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© St. Petersburg Times, published July 29, 2002
Men In Black II: Alien Escape
SYSTEM: PlayStation 2
COMPANY: Infogrames
PRICE: $29.99
RATED: Teen
Confidential: Men in Black II is a very cool game, even though it has a completely different plot from the movie. In the game, the spaceship that held all of the universe's hostile alien delinquents has crashed into a lake in New York. But when the MIB go to check it out, all of the prisoners are gone. It's up to Agent Jay and Agent Kay to save the universe by getting rid of the escaped scum.
In Men in Black II: Alien Escape, you choose your favorite agent and set out on missions appointed to you by Zed, the boss. The missions take place all over New York City, from the harbor to a nuclear plant. Even though Agents Jay and Kay don't exactly look like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, they still get the job done by kicking some alien butt. The agents wield six awesome weapons that help out in different situations.
Some of the aliens you will encounter are Mulkorans, Black Rottermites, Easykleen V2.0s and even those hilarious worm guys, AKA Manitoba. The graphics in MIB II are great and about as realistic as aliens can get without being real. Without question, this is an awesome shoot-'em-up game, and I'm sure everyone who plays it will want to join the MIB.
Grade: B
-- CHRIS HUMBURG, Times correspondent
SYSTEM: Windows
COMPANY: Bioware
PRICE: $54.99
RATED: Teen
Boom.
That's the sound of the gaming revolution Bioware has started with Neverwinter Nights.
One of the most eagerly anticipated games in the past five years, it is likely to emerge as 2002's role-playing game of the year.
And it's not so much the single-player game that makes Neverwinter Nights remarkable. It's the package of tools that comes with the game, which allows players to build worlds and role-playing game campaigns so they can immerse dozens of their friends in original creations.
This is where tabletop gaming goes laptop. Trade in pencil and paper for mouse and modem. Keep the polyhedral dice as souvenirs. You have to supply your own snacks, but Neverwinter Nights does just about everything else.
The game, developed by the minds behind the popular Baldur's Gate series, is set in the Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition universe.
The single-player game is expansive, with an easy-to-master interface, zoomable graphics and plenty of quests to keep short attention spans occupied. But unlike Baldur's Gate and other classic role-playing games, you don't get to build parties of travelers to fight together in the single-player game. You can, however, get hired help for various quests, but you can't do much to control them, their health or their inventory.
But who needs a virtual team of adventurers when you can log onto the Internet and find real people ready to join you via servers all over the world?
Neverwinter Nights is the bane of pay-to-play persistent worlds such as Everquest, Ultima Online and Asheron's Call. You pay once for Neverwinter Nights, and the subsequent experiences are free -- no monthly credit card bills, just a one-time charge for the software.
And where players must rely on the developers of the big multiplayer games to introduce new areas to explore, Neverwinter Nights players can do it themselves and have a sense of ownership in the creative process.
Neverwinter Nights is a commercial graphical multiplayer game merged with the more altruistic philosophy of popular text-based multi-user games on the Internet whose owners think fun should be easily accessible and free.
-- WES PLATT, Times staff writer
SYSTEM: Xbox
COMPANY: THQ
PRICE: $49.99
RATING: E
After a few weeks of playing, I have discovered the level of innovation in this game: zero. It's just a pretty racer with two wheels instead of four. Sure, there are 29 official drivers, each with different skill levels, 10 of whom are unlockable, and 10 real life courses, seven of which are unlockable. That makes for good replay value, if you can put up with the problems.
Though drivers have different skills, they all seem to play the same. And the courses all seem the same, too. The music, generally good in racing games, is barely audible generic techno.
The biggest problem in this game is the learning curve. Although there are different levels of difficulty, they don't seem to affect anything except the speed of the other racers, and not enough to make a difference for a beginner. Also, the crashes are unforgiving, and the turns seem way too sharp. It takes a couple of hours to get used to the controls, and by then the casual gamer may have given up in frustration. The computer, on the other hand, makes the turns perfectly.
The best thing about this game is the graphics. The sun shimmers off the bikes, and the shadows are as detailed as the bikes and characters. The backgrounds are detailed, if a little boring. Characters move realistically, and dirt flies off the wheels if you get off track. You can even see individual spokes on the wheels.
Unless you are a hard-core fan of Moto Grand Prix racing, I don't recommend this game. It tries to save itself with pretty graphics, but even that can't make up for the horrible control, steep learning curve and unexciting game play.
Grade: D
-- ANDERS SCHERBERGER, Times correspondent