[electronic music]
[typing]
Giant mech games.
Especially throughout the '90s.
The late '90s.
Man, there were a lot of those things.
And as much as I could see myself easily talking about any number of them,
today I would like to talk about one of my favorites.
And it's a bit of an underdog.
Undeservedly so, as most underdogs are.
And that is...
Slave Zero,
developed by Accolade and published by Infogrames in 1999
for Windows PCs and the Sega Dreamcast.
Giant robots on fire,
pointing giant guns at my face,
while a vaguely Japanese futuristic city looms in the background.
My pants just got tight!
"It's 500 years in the future."
"Man and machine are virtually one"
and war has broken out for the eight millionth time
since Neon Genesis Evangelion came out.
"New 3D technology – the Ecstasy Engine!"
Yeah, marketing mentioned the game engine repeatedly,
as this was not only meant to be a departure for Accolade's typical gaming fare
like Bubsy, Test Drive and Hardball,
but it was also supposed to be a new powerhouse game engine
to compete with the likes of Quake and Unreal.
It supported all the contemporary APIs,
like Direct3D, Glide, OpenGL,
and cards from 3dfx, Matrox, Nvidia and ATI.
But it wasn't meant to be,
as the game ended up getting a lukewarm reception,
and as far as I know, Slave Zero ended up being the only game
to use their shiny, new Ecstasy Engine.
Open up the box of broken Accolade dreams,
and you'll find the game on a single CD-ROM,
as well as a detailed jewel case manual
covering the backstory, installation, controls,
and plenty of information on the game's weapons, enemies,
and even a walkthrough of the entire first mission.
Slave Zero begins with a bunch of green text
letting you know the story so far,
assuming you could read English and tolerate basic dystopian plots.
The gist of it is that it's Earth, 500 years in the future,
and everything of importance is Asian.
The Sovereign Khan, or SovKhan for short,
'cause he's cool like that,
has taken over the capital,
MEGACITY S1-9!
And since Judge Dredd is nowhere to be found in this graphic novel,
SovKhan goes on a rampage using an army of biomechanical war machines,
referred to as Slaves.
Thankfully, there's a convenient plot device that can stop him:
an underground group of resistance warriors known as the Guardians.
You play the role of Chan,
who has permanently melded mind and body
with a stolen slave unit known as Slave Zero.
It's up to you to battle your way
through this drawn-out opening sequence,
and actually get to the gameplay one of these days.
The main menu is mainly awesome,
not only giving you your typical set of main menu options,
but showing Slave Zero in the background, looking all cool and stuff.
Originally in this PC version, all you had was a single-player mode,
but multiplayer was patched in later.
It's pretty much just a deathmatch form of the main game,
so let's just dive right into that... main game!
In-engine cutscenes abound in this game,
starting with you running through a sewer,
your crew of typical rebels doing typically rebellious things,
and then you stomping on the highway and killing several innocent people
before you've even taken control.
FEMALE VOICE: Welcome to the Industrial Area, Slave Zero.
We've got to destroy this sector's communications array
by taking out its three core generators.
LGR: In this starting area, you can take the opportunity to get used to the controls
and how Slave Zero interacts with the environment.
When I first played the demo of this a decade and a half ago,
it blew my mind how detailed everything looked.
People running around the streets,
buildings of all shapes and sizes,
many of which that can be destroyed,
"Blade Runner"-style transports flying around,
and the ability to step on, pick up and throw all sorts of stuff,
like building pieces and cars.
Immediately, the game feels like a living world,
and you get a real sense of scale with all this stuff going on beneath your feet.
But before you know it, you're being attacked by douches,
so it's time to start shooting
and don't expect to stop for another 4 to 6 hours.
In the words of the producer of the game,
Slave Zero is a pure action game with lots of enemies,
no complicated exploration,
cool weapons and just plain twitch gameplay.
And that about sums it up.
Don't expect anything too involved or mind-blowing here.
It's a third-person shooter with non-stop action
and lots of stuff blowing up at all times.
Well, it's third-person unless you put it into first-person shooter mode
through the options menu, but
honestly, that just feels weird.
Although doing so does make it feel a bit more like Shogo: Mobile Armor Division than it already did,
which is either a good or a bad thing, depending on what you think of that game.
But yeah, Slave Zero is clearly optimized for third-person gameplay,
and that just feels far less awkward, so I would not even bother with first-person.
Anyway, while you CAN interact with a lot of small stuff in the environment,
smash up buildings, stomp on things, and roar like a cyborg T-Rex,
none of that stuff really come into play
and actually most of it only gets in the way.
The action is so fast and the enemies so numerous
that enduring the stomping animation or lining up a shot to throw a giant steel beam
is only going to get you killed.
What you'll wanna do is strafe around like crazy,
manage your health by picking up health packs that enemies and buildings drop,
and make the best use of your three weapon types:
ballistic weapons, energy weapons and missiles.
They all have separate ammo that runs out surprisingly fast,
so swapping between the three and keeping up with ammo drops is key to survival.
It's also just plain fun to continually shoot a stream of rockets at an enemy
while simultaneously pelting them with a minigun
and then hot swapping over to an overpowered rail gun to finish them off.
And you've got all sorts of enemies in your way, too,
from tanks getting underfoot and VTOLs flying around your head like flies
to a whole slew of humanoid slave mechs,
all cloned and grown from the same type of embryos Slave Zero came from.
And then you've got these freaking mecha-spiders
that really just annoy to no end, since they can crawl on any surface,
as well as the expected giant boss battles.
A lot of the bosses are pretty forgettable,
consisting of things like a basic giant mothership
to a basic big, beefy robot with shields.
But some of them are pretty memorable, if incredibly stressful,
like this overpowered hovering slave
that's constantly chasing you up a spiraled room,
all while a vat of toxic ooze slowly makes its way towards you
and parts of the room keep collapsing in front of you.
Beyond bosses, you'll always have some kind of objective to take care of,
like blowing up power stations,
making sure the enemy doesn't sabotage your base,
and protecting a fleet of cargo ships carrying vital supplies.
The rest of the time the game stays mostly predictable.
Just shoot, shoot, and shoot some more.
Do some more shooting. There's a lot of shooting.
Though some of the areas appear more open than others,
the game constantly funnels you along to the next room
full of bad guys to, guess what, shoot.
There are always secrets to find that contain more ammo or maybe a weapon upgrade,
but you'll get those things just by sticking to the route laid out for you.
There is no notable exploration, so don't expect any,
and even when a mission seems a bit maze-like,
it's really just cleverly pushing you towards your goal anyway.
And as much as I appreciate well-designed, complex map designs in some games,
I also appreciate a good corridor shooter, if the action is solid.
And in Slave Zero, that action is rock-solid, in my opinion.
In fact, I'd say its 15-mission campaign still holds up quite well today.
For the most part, it's just straightforward action
with enough variety in enemies, level aesthetic and objectives
to keep my attention the whole way through.
And there are a few rough edges,
like the fact that the game takes control away from you at random to show a cutscene,
sometimes in the middle of a firefight,
only to drop you back into the action, and you'll lose health for no reason.
Or the fact that so many levels have so many bottomless pits that instantly kill you,
which is made especially irksome with the number of enemies that will knock you around
with no chance of defense.
There's also the occasional difficulty spike
that will make you possibly want to kick puppies,
even on easy mode.
But yeah, for the majority of the experience,
I find Slave Zero to be an enjoyable shooter
that's still a blast to play nowadays.
And if you wanna check it out, you're in luck.
It's pretty easy as it was re-released for modern machines
on GOG.com and it works great.
There's also the Sega Dreamcast port,
but, eh, it just kinda sucks.
Far fewer graphical details,
less stuff populating the world,
clunkier physics, wonky controls,
frequent frame rate issues – way more than the PC version,
annoying load times and so on.
Avoid it, unless you're just a hardcore Dreamcast fan, but
the PC version, oh yeah!
If you like some retro shooting action
wrapped up in a late-'90s skin,
I'd wager you'll get a kick out of Slave Zero.
[techno music]
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