Wetlands

New World Computing

Action

Bad Mojo

If they locked 100 monkeys in a room with 100 computers with rendering software for about 100 years, Wetlands would be what you get. Monkey shit! This game has NO plot, NO action, NO control, NO concept and for all intensive purposes is a re-hash of another bad nightmare of a game called Creature Shock. While Creature Shock had nice graphics, Wetlands has horrible animations and even worse action sequences. If you play this game and find it in your heart to enjoy or even think about possibly liking it, you are Hitler and should be destroyed! I hope the manufacturers of this game die from food poisoning.

Quintin Stone

I am writing this review only one day after the purchase of Wetlands. "One day?" you ask yourself. "Is that enough time for you to know a game well enough to write a review?" I'd say the answer is yes, and the review does not look good...

First off, let me say that the programmers for Wetlands did some amazing jobs with 3-D rendering. All of the buildings, vehicles, and ships are done amazingly well, with intricate lighting, surfaces, and gemoetry. The animation for these sequences is usually fast and perfectly smooth. My hat's off to you.

However, the graphics and animations for the people in the game is, at best, mediocre and, at worst, just plain lousy. You'd think that for all that amazing 3-D rendering on the CD, they'd complement it with some digitized video, or even a competent artist. But, they didn't. In typical cartoon fashion, when the characters talk, their jaws don't move. Not a pixel. So they end up looking rather cheezy indeed. A few of the character animations look good, but for the most part, they are very badly done. This is evident even in the game's intro sequence where we witness a breakout from a prison planet.

Let's get down to the nitty gritty, shall we? I can take bad graphics. They're not vital to a game, they're just there to make the environment more believable, in my opinion. Okay, so they character graphics aren't that great. So what? Well... all of this "lousy" to "mediocre" animation takes place in the cut scenes. Between action. So, they're not sacrificing quality so that you can play the game smoothly.

The true curse of this game is simple. It is nothing more than a mindless arcade game. Sit through several minutes of cut scenese with good rendering and bad character animation, then you are rewarded with a set of crosshairs and an energy level. Shoot the bad guys. Click click click goes the trigger on your joystick. Zap zap zap goes the screen. Okay, you either make it through or you die. If you make it through, you watch 5 more minutes of animation, then back to the gun screen. Shoot the bad guys. Click click click goes the trigger on your joystick. Zap zap zap goes the screen. Again, make it, or die. Can you say redundant? You have no control over how fast you move, or (except for the underground tunnels) where you're even going. In one sequence, you're piloting a sub, shooting at cannons and other underwater vehicles. Whoops, scratch that. You're not pilotting this sub. It spins and twists and goes all over the damn place, and you have absolutely no control whatsoever. As a result, some of your "targets" are on the screen for a mere fraction of a second, and if you can't shoot them, you get hit. Also, the targetting system with the joystick is not a joy to use. It is jerky, choppy, and hard to control. This, in union with the wild gyrations of your vehicle or player, makes the only interactive part of this game a serious disappointment.

My advice to you is that you do not buy this game. It is not worth the money you will pay for it. It takes less brains than even Doom to play, but is a hell of a lot less enjoyable. I don't know, maybe you'll like it... but I doubt it.