Rez

The game is not particularly easy, the levels themselves are but the bosses are quite tricky even with the Overdrive bombs.

As has been mentioned before you have 8 lock-on lasers and a number of Overdrive bombs which last about 5 seconds and will destroy all targets that appear on screen during this time (very much like Panzer Dragoon - an old game on the Saturn). Save them for the bosses or if you're going for that 100% shot down percentage during a tricky bit.

The whole game reminds me of Tron, the style and graphics ooze class, they might be very minimalist with barely shaded in vector graphics for the most part (hence the reference to Tron) but they ooze class. Your character and the entire level all throb and vibrate to the beat of the music track playing and you can add your own melody by locking onto enemies and destroying them.

The character you control in the game is a projection of a hacker trying to find an AI program called Eden that shut itself down when it became self-aware, this character developes as the game progresses through picking up bonus items dropped by shot enemies. Blue items to evolve your character, red to get more Overdrive bombs.

You character can take 6 forms, the lowest (level zero) being a throbbing disco ball, I've never seen level five as the highest I got was level four which is a bloke sitting inside a globe, which throbs. Basically the higher your characters level the more hits it can take before it's game over.

No continues in this game!

I'd recommend level 2 as this character strikes a pose before every level. :)

The music is excellent, sort of mellow-ish trance for the most part and excellent pumping beats when the situation calls for them.

This game is class, no doubts about it. You won't be disappointed if you buy it.

The music is some of the best on any video game, but unlike most music it isnt merely an audio track being played back, its dynamically changed as you play, the template for the music is set, but the beat noticably changes when you replay levels and do better/worse, or jus play around shooting the enemies in different ways/quantities.

Anyone who played the Panzer Dragoon games will be well used to the control system. Basically it is just a case of holding the 'A' button and moving the target over an enemy to lock-on, then releasing the button to launch a missile. You can have up to 8 simultaneous lock-on's, this may sound simplistic but you will appreciate the simplicity of it when trying to shoot the hordes of enemies and trying to get a 100% shoot down ratio for the level.

The graphics on this game are fantastic, it is constructed of wire frame, flat shaded polygons and cel-shaded polygons all in vibrant neon colours, if none of that made sense to you basically its Tron on a major dose of some mind warping drug, the entire level pulses with the beat of the music, the music is controlled by the game and as such all are interlinked and just draw you into the game.

If you have difficulty getting hold of this game for DC, firstly try sega-europe's official game store, they are the best source, if not then get the PS2 version, there's no difference in the versions, though im told the PS2 version looks slightly rougher on some occasions due to lack of hardware anti-aliasing (shame on you sony).

This is an awesome game and the DC version is likely to become something of a collectors piece due to Sega not printing that many copies for the UK (and no release at all in US, meaning you can sell this title for ALOT of cash on US auction sites)