Restricted Area

According to Restricted Area, catastrophic destruction of the environment and mass starvation is due in about 70 years, so we'd best crack on then - the game is a Diablo clone in a crappy German Fallout-style cyberpunk world.

You begin by choosing one of four characters, each possessing unique skills and special abilities, including a sassy hacker called Jessica Parker and a shadowy ex-military commander with the look of JC Denton from Deus Ex called Johnson.

As with all role-playing games, Restricted Area's bread and butter is in the levelling-up of character's skills and weapons, but you can also enhance your Johnson (sorry) by using bio-mod implants, such as bionic arms, cyber hearts and electronic eyes. However, you never get to see the appearance of your character change - it would've been nice to see them strutting along on a pair of buzzing, robotic Bb legs.

From a central inner city hub, you interact with various NPCs to buy medical supplies, ammo and so on. It's also here that you receive missions from a dodgy businessman called Mr Jones, which involve flying to a new location, collecting pick-ups and valuable objects and killing dozens of mutants and monsters.

Unfortunately, it's here that Restricted Area falls down - and that's nothing to do with malfunctioning limbs. The combat quickly becomes repetitive, simply involving mouse-clicking onscreen to shoot at the blindingly stupid enemies blundering towards you, retreating if they get too close, then shooting again, maybe using a barrel of explosives'fbr a bit of a change. A decade ago, Restricted Area might have been cutting edge - but not now.

Riding the coattails of other more popular A? view RPGs, Restricted Area places you squarely in the boots of one of four mercenaries who are brave enough to enter the Restricted Areas of society in order to gain fortune and power. Since an apocalypse has rendered these areas nearly inaccessible, you will do battle with mutants, robots and other evil creatures that are hell bent on killing you.

Now it's no real surprise that this game is being compared to Diablo, since it darn near plays like it. Where I have a problem is the game states it's an action/RPG, well, sure there is action, but the crucial RPG ingredients are sorely lacking. No real storyline for any of the four characters, the plot it very, very thin and un-engaging and the whole thing feels really dated. Now I like 'nuclear eradicated future'? games as much as the next guy, but Restricted Area's visuals are pretty disappointing. There are all sorts of burnt out locations and destroyed buildings and stuff, but there simply is nothing that jumps out at you. Lighting effects are drab, textured locations are almost too soft looking and not fully interactive. I liked the very bloody and violent deaths that are prevalent, but that was the only highlight for me in regards to the game's graphics. And only because it resulted in chuckles more then anything. Now, given the game's low requirements for play, you could argue that Whiptail, wanted to get to the largest gaming market as possible, but, there literally is nothing new here, we've all seen it before, and that in itself is disappointing.

Multiplayer capability only allows for co-op gameplay. Since the game was released in Europe last year, there are some others out there playing online, I just hope you speak German.

What else is disappointing is the character upgrades. As you play along, you can augment your character with new limbs and beefier weapons. But oddly enough the little character model never changes. I don't know if it was an oversight, but I found that to be kind of strange.

Restricted area gives more then one nod to the classic RPG Fallout and even the less classic game Arcanum, but the serious lack of deep storytelling places this title on the 'B'? list. It will scratch the itch of only a select few gamers, but chances are it will be in the $19.99 bin inside of two months.