Interface and Sound

I wanna fly away

Sanity has a very simple and user-friendly control system. If you've ever played Nox, you'll be completely at home with Sanity. Right click and hold in a direction to move. The further away your cursor is from Cain, the faster he moves. The typical number keys (1-0) select your Talents (psionic skills) which you fire with your left mouse button. You can also use your gun, talk, show your badge or ET call home (phone). Each of these is activated by the first letter of the word - g, t, b, and p.

Oooh a hotty. They sell games, or so execs think

Chopped up

Combat involves nothing more than avoiding other's attacks while hitting them with your own. You have to compensate for the time it takes to fire your Talent as well as the time it needs to get across the screen. It's all very simple.

The front-end interface, as well as the popup menus in the game are excellent. They do their job and that's it - nothing flashy. Sure they look good, but they're intuitive and easily navigated. When you want to change your selected Talents while in the game, all it requires is a few clicks. It pauses conveniently for you while you click to select a talent and click again to drop it in one of your 1-0 slots. They all have a small thumbnail picture and their sanity cost (think: mana) listed in the menu. If you want more information, just right-click the thumbnail and the Talent's "card" will pop up with a full description.

Bring it on!

Boom-shaka-laka!

All in all, Sanity is a very easy to learn game that plays very intuitively. It speaks of a lot of thought and good design on the part of the developers.

Put on ICE

The sounds, music and speech in Sanity are awesome. The voice of Cain, the lead character, is provided by ICE T - and I think everyone can appreciate what that means. Music is varied and different from scene to scene. The action sequences in the third part have the best big-bass beat I've heard in a game.

What, you mean a barbecue?

Slip 'n slide

Speech ranges from very good to excellent, though some of the stock cardboard characters get the voice-overs you'd expect for minor roles. Repeat characters or the major ones are given good actors, almost on par with those used for Blizzard movies or Interplay's Fallout games.

Sound effects are crisp and clear - high quality all the way. Fox didn't just dig up some "Stock Sounds Volume 19" CD and start randomly putting them in. A lot of effort was put in to give them variety and to keep them appropriate to the visual effect being used.