D2

Originally created to run on the 3DO's stillborn D2, Warp's art-house game D2 is finally seeing the light of day in August. The game has undergone extensive retooling over the years and become an odd combination of computer-generated cinemas and first-person shooting with Tomb Raider elements. Sega had to make a few changes for the U.S. version, like no giant tentacles spewing milky white liquid. It's surprising that the sequel to an FMV adventure looks like this.

Overview

Guns, monsters, backstabbing humans and a heroine named Laura. D-2 is the survival horror game that asks the question: "How can a woman in high heels and a skirt run around in a blizzard so effectively?"

All kidding aside, D-2 has plenty of action and gore with a couple of surprises thrown in for good measure; a survival horror game that will feel quite familiar to those who play the genre a lot. Some nice additions coupled with the same old predictability that has recently plagued all games of this type and theme. Read on, if you dare.

Gameplay, Controls, Interface

Did anyone play the original D? In that game, Laura survived a night in the hospital after her father went wacko and slaughtered patients and staff alike, ultimately discovering that her father was a vampire. Does this come into play in the latest installment? You decide. As the game starts, Laura awakens in a cabin a million miles from nowhere in the Canadian North. Having been in a huge plane wreck a week earlier (thanks to a meteor that clipped the wing) she was rescued by another woman named Kimberly and has been in and out of consciousness. Laura, who never utters a word thoughout the game, is taught a quick lesson on survival by Kimberly who shows her that hunting the game that roam the frozen tundra is an excellent way to heal herself, since food acts as a healing agent. And yes, monsters are everywhere. Laura is never really fazed by the events that unfold around her -- apparently that whole vampire/dad thing numbed her to any sort of real trauma. The game itself is done very well in some aspects and poorly in others. I thought the free-roaming countryside was done well with the hunting of animals for food and that the addition of a snowmobile was pretty cool. On the flipside, often when entering buildings or other places of interest, you are forced to walk along pre-made paths. Let me explain -- you're running through the snow with a third-person view, suddenly you're attacked by monsters and it switches to a first person view where you become stationary and use the analog controller to move the crosshairs around the screen.

The game warns you if monsters are coming from another direction by prompting you to press the appropriate button, effectively swinging Laura around to face the new threat. When the combat is over, you go back to a third person perspective and can essentially go anywhere you want, provided you stay outside. The moment you enter one of the cabins periodically located on the map, it goes back to a first person perspective. For example, when you walk into Grandpa's cabin, you see several items throughout the cabin. A box of shotgun shells, a radio, a health canister, and a bed litter the area -- all of these items are located on the right side of the room. You press right once and the center of the screen locks onto the radio. You then must press forward to see if you can do anything with the radio. Press right again and the center of the screen locks onto the health canister, but wait, I want those shotgun shells that are back on the left. Well toooo bad, you can't get them because the premade course that you walk in the cabin never lets you lock onto them. I was really bugged by this. For a game of this caliber on a next generation system, I expected better. And of course, Laura deals with the monsters by finding bigger and better weapons as she runs from point A to point Z and all points in between (getting the snowmobile sure helps).

Eventually the game plot slowly comes to light if you can just force yourself to keep playing. Find the little girl who was on the plane with you. Discover the secret of the research facility. Kill as many monsters as humanly possible. What's the deal with the old Indian shaman? And so on and so forth. Again, while parts of this game will feel like deja-vu and others might be original, they drag on.

Graphics & Audio

The graphics in D-2 are pretty decent. I enjoyed the snow whisking by believably and the fact that the changing position of the sun throughout the day affected shadows and such. Laura and all other human characters look good but I was pretty disappointed in the monsters -- they were goofy looking abominations that never seemed to invoke any fear.

Audio was also pretty good as far as snow crunching underfoot and the recoil from the hunting rifle, but again the monsters sounded silly. With all the out of work actors available, you would think one of them could make decent monster growls and grunts and get a job in the video game industry. The game was made by WARP and I can't help but think that even they knew they could have made a better game.

Bottom Line

I kind of beat this game up a bit, it's not all bad. Think of this as a B-movie video game -- one that probably should be rented before purchasing. Someone out there will really get into it while I found it difficult to play for long stretches. It has a Mature (M) rating for gore and sexual themes so don't play it with really young kids in the room. This game is better than Blue Stinger but not nearly as good as Code Veronica.

Originally designed and developed for 3DO's ill-fated M2 console, D2 has a long and storied history behind it. In development for over three years, D2 is the third, and supposedly final, Warp game that will feature their near-mascot Laura Parton.

Having appeared in the eponymous "D" (on 3DO, Saturn and PlayStation, and the neo-follow-up Enemy Zero, Laura makes her third appearance on a next-generation console in the long-awaited D2.

The game opens with a CG-rendered FMV (found on disc 4 of all places) that shows Laura traveling on a plane flying high over the Canadian mountains. Unfortunately, terrorists happen to be riding the friendly skies, and it's not long before gunfire interrupts the proceedings. As if that weren't enough, a mystic shaman and a meteorite also factor into the chaos and soon the plane (and Laura) find themselves plummeting to the snowy tundra down below. What ensues is a frozen struggle for Laura and the other few survivors to find their way out of this frigid wasteland.

Gameplay takes place via a number of styles, all seen in previous Warp games, but never all at once. Like the original D, you get to watch a lot of FMV, only this time it's rendered by the game-engine instead of being CG. Like Enemy Zero, action sequences are handled in a first-person perspective, although it's not free-roaming. Instead, you're fixed on the spot as you attempt to mow down the enemies that surround you. Lastly, and only in minute quantities, there will be moments of sheer blackness and silence, much like Warp's experimental Saturn/Dreamcast project Real Sound.

While this makes for an interesting hodgepodge of gaming styles, it remains to be seen if gamers will embrace it. A number of changes are being readied for the American release, such as toning down some elements that some might find racially offensive. There are also some moments certain gamers might find sexually offensive that will be altered to make the game more accessible to a wider range of gamers.

While no release date has been set in stone, it seems as if D2 has tentatively been pencilled in for an early spring release, possibly as soon as April. Check back for more details as the American version nears completion.

When we last left Laura, the heroine of D (3DO's top adventure game), she was languishing on the D2 system, waiting for her sequel to debut Now Warp has taken Laura to the Dreamcast--where she'll find a much happier home. Given that the game will move over a million polygons per second, Warp points out that even individual expressions will be noticeable. Indeed, most characters in this action/adventure/RPG hybrid will contain at least 5000 polygons. D2 should make more people sit up and notice the Dreamcast.