The foot soldier - the cornerstone of any military. You may have tanks and helicopters, but we've got 50,000 men ready to go at any given time and the battle of attrition has won more fights than history could possibly know about. But that's what you are, a foot soldier in the ruling body when you found it. "It" being an ancient artifact that has now melded with you and allowed you to see the things that were always there but you never really saw. Now you have abandoned your post in the military and are a hunted fugitive. Your only recourse is to leave the city and venture outside of it's protective walls in order to get the answers that are literally calling to your soul.

Well, we all have probably played a post-apocalyptic game sometime during our travels. It's a fairly popular medium in which to plant an RPG or adventure game or a hybrid RPG-adventure (like this one). The Fallout series comes to mind as does Pariah, but there is something to be said about how Etrom does it's business. From an observer's standpoint, I really thought the lay of the land looked very nice even though I wasn't really looking at nice things. The Mega city (Judge Dredd anyone?) in which you start out at does a good job of making you feel you live in a sterile and clean environment. Never mind that you are going to be shot at numerous times by some soldiers, but the game takes a real visually dramatic turn as you escape into the sewers and eventually out into the wastelands. 

 
Glamour Shots... Your choice for a more beautiful you.

And this is where I think the game has legs, it really has a well designed and developed look to it. From underground caves to filthy hellholes to the really evil look of corporate sterilization. The game has fantastic designs for locations and makes you feel as if you are knee deep in the soup. Plus with a game that mixes technology, magic, religion and government gone bad the designers were given free reign on what kinds of monsters and other opponents to come up with. From the calculated attacks of the military death machine to evil priests who wield black magic back over to robots and mechs and dragon men. The game throws baddies at you that quite frankly you sometimes don't see coming. And that is a plus in my book. Anytime a new game comes up with original and diverse creatures and badguys to fight, I appreciate it.

Which makes it that much worse when you surround such a promising title with below par controls. At the beginning of the game, the tutorial basically tells you that you can play the game for the most part just using the mouse, and that is fairly accurate. The problems begin with this though. This is a third-person adventure viewed from a dynamic 3/4 camera angle that can be rotated around using the mouse. If you want to move somewhere, you put the cursor on a place in the distance and left click. Your character will then walk to that area. If a baddie pops up and you need to kill him/her/it, you put the cursor on them and left click. Your guy will then walk over and attack. The more times you click on them, the more times he will attack. The whole thing felt very cheap considering that you need to have your other hand on the keyboard ready to use the hot keys for movement type (slow, normal, fast) or inventory or health or whatever. I would have much rather had been able to use the arrow keys to move around and had the mouse rotate the camera and hit the icons on the HUD located at the bottom of the screen (you can do that anyway). Plus, with the way it is set up now, you will find yourself looking at walls anytime you go into the cramped areas that are all through the game. There is nothing worse then walking into one of these areas and getting the view caught up in a wall just as some bad guy is taking shots at you.  Where you can't do anything until you can see what's happening and in some cases that still means not being able to get a bead on the bad guy because the only view you have, is of your character looking towards you (the gamer) and having to have him walk towards you (the gamer) in order to get to where you can actually see the bad guy. Does that sound confusing to you? Because that's exactly how you feel when this scenario happens.

 
Now is not the time to get cheap and not spring for hand rails.

If that's not enough, the inventory system doesn't do you many favors either. It seems that even though you are a tough as nails military type who is clearly built like your average Mr. Universe contestant, you can only carry so many items (i.e., not that much). These items are placed in your inventory with an emphasis on essentials. You can carry your armor, a couple of weapons, the standard fare with health and whatnot, but it seems like you are really gypped when it comes to all the crap I felt I was leaving behind. Of course this could be offset by the amount of information that is contained in your PDA. This is the type of game that those who are big on reading will really get a kick out of.  I swear, they placed enough content in this title that you will have read a full-sized novel by the time it is all over. Of course, the passages that you find are their own rewards, seems the government likes to keep the population in the dark regarding certain information. And as you adventure these bits of information (think information is power) will really breathe life into not only the world in which you find yourself, but the better-than-average plot that you have become mixed up in.

You will use both ranged and melee weapons in this title and thank goodness for it. As you adventure, like any good game, new powers and abilities will become accessible, most notable the ones that are gifted to you by the artifact you found during the beginning intro sequence. Most notably the ability to turn into a hulking, destruction-dealing demon. This is done by merely pressing the spacebar but at a sacrifice to your characters statistics. As if roiding out into a 700-pound demon would really take a toll on someone, sheesh.

Gameplay: 5.9
Wow, really unfriendly controls that you do eventually get used to, but won't you don't get used to is the dynamic camera that gets caught up in the environment. Where's the control pad?

Graphics: 8.8
Really nice looking lighting effects, vapor trails and other ethereal visuals all come across nicely. The bad guys and monsters get the job done as well and the in-game information is all displayed easily and efficiently. 

Sound: 7.9
The narration is better then average and I like how the in-game sound effects came out of my speakers. 

Difficulty: Hard
Yeah, you will die many times in this one, some because of the control issues, other times because the baddies are just that bad.

Concept: 8.5
This is a game that is really made for those who like a lot of thought in their sci-fi. There is a ton of reading involved and it all helps to make the game that much more in-depth. The world has been lovingly given a ton of back story and there is more then one veiled conspiracy to uncover.

Overall: 7.5
I can forgive the horrible controls because so much attention was given to the story, the graphics and even the gaming experience. Still, if this title was ported over to a console it could be a mega hit since the controls would be "forced" into being better (I would hope).  This is a thinking person's adventure who really feels like getting enveloped into a title.