The completely sick and twisted storyline may be enough to grab the
"goth" crowd, but the mainstream audience will just be disturbed by it all. The
game plays like a slow paced beat-em-up, only a few enemies sparingly tossed into the play
field. The large, infuriating boss characters burst onto the screen, usually in a
spectacular way, but beating them is nearly impossible thanks to the sputtering,
inconsistent frame rate.
For some reason, the Dreamcast constantly pauses to load EVERYTHING. Every few steps, the entire game stutters to load something, ruining any kind of pacing. It may even do it in the middle of a fight. Add this to an already rather weak framerate and you've got an unplayable mess.
Even stranger is that this is one of the worst
looking Dreamcast games ever produced. It's understood that the game is shrouded in
darkness for a reason, but the amount of pop-up is entirely unnecessary. The character
models have seemingly been lifted right from the PlayStation edition of the game, only now
with smoother textures. Animations are choppy (not because of the framerate either)
killing any chance of realism. The only positive is the ridiculous amount of blood spilled
with every hit.
The foreboding voice work here is great, which shows a little bit of effort on the part of the developers. The acting is much better than many other games and helps keep the mood everything else failed to do. The soundtrack by Rob Zombie is appropriate though you'll obviously like or dislike it based on your taste. Some of the ambient sounds are effective as well.
If you enjoy unplayable games or are some kind of whacked mental patient that can enjoy this storyline, you may find something here to like. There's not a game on the console that has ever looked this bad or has had to load this much. It's is an unplayable disaster that should have never been released. Amazingly, two other consoles were recipients of this junk. PS One and Nintendo 64 owners be forewarned.
