James Camerons Dark Angel: The Video Game Review for Playstation 2 (PS2) and XBox

The pathetic attempt to create a Dark Angel video game ended in unparalleled disaster. This game made a mockery of the once popular television series, basically rubbing the fans faces in the dirt. If you can't do it right then don't do it at all. This was one of the least imaginative games that I have ever seen and truth be told I could have more fun playing an old odyssey game than this crap. The Dark Angel series may have been canceled and public interest for anything Dark Angel may have been slim, but that is no excuse for this kind of debasement.

There is basically no story line going on here, Max attempts to rescue her siblings with the help of Logan Cale, blah, blah, blah. What else is new? The dialogue between the character Max played by Jessica Alba and the character Logan played by Michael Wheatherly sounded less like people than something robotic. I know they can do better than that so what's the problem here? There is no excuse for doing a half-ass job have some self-respect this is your career.

The graphics for the game were horrendous, the same cop cars and trash cans will show up in nearly every section. You can't tell one section from the next because they reuse all of the same graphics. The graffiti looks the same on each of the walls, the characters all look the same, but with different gear on. Max and Logan look similar to the actor and actress that played them, but Original Cindy doesn't even come close. The boss characters, Beetle, Gecko, Bear, and Stingray (how original) are the most pathetic things ever to appear in a video game.

The gameplay has a rigid feel to it, there is a set path to follow with no room for deviations. The character Max must find a way to get past each section by either using a keycard that she gets from killing a guard or setting something up to explode. If Max is detected by the guards a timer begins and you have only minutes to kill every bad guy you see before it is game over for you; this is the most difficult part of the game. Max has a few moves that they have given her, but they are the same moves that she uses throughout the entire game and they aren't even that good. Logan pipes in from time to time to let Max know what's going on around her, usually at the beginning of each section, but sometimes in the middle of a battle which throws you off.

The camera for Dark Angel gets caught in walls or you can't see down when you are on a second story to see if there are any bad guys down there, not that if they fixed it it would make much difference in how well received the game was. There was just not much fun in playing this game, it would have been a hit when the first Nintendo game came out, but video games have progressed so much farther since then. If you are a fan of the Dark Angel series your best bet is to buy the boxed set and the books; playing this will just let you know how far it fell when people stopped watching it.

Miranda Stites
HeroesOfGaming.com
"Saving Good People From Bad Games"
http://www.heroesofgaming.com/games/ps2/j/darkangel/darkangel_rev.htm