10/20/00

Jake's Spooky Review: Shadow Tower

Publisher: Software
Platform: PlayStation
Difficulty: Hard
Learning Curve: hour or more

    Well Gamers, its your old friend Jake gearing up for the Halloween Season. Of course what better game to play in October then a spooky title with some ghosts, walking zombies, and a little spice of crawling hands jumping on you and trying to tear out your eyes! Luckily we live in reality (or so we think), so we shouldn't be attacked be any walking, crawling, slimy things that want nothing more to do then tear our bodies limb from limb. However, in our world there is something worse then the living dead... NO! it's not Poke'mon! I'm talking about Software's Shadow Tower...geez, what did you think I was talking about?

    My first thought when I seen Shadow Tower was hey this looks like a cool "scary" title. It's cover has an almost naked man on it with a blind fold surrounded by darkness with the the name "Shadow Tower" above him. Now wouldn't you want to pick this title up just for the cover alone? Of course that wasn't my goal. Jake had other things in mind, you know the basics. Play the game, review the game, get the few cents store credit, and call it a night. Then I thought I shouldn't forget about all my fans and deprive them of a useless title like this so I thought I give them the spook down and show them what true horror is like in the gaming world. 

    Awhile back, Software released three titles called The King's Field series. Each involved several different elements from all kinds of games. However each game pretty much failed to make "The Cut" in both Japan and America. You did the basics, roamed a place and killed evil winged demons attempting to get the best of you.  Yet even this game had it's advantages back then. Now today we are stuck with another copy of it called Shadow Tower. Shadow tower is a mix of a RPG, Action, and Adventure title other words known as a First-Person-Action-RPG. Its like taking a blender throwing in Diablo, Vagrant Story, and Tomb Raider. Then hitting the on button and let rip! Then you take the final product and walla, Shadow Tower. It's all so very simple.

    A long long time ago on the continent of Eclispse. A dark and evil tragedy had occurred in the Holy lands of Zepter. A larged sealed tower lies in this region and your ancestors have stayed there to fight and protect the tower. Inside it lies a crown with one eye that one night destroyed the entire kingdom with a look from its eye. This crown is now closed inside the large tower so it can never harm the kingdom again. Years have gone by and the traditions have stayed the same. A darkness has taken over the peaceful land again. You are Ruus Hardy, one of the knights serving as a guardian of the tower. You roam inside the tower to search for the one eye crown in hopes to prevent the evilness coming to the land again.

    On my first note I would like to apologize to the makers of Danger Girl. Your control and game play are not the worst I have played after all! Now we have a new champion! Shadow Tower. That basically tells you the type of controlling this game has, but I'll break it down for you more. You control a screen with a sword (yep you can't see yourself). Here you have a small amount of options and terrible handling. I basically found myself bending over swinging and MISSING a pill of acid! Actually the controls are so bad I didn't kill anything for the first hour!.. Or it was just me. In order to kill something smaller then you or up high in the air you must adjust your screen so that creature is right in the center of your screen. In order to do this you would normally have to use your L buttons on the top of your controller. However the reaction time with these and the reaction time with the enemies is just not funny! by the time you have your screen position your already losing a good deal of life. Now you swing and hit nothing. This was the most exhausting part, since save points seem to be rare, in order to kill a enemy you must get inches away from it. Here you swing and hope you hit it. Normally all the enemies have special abilities and end up taking a good chunk out of your HP. In the end you find yourself using a heal every other time you face off with a enemy. This game also gave me that Diablo/Doom feeling of game play since you roam a 3-D environment and seek and destroy the creepy crawlers. Over all Game play comes down to two words "It Stinks!".

    The sound was great when you pop in the disc and watch the intro movie. Here you have perfect footsteps and some scary music which makes you wonder what the games music would be like. Then we get into the actual game, what music? I thought there was music!!!! Well it turns out Software was trying to keep that alone feeling and make complete silence instead of haunting tunes. Well Software did a good job with this but footsteps are the normal thing you hear throughout the game. Sure you here your voices here and there but we all need the music to be really scared! What's better then hearing the sound of your own heart beat along with the tune of RE's? I'm sorry to say, Shadow Tower fails in this to.

    Ok here we come to another of the most judged things in games, the graphics. Of course without surprise Shadow Tower fails in this too! This looks like a first generation title only worse! The game has constant slowdowns and looks like no effort was put into the levels. You constantly see the same thing over and over and end up getting lost and frustrated when you realize that well this game is outdated for today's technology. Software could have at least made the game look nice!

-Graphics:3.5: Well the story line didn't scare me much, but the graphics sure did! For a game that was made early this year it sure looks outdated.

-Sound:2: Why didn't they put music in the game? Sure the footsteps and moans from the monsters are ok but they could at least put music in it! This time, sound effects are not enough but nice try Software.

-Control:2.5: The controls will sure take some time to get use to if you want to beat this game. I found most the controls annoying and unnecessary. Hopefully their other games will at least have a auto aim or monsters that are not as small as they are!

- Replay:1: After wandering the first level, I basically wanted to smash my control and kick in my TV.. This game isn't worth the look! I wouldn't even spit on it!

-Over All:3: Ouch, what a scary scary game. No, the game wasn't scary, it was the game itself that was scary. Sure you jumped when you see the outline of a giant skull or a sword swinging skeleton, but this game barely made my neck hair stand up. This is not the spook title you want this Halloween.

                                                                           

                                         
-Jake

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