, it's a futuristic bow...) The music is acceptable, but non existent in the game itself, as you'll need your ears for hunting.
The Bad
OK, lots of bad things in this game: -
Get ready for running around the whole scenery hunting down an animal. Unless you try to do it quietly and patiently (I couldn't...), this will be the case with creatures that are afraid of you. For the other case, if it is a ferocious animal, the moment it "feels" you, get ready.. You'll be dead, unless you have a good weapon.
-
The creature's AI is very limited. They walk in circles and have simple reactions to the environment. Seems like Doom's AI, they may even block if there isn't a direct path from where they are to their destination (for instance, you, if they're trying to attack you, or far from you, if they're fleeing). It's very sad to see a creature running away from the player, just to arrive to the sea and then walk in random circles in the coast. Very bad for a 2001's game. Another example are the flying birds, which have a strange "flight path", like a spline trajectory. Very unrealistic...
-
You begin with a small amount of money, which only allows you to have one weapon: a pistol or a bow, both of them are very weak. If you just want to hunt down the fastest possible, you'll have to use camouflage, the radar and more accessories, which makes the hunting rewards smaller. Consequently you'll have to hunt more just to win the required "money" for acquiring better weapons and accessing the other maps. Again, patience.. too much, in my opinion.
-
The graphics are acceptable, but seem somewhat old for a 2001's game. They are extremely polygonal and the engine has problems with distant geometry, i.e., the mountains appear/disappear block by block, suggesting the engine may use a voxel based rendering (or similar). Probably it is the choice the game designers made, to have "blocky" models and scenery but a huge map. However, it doesn't appear that way, because the player only sees a part of the map (the rest is hidden using fog, like in the game Turok), so, the graphics could be much better. However, the game can handle lots of small detail models (like grass), and each one of them is a 3D model.
The Bottom Line
I approached this game expecting a FPS for hunting virtual animals, but be warned: forget the "FPS". It's a hunting game, played in first person. The only shooting is the one done by you while trying to hit the creatures, who's behavior is very unrealistic... This patiently "hunting" thing doesn't appeal to me much, and very likely to most people out there.
By C3R14L.K1L4 on October 5th, 2010
V2000 (Windows)
Only for the fanatics of the genre.
The Good
The graphics are very colorful and detailed (for 1998), the sound is acceptable as well as the game play. All worlds have a nice map which shows the position of every enemy, creature hive and human civilian.
The Bad
The controls are almost a nightmare (specially the aiming ones). Combined with the camera (which never changes direction) and the huge ship's inertia, it's extremely difficult to aim and precisely position the ship. Also, the enemy creatures have an deathly accurate aiming precision, so their shots almost arrive at their target (the player)!
Finally, the game can only be saved at the end of a map, which doesn't help much on this game... oh well, could be worse!
The Bottom Line
The game is of arcade type, so the people who like games with lots of enemies, constant shooting and extreme difficulty will find themselves at home.
By C3R14L.K1L4 on August 1st, 2009