Review: Evil Prophecy

Evil Prophecy

Platform:PS2
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Players: 1

While I believe there is a story to this game—something about an end of the world prophecy—it seems all the game creators were interested in was how many times they could get players to fight the same damn monster from one level to the next. And if it weren’t for this major downfall, this mindless hack and slash game would actually be a blast to play.

The best part is that you play as a team of four, each with a different special elemental ability. For example, the scientist uses lightning, the Indian uses the wind, the pirate uses fire, and the girl uses…well, guns. By pressing the D pad you can cycle through your team in quick succession. (Sadly, it’s only single player; no co-op). The team as a whole shares an energy meter, so one character’s Special move depletes every one else’s, which makes for some skillful gameplay. The other unique, albeit kind of useless, innovation is the need to “get along” with each other. Each character has sort of friendship HP system that can be raised by performing tag team combos. The more friendly you are, the stronger your attacks. In true RPG fashion, all members can level up by defeating more monsters.

Which brings me back to my opening paragraph. The game throws so many monsters at you, it’s takes forever to get through a level. Sometimes you’re required to backtrack to find items, again slashing through endless foes. And not different foes mind you, the same foe every time, at least until you defeat that particular enemy’s boss. So what you get is two hours of fighting the Wolfman over and over and over. Creature design is pretty cool, as you’d expect from a McFarlane endorsed game, but repetitiveness and clunky camera angles are too much to bear.

Overall, this is for hardcore McFarlane fans only. Barely.

Fuego