textfiles/games/REVIEWS/swrdsodn.rev

 SWORD OF SODAN

 Blood. Lots of blood. The package screams it in scarlet letters. This game
promises to be bloody. Red blood: It will drip, pool, shine, stain, slicken
sidewalks, and splatter on walls. It is easily the first game with this
intention, spelled out on the back of the package in dripping letters, so let
the fainthearted be warned. Much of this review is about blood. 

 But before we get to the gore, let's talk about the excuse...er, scenario and
game play. SWORD OF SODAN borrows from the heroic fantasy legends and fiction
made popular by Robert E. Howard's CONAN, THE BARBARIAN. You are one of the two
surviving children of King Pallas. This is a nice touch, as you may choose to
play either the daughter or the son. Pallas's kingdom is long lost to the evil
wizard Zoras. Guess what your mission is? Got it? Good. You must storm the
castle, kill Zoras, and reclaim your heritage. I know it's hard to come up with
a unique or even fresh idea for a scenario today, but I can't help thinking that
better games would result.

 As Shardan (heroine) or Brodan (hero), you must march through the outer
reaches, the city gate, the streets, the zombie graveyard (every city's gotta
have one!), the Foyer, an underground passage, and finally, Zoras's Tower. Along
the way you'll be attacked by guards, soldiers, dwarfs, giants, bugs (_big_
bugs), zombies, spike traps, pit traps, and the like. You are armed only with
your sword, and that is not enough. However, along the way you'll collect your
victims' potions. These potions will mean the difference between success and
failure.

 The screen displays your character, who stands almost half the height of the
screen, making for a striking impression (please excuse the pun...I have a note
from my doctor). Your health -- the number of hits you can take before dying --
is represented by a tapestry on the left side of the screen. Across the top of
the screen are your lives remaining, your current hit strength, and your score.
Your enemies have a miniature health tapestry that floats beneath them, but it's
very hard to read, especially when you're facing several at a time.

 Again, as you vanquish your foes, they may drop one of four types of potions.
These potions make you stronger, give you more stamina, empower your sword with
special attacks, and more! Much is not told to you in the documentation, but
must be discovered through experimentation. This may be fun for some, but can
lead to several tedious deaths and one anti-drug message. A hint here: The
manual suggests mixing potions for new effects, but doesn't hint at dosage. One
particularly useful effect is achieved with a full strength of one specific
potion.

 As you might expect, you use the controller's directional pad to move through
the horizontally scrolling landscape. Forward and backward movements are simply
left and right, and crouch is down. Turning and jumping are more convoluted than
I care for in an action game. There's a difference between jumping up and
jumping forward, neither of which uses the up direction of the directional pad.
And turning around is a sequence requiring either the jump or attack button,
plus a pad press in the direction opposite your facing. Even if that sounds
simple, and I don't think it does, it's way too much when you're fighting four
dwarves and being flanked by a bunch of city guards.

 Swordplay is pretty simple: Swing your sword by pressing the "C" button; press
up for an overhead swing, forward for a thrust, and down for a crouching blow.
There is nothing so elegant as a parry, or a feint: This is hack and slash.

 With that in mind, I'd love to recommend this game for delivering what it
promises: blood. But I can't. The graphic representation of the spilling of
blood during swordplay is poorly and unrealistically animated. There is no
difference between the representation of a character who is in perfect condition
and one who is a swordstroke from death (which at least would've provided an
arguable justification for the aesthetic of graphic violence). When the killing
blow comes, the victims are simply flashed to the ground, where their ribcage is
depicted by what appears to be a shiny string of red tennis balls. While there
are variations on this theme (the beheading of giants, for example), most are
singularly disappointing.

 The characters look good in still photos on the box, but when animated they
continue to resemble still figures. Each character has perhaps five or six
positions on the screen, all of which render them as stiffly animated paper
dolls. Given the level of animation we've seen recently in MICKEY MOUSE IN THE
CASTLE OF ILLUSION and STRIDER, this is very disappointing.

 Games that graphically represent physical damage in combat stir up controversy:
Razorsoft's TECHNOCOP also makes much marketing noise about its graphic mayhem.
With the higher resolution and animation tools available to programmers today,
and the trend toward representing violence in popular entertainment, I expect
that this is only the opening shot in what promises to provoke an ongoing
debate. However, apart from informing potential buyers, I wouldn't cite explicit
gore as a reason to avoid this product. It is simply a poorly implemented game.
The controls are ill-conceived: Older games, such as GOLDEN AXE, control similar
or more complex functions in an easier, more natural way. The graphics, while
detailed and colorful, are stiffly and unimaginatively animated. Combined, these
elements make gameplay difficult and unrewarding. With the number of truly
excellent Genesis games available today, it should be easy to avoid SWORD OF
SODAN.

 SWORD OF SODAN is published and distributed by Electronic Arts.