Graphics/Sound

Inconsistencies

The graphics in Slave Zero are decent, but they're not all that they're cracked up to be. Weapon effects are fairly vanilla, as are the explosions and such. Level architecture is blocky and rather monochromatic. Also, the vaunted sense of scale you're supposed to notice in the game is inconsistent. On the one hand you do feel like a huge robot when you go climbing around freeways, stomping on cars and stepping on people as you battle it out with the Sovkhan's forces. But it is rather strange that none of the cars or people on the ground seem to panic when you come stomping around or when the bullets start flying. It's as if they're completely oblivious to the mayhem you're creating. Then on the other hand, the "sense of scale" is completely ruined when you stand next to some of the buildings and bridges that make up the interactive environment. Factories, and other buildings look like big dollhouses instead of real buildings when you stand next to them. The problem is most apparent at the end of Mission 5 when you're defending the Guardian base from the Sovkhan's forces. The base is hardly detailed at all and just seems like an oversized toy.

Spider mech

Kaboom!

What makes all these issues worse is that Slave Zero seems to demand quite a bit out of your computer. For the average visuals that you do get in the game, we expected a lot more performance out of our test machine. As it is, the game is really choppy at 1024x768. Even 800x600 suffers from more than the occasional hiccup, so we were disappointed to have to crank down to 640x480 in order to play at a smooth framerate throughout. As a note, graphics settings range from 320x240 on up to 1600x1200 (yeah right).

Those spiders can cling to walls

Rockets go flying

Bump it

One of the few highlights of Slave Zero's graphics is the incorporation of Environmental Bump Mapping. The bump mapping seems to affect the player's mech only (Slave Zero), and not the water or any of the other robots. The bump mapping does spiffy up the looks of your robot a lot with noticeably detailed textures and creases in the robot's armor. You'll only be able to enjoy it in the cut scenes and if you play 3rd person, so if you choose first person mode, you may as well leave the option off for extra speed.

Guard that convoy

Missed with the photon burst

Aural headaches

Slave Zero claims to support EAX and A3D out of the box, but there seemed to be a problem with hardware accelerated audio. When we first loaded up the game, we couldn't get EAX to work - the game would crash the second we started firing any of the guns. There doesn't seem to be a patch for this problem - our only recourse was to turn off EAX. At any rate, sound effects and music were both pretty average; nothing extraordinary to report.