Divine Right #1 (Bagged w/ StormWatch Preview)

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MEN IN BLACK PRODUCTS
Divine Right #1 (Bagged w/ StormWatch Preview)
Divine Right #1 (Jim Lee Cover)
Divine Right #1 (Travis Charest Cover)
Men in Black: Zap-Em Van
Men in Black Trading Cards (Box of 36 Packs)

MEN IN BLACK ARTICLES
Toy Time, May 30, 1997
Andy Mangels' Hollywood Heroes, May 30, 1997
Toy Time, May 2, 1997
Scott Rosenberg Interview Part II
Mania

MIB ARTICLES
The MIBs Are Coming

Goods: Here comes Lumpy! Bads: Clunky interface, Game Engine is actually stolen from the lovable and reliable Yugo, impersonated celebrity voices, Pac-man had better cutscenes, actually feel like you ARE working for MIB. The Culprits: SouthPeak Interactive Rating: 3.5 of 10 (I've played worse.. )

If only the game's was as well.

It is really hard to convey the atrocities that I, your humble reviewer, had to endure to bring this review to you. If only the real Men In Black would come visit me, erasing my memory of the these events, but that is not to be. Men in Black: the Game is.... is.... oh I can't lie... it's terrible.

Everyone I talked to at SouthPeak was unbelievably nice and helpful, and I am sure that there was a lot of pressure to get this game out in time to coincide with the release of Men In Black on video and to hit the shelves for the holidays. Just wanted to try and empathise with the design team. Now let's tear this game up.

Technically, this game is a third-person cinematic adventure like the much-superior Resident Evil or the also-much-superior, Lovecraft-inspired, and first of its kind Alone in the Dark. You control your choice of Men in Black exploring exotic locales, solving puzzles, menaced by aliens, all the while trying to uncover an underlying, insidious plot and emerge victorious. Sounds like fun, right? If you said "yes", you're wrong!

Unlike the current release Resident Evil or the 6 year old classic Alone in the Dark, Men in Black never creates a mood. You basically push your Tommy Lee Jones-ish figure around some pretty, but sterile sets. There is no sense of risk, or even fun. Interaction with other characters consists of shooting them. Its like the old the old Army motto: "It's not just a job: it's an adventure." Except you can skip that last sentence.

The characters move with a clunkiness and gracelessness that I have not seen since the final few moments of Space Invaders. They don't walk, they kind of slide while their legs move. Running backwards looks like a goofy moonwalk. Characters don't turn they rotate on an axis that is so obvious I wonder why they didn't just leave a nice clear Y-axis line impaling the characters.

Combat, the majority of the game interaction, is horrifying, which would be a good thing when talking about a game like Alone in the Dark, but isn't in this case because I mean horrifyingly frustrating. Spinning my Will Smith-ish character to try and line up a left-hook on a bouncing alien, except I am trying to do it from a camera angle that would make John Woo burst into tears, is nigh-impossible. Shooting the baddies is easier, and you get a wide variety of weapons to choose from. I just wished I could shoot myself.

Oh, did I mention with all of this other lunacy that some missions are timed? For instance, take too long, and the bomb that you didn't realize was even there explodes, killing you. Even if you did know it was there, you have to take critical seconds to flail through combat and then shuffle towards the explosive, or the escape hatch, or whatever... Death lets you revisit the mundane and very slow save/load screen. I am not saying that a save/load screen needs to be action packed or anything, but I think I should get the impression that someone took more than 3 minutes to build it.

The chapters of the game are strung together with the worst cutscenes that I have ever scene in my long and distinguished career as a video game aficionado. And that includes playing on a system hardwired for pong that pre-dates the Atari 2600 from the mid-70s. Crucial clues are mumbled as you are assaulted with a slide-show of 4 color bitmaps that makes the light show in 2001 seem exciting.

Before each mission you do get to choose whether a celebrity voice impersonator will butcher Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, or Linda Fiorentino. The Fiorentino impersonator is bad, but not as terrible as Smith's. Whoever did the work for Tommy Lee Jones didn't succeed at doing a terrible job, even if he was mis-aptly credited with the others as "Voice Talent". Actually, Jones' impersonator has the only fun in the game, yelling out "here comes Lumpy" at a rather comical moment. Or rather the only comical moment, or mayhap I was just hysterical.

Here comes Lumpy!