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A.P.I Review:	PERFECT WEAPON
Developer:	Grey Matter	OPTIONS:	SCREENSHOTS: No.1   No.2   No.3
Distributor:	EA/ASC Games	1 Player
Game Type:	3rd Person Beat-em-up	Memory Card
Availability:	Out Now

Rapid Review

The Earth Defence Force has lots of agents protecting the world's
population from all sorts of menaces. The top agent in EDF is world
champion martial artist, Blake Hunter who mysteriously disappears one
night after emerging victorious from his latest bout. For no obvious
reason, Blake is transported to a strange alien world where he must
immediately begin fighting for his life in order to find his way home.
Luckily for him, he's a tough character and he can kick and punch his
way out of pretty much any situation, which is a good thing, since
that's what he's going to have to do.

Perfect Weapon is a game in much the same league as Time Commando and
Resident Evil, where your polygon based character progresses through
areas with very nice pre-rendered graphics. Given that games of this
type already exist this one really doesn't add anything to the genre.
While the graphics are very nice, the gameplay essentially consists of
walking (running is difficult) around the pre-rendered backgrounds,
kicking and punching enemies which range from wild dogs to poisonous
monkeys. 

Fighting your way around the various levels in the game can be enjoyable
but that's really just about all the game consists of. The major flaw
in the gameplay is the lack of adventure elements, there are no real
puzzles to solve with the exception of obtaining icons or keys to
progress through the levels which is a bit of a pity since the gameplay
would have benefited from this feature. 

One minor flaw that makes gameplay a little confusing is the camera
angles used in some of the screens, occasionally you will find yourself
stuck behind some scenery or a building that blocks your view and makes
it very hard to fight your way out. Control of Blake can be a little
difficult at times too, while there is a run function it really doesn't
work which means that you will spend most of the time walking slowly
around the landscape looking for your next fight. 

It's not all bad though, the fighting in the game is good, there is a
reasonable variety of moves and the speed of the fighting is close to
what you'll find in Soul Blade of Tekken 2, it's just s shame that there
isn't more depth to the game.

Comment

Taken on its' own, Perfect Weapon is a pretty good game, the problem is
there are better games available at the moment, with Resident Evil 2
being the best example you're probably better off going for that.
However, if you're looking for a fighting game that gives you a little
(and I mean a LITTLE) more depth than standing in an arena beating the
hell out of someone then this may just be the game for you. The graphics
are nice, it's fast and there's plenty of bad guys to beat up.