Reservoir Dogs

My Reaction To the existence of a Reservoir Dogs game was suspicious excitement Unlike The Godfather: The Game, where the feeling was baffled contempt. This makes sense: Coppola's films feel more valuable, coming before George Lucas had made twelvety billion dollars from the sales of plastic Stormtroopers. Although I have more love for Tarantino's films than any Godfather film, they don't feel precious. They consume and regurgitate pop references, so they're more valid fodder for pop culture's greedy sisters in the games industry. Making a videogame of Reservoir Dogs might still be cynical, but it's not filling a Supersoaker with dog's arse and letting rip on the Mona Lisa.

Reservoir Dogs has a promising concept - you play through the action alluded to in the movie. At my most optimistic and naive, I can conclude the developers must love the movie themselves. So now. I'm doubly excited. They wanted to see Mr Blue's miraculous escape from the diamond store, they wanted to be Mr Blonde riding around with a cop in his trunk (pardon my American). And, as much as it's possible for anyone to want to be Steve Buscemi, they wanted to take part in Mr Pink's exploits with his bag full of whatever.

You've probably been goaded into a dirty froth by now, but what if I told you the film soundtrack was intact? That you'll be driving around to Little Green Bag. Stuck In The Middle With You and the 'Oo-Ga-Cha-Ka' song? If you were a little doggy, then I'm doing the equivalent of holding a lead above your head and saying, "You wanna walk? Wanna yes go walk now?" for 300 words.

The Difficult Brown

Now imagine, now that I've got you all excited and ready for that thrilling walk, that I just sit back down and watch Songs Of Praise. That look of lost confusion and wasted energy is exactly what you'll feel playing through Reservoir Dogs.

The 15 short missions are of two types; driving and crowd control. Both are fun enough, but both are far too shallow. Over the driving levels, there's a slight tweak each time, but in essence - get where you're going, fast Fun, but short And necessarily repetitive, considering you're all going to the same place.

The real disappointment lies in the crowd-control levels. Your professionalism is based on your bodycount. Of course, you'll have to rough people up, but killing everyone is the mark of a psychopath, not a pro. So you use hostages and controlled violence instead. The problem is. the training level really does sum up the entire game; shout at civilians, take a hostage, punch the hostage. This very quickly loses its novelty when you realise that if you want to reach Consummate Pro rank, it's the only three things you can do. As for the bonus item, blueprints - just look for a building you don't have to go into. There'll be a blueprint in there, sure as shit.

Nice Slice

Adrenalin, which accrues as you play, adds a cinematic flair to goings-on. The psychopaths among you will use the - wait for it this is even gayer than squabbling over who's Mr Pink - 'Bullet Festival' to win a few seconds to shoot everything in slo-mo. Professionals can use a signature move to torture their hostage, causing everyone in the area to drop their guns in disgust This answers the question you were all silently asking - 'how will they work slicing an ear off into this game?'

Beyond finding out what each character's move is, the game's easy enough for you not to need these tricks, and besides - they do a CG rendition of Mr Blonde's ear-slicing scene between levels anyway. Speaking of which, I Volatile would have done well to leave these l scenes alone or not use them. Watching a f dead-eyed computer simulation of Michael Madsen mutilating a cop is about as engaging as wireframe tits are erotic.

I It's a console port, but the PC shines an unflattering light on its faults. It doesn't look any better, you'd be better off with a gamepad to avoid wild mouse flails. Just because this game isn't as cynical as The Godfather's art-slashing antics, doesn't mean ft's any good - it's with great regret I have to say it's not.

The iconic image of Reservoir Dogs tough guys in black suits, skinny ties, and dark sunglasses represents a challenge for a videogame adaptation. In the legendary indie flick, each of the sharply dressed jewel thieves (with the colorful code names of Mr. White, Mr. Blonde, Mr Pink, Mr. Orange, Mr. Blue, and Mr Brown) has his own distinct personality. But when you turn a charismatic, real actor (say, Steve Buscemi) into a polygonal dummy, any personality not conveyed by clothing tends to get lost in translation. The challenge: How do you make a Reservoir Dogs game that doesn't just feel like a bunch of nobodies in black suits?

Each character's dialogue is based heavily on their personality, says Project Manager Dave Manuel, and they have their own method of torturing a victim. Wait can we roll that back? Each character has his own special torture move? personally like to grab a groveling hostage and slice an ear off, which makes a cops facing me drop their weapons in the hope that I won't go any further, says) Manuel. That might help explain why Reservoir Dogs has already been banned Australia, even though, according to Manuel, you can play through the entire g without killing a single person. Australia has a rough-and-tumble tough guy imad but considering their ninny censoring (the country also banned the Grand Theft Ai series), are they really a bunch of pussies? You know, they almost chose "Walty Matilda' as their national anthem, says Manuel. You tell me..."

Doing video game adaptations of film is tricky business. Most of the time you end up with something mediocre and occasionally you get something downright offensive to both fans of the original material and gamers alike. Reservoir Dogs falls squarely in the latter category.

Reservoir Dogs closely follows the events of Tarentino's classic crime drama. Given that the original film was based much more on tense character situations then shoot outs, this iteration of the story takes some liberties by incorporating scenes that were alluded to in the movie but never actually shown. This sounds like a good idea in theory but unfortunately, due to some terrible execution you'll find yourself glad that the film left these scenes to your imagination.

These new scenes usually involve one of the dogs either blasting his way to freedom through the game's decidedly generic levels or fleeing from the cops via car. Besides the fact that neither of these things really mesh well with the theme and feel of the movie, they're just not much fun to play. Driving offers more frustration then thrills due to the fact the controls are so loose that you feel like you're trying to steer a boat. On foot things aren't much better. The gunplay is imprecise and to survive you'll find yourself relying heavily on the game's contrived hostage system. Taking a hostage prevents your foes from shooting at you, but slows your pace down to a crawl. Issuing threats or roughing up the hostage will cause the cops to actually lay down their weapons. This gets particularly silly when you use a signature move, such as getting Mr. Blonde to slice off one of the hostages ears which causes everyone to drop their weapons. Instead of being simply methodical, creeping from hostage to hostage through each level is both repetitive and boring.

Reservoir Dogs doesn't look entirely horrible, its cutscenes effectively recreate some of the memorable sequences from the movie. Outside of these cutscenes however, character models are lack detail and animate poorly. Reservoir Dog's one redeeming quality of is its audio, and although only Michael Madsen reprises his role from the film, the stand ins do a good job representing their characters. Similarly the soundtrack is great with tracks like Stealers Wheel's 'Stuck in the Middle With You'? feature prominently.

As if Reservoir Dogs needed one last nail in the coffin, it's ludicrously short. Beating this game takes a mere handful of hours depending on how long you can tolerate it in one sitting. If you enjoyed the movie, give this game a wide berth.