Evil Zone
Is it an unwritten law that all Japanese school girls have magical powers and can use some sort of midevil weapon?
Developer: Titus Publisher: Titus Genre: Fighting Players: 1-2 Memory Blocks: 1 Discs: 1 Analog: No Dual Shock: Yes ESRB: Teen Difficulty: Intermediate
Being a rabid anime fan, and having found this game for only $9.99 at Wal*Mart. Considering it's price, I wasn't expecting too much, but I was thankfully surprised!
Gameplay-- Evil Zone uses a two button fighting system. One button for attacks, and one button for defense. Depending on which direction you are pointing your control pad (left, right, up, down), the attacks change. This was a nice change from the usual fighting games I play, because I just can't do those 85 hit, massive combos, nor can I even remember the 2 hit ones. Each character has 6 differant attacks; a basic attack, a magic spell, a projectile, a big kung-fu combo attack, a flip attack, and a magic attack you have to power-up for. The latter of the list is very effective when you just wanna kick some butt and don't wanna waste time punching your opponents face in. In usual fighting game style, two taps to the forward button makes you run. The fighting levels are in 3D, so you can side step your opponents attacks and roll out of the way if you're knocked down on the ground.
Graphics-- The graphics, in my opinion, were pretty darn good. The opening movie looked like I was watching an episode of my favorite anime, and it was very colorful. Most of the characters wear bright colors that, if your TV has a bad setting on your brightness, could look like big blobs of running pixels. Thank goodness I fixed that right away. After the brightness level was fixed, I was impressed by the in-game graphics as well. The fighters look like the battle graphics of Final Fantasy 7, only a tiny bit more choppy. But sometimes the attacks would go through people and the graphics would cut off. I'm not sure what this is actually called, but you know in FF7 when the camera spanned around the characters, sometimes their clothes would cut away and you would see the background through their leg or something? Well, that's what happens sometimes. Overall, the graphics were very good.
Music-- Well, considering it's a fighting game, one can't expect masterpieces of the audio sorts. But the music wasn't to bad. There's voice acting, and it's pretty good, but some people's voices just, well, suck. The sound effects are good, though.
Storyline-- Basically some psycho woman is trying to free herself from this seal that was put on her years ago, and now she's - SHOCK - TRYING TO DESTROY THE WORLD!! So it's up to all the fighters to stop her and get the magical ancient power, or something like that.
Control-- Control is very good. You push left, you go left. You hit the attack button, you attack. The only bad thing is if the computer's to hard, they'll get on your back like it's nobody's buisness, and it's hard to side step them.
Fun Factor-- The story mode in this game is very fun. Each character has his/her own story to tell, and I particularly liked Setsuna's story. It's pretty fun game. However, your thumb gets really tired if you try to rotate the control pad to do a big attack, so you get the whole player's wrist thing comes into play.
Overall Satisfaction-- I liked the game, and I keep playing it today even though I got it in September. The more levels you advance, the more outfits you get. And you can unlock the big bad lady, who can kick anybody's booty three ways from Saturday with two hits.
Highs: The female characters, the battle style, storymode
Lows: Some of the voice acting stunk, the male characters all looked like
they came from the Fighter Guy Clone Shop
Score: 9