Uneasy, I walk into a subterranean maze. The undead villagers haven't noticed me yet, but once they do, they'll work together to get me. They're smart—smarter than most people I know. And a grotesque twist means I have to avoid shooting them in the head. I hear the distant buzzing of a chain saw, but I'm being careful—till snap! What?! I've stepped into a bear trap. I'm not badly hurt but the time it takes for me to get free is just enough for the chain-saw guy to find me. My head's on the floor and Capcom owes me another pair of clean pants.
The genius of the latest, action-packed Resident Evil is that most of the scares aren't scripted. You're thrust into tense, unpredictable situations with hordes of intelligent foes, and you can never relax, not even in a cut-scene, or you die. The pressure makes you long for the comfort of an old-fashioned, lumbering cadaver. And when a survival-horror game makes zombies seem comforting, you know it's the best of the genre.
The Getaway: Black Monday (M) (3 stars)
Sony Computer Entertainment
PlayStation 2
If you love crime games but prefer your characters to sound like potty-mouthed chimney sweeps, then this is your franchise. Black Monday, like its predecessor, tries hard to capture that gritty, Guy Ritchie feel, and succeeds tremendously in its well-acted cut-scenes. The tedious and unimproved game play, on the other hand, ain't worth your quid, guv'.
Mech Assault 2: Lone Wolf (T) (4 stars)
Microsoft Game Studios
Xbox
Isn't one of the Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's Mech?" If so, then playing Mechassault 2 is a cardinal sin, since nothing is quite as wickedly satisfying as jacking your adversary's hulking robot chassis and tossing him to the curb. It's unending fun ... that is, if you have Xbox Live. Otherwise it's fun that ends in a disappointingly short, six-hour single-player campaign.
Banjo Pilot (E) (3 stars)
THQ
GameBoy Advance
That bear in the yellow shorts is taking to the skies without the aid of his feathered companion, Kazooie, in this wannabe, miniature Mario Kart. Developer Rare (which should be paying more attention to its many late, highly anticipated Xbox titles) provides superb graphics that almost pass for true 3D, but the course simplicity has you flying disappointingly friendly skies.
Matthew Scott Hunter has been known to mumble, "Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start" in his sleep. E-mail him at
[email protected].