OK 'Primal Rage' boy, I'm talking to the chap who gave Primal Rage a 'C' grade, you have some pretty random titles on your 3DO review website - well take this!
Undaunted by the plethora of games reviewed on other sites, I have hunted high and low (there is a New Romantics 1980's joke in there but I think it is best we let it lie) for a game so rare, that I would have been better off looking for chickens teeth or rocking horse pooh or some actual kellogs corn flakes in Tescos, rather than their soggy looky-likey Tescos own brand?
So, did I get 'Blue Forest'? Claimed by many to be the rarest 3DO game ever? Nope, I haven't got that. It's all in Japanese language anyway and I've tried that already haven't I. Obscure plus Japanese plus game review, didn't work for me did it? (See Yu Yu Hakasho review for details.) How about the unreleased gold disk version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat for the 3DO? Nope, don't have that either. I never liked Mortal Kombat anyway.
What we have here for your viewing pleasure is, drum roll please: "Braindead 13". Now, with this we are talking about a true 3DO rare title. A little rarer on the Atari Jaguar CD but we won't go into that.
'Rare' as in widely released but didn't sell too well and so rare, as in not seen too often on eBay.
It is a game by Readysoft - Yup, that's right, Braindead 13 is Space Ace for adults or Dragons Lair for the maturing generation 'X' if you prefer.
Braindead 13 is a high quality, almost fun, entertaining production and that is in my genuinely honest opinion. (Don't pull that face while you read this!) Think interactive 'Pinky and the Brain' or 'Ren and Stimpy'. It, Braindead 13, is a sort of an aggressive, funny, if you find comedy cartoon violence funny, interactive cartoon game or perhaps is that American animated interactive cartoon movie. Or if you have read my other stuff, think Strahl but American style.
Braindead 13, summed up - 'It's alright'.
During the early to mid-nineteen nineties everyone was trying to define Interactive Entertainment, a big catch phrase of the era was Interactive Movie - the dream being that the game player (or is that viewer?) could take part in a movie.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, tried to achieve this within the confines of the hardware available. EA, Virgin Interactive, Namco (what is Starblade if it is not a stab at an interactive movie? Eh?) It's easy to point and shout these days and declare Metal Gear an interactive movie or Resident Evil 4 an interactive movie and shout in the same breath that Braindead 13 and Night Trap are not interactive movies but without super powerful 3D processors, what are interactive movies going to be?
If they, the developers, can't do full roaming 3D, what are they going to do? Think about it, even the likes of Warp's D is really 2D game and 2-dimensions limits developers, certainly if they intend to make an interactive movie.
So, it, Braindead 13 is an Interactive Cartoon and it goes something like this: While playing Braindead 13 you wait for an on-screen prompt, for example 'UP' and then you press 'UP'on the D-Pad, you then wait for next prompt and so on.
So, interactive is reduced to pressing a button, hardly Resident Evil 4 but then elements of this style of game play did make it into Resident Evil 4, so perhaps all was not lost.
Braindead 13 is too good and too professional to be remembered in the same cherished memories as Night Trap and Sewer Shark, it is too polished and too slick. The Script is funny, well thought out and entertaining. You laugh (or is that smirk?) with it, not at it.
If you can find a copy, then do so. It's worth having just for the beautiful (hand drawn) graphics.
3DO Kid.
