Gameplay

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

As mentioned earlier, Slave Zero is best characterized as a classic console shooter. In fact, it probably was designed initially for the console since it was released for both Sega Dreamcast and PC. Waves upon waves of enemies come at you as you blast away at them with seemingly no end to the carnage. That's pretty much the best way to describe Slave Zero's gameplay - 15 levels of mind numbingly repetitive shooting, dodging and blowing things up. Enter Room. Blast all the enemies with copious amounts of missiles and bullets. Pick up the ammo they drop (lots of it). Go into the next room. Lather, rinse, repeat. Anyone have a bottle of Head and Shoulders lying around?

Narrow miss in front splashes up water

Sniping from above

And repeat, repeat, repeat

Once in a while Slave Zero tries to mix things up by having you protect a convoy of ships or having you rescue some valuable cargo from being destroyed by the SovKhan's forces. Then in another level the developers make a weak attempt at a keyhunt - forcing you to destroy a couple of power generators in order to open a specific door. But it's all variations on a theme - blow up everything you see, which might be fine for some people, but not us. Not on PC anyway. We mentioned that there were about 15 levels; at first, 15 levels sounds like a lot of gameplay but it really isn't. We finished (well nearly - more on that later) the game in under 10 hours. Sorry but after paying $40 or $50, having less than 10 hours of gameplay would be rather disappointing to most people. On a dollar per hour basis you're getting less value than you would if you went to the movie theater on a Friday night. And trust me, you'd have a better time at the movies.

Look out!

The Cyclone Saturation cannon eats up ammo

What about the interactive stuff?

Yes, Slave Zero lets you pick up cars and throw them around, but the problem with that is simple: there's no motivation to do so. There is a TON of ammunition for all your guns lying around on the levels. Even if you're a horrible shot, there's no way you would run out of bullets for your guns. So why stop shooting? Picking up a car takes a good deal of time, and aiming it can be tricky. The amount of damage you do is substantial, but not any more than if you had just shot at your opponents. What about picking up a girder and swinging it? Again, why? Doing your Sammy Sosa impression with a steel girder would require you to run into harm's way, when it makes more sense to shoot from afar.

Taking hits

Throwing a car back down

Well ok there's one reason where we can see why people would want to throw a car. It would make the game harder. Even on medium and hard, Slave Zero is a pretty easy game. An average action gamer probably won't die very much or at all until around level 10 or so. Health power ups are everywhere, and far too often you run into full health recovery packs. After level 10, the game does get harder, but only for rather dumb reasons - missing a leap on a jump puzzle, or getting shot off a ledge by an unseen Sentinel sniper, etc.