the Guru 3D - review

System Requirements:

K62 233 or Pentium 200

32 MB RAM

3D card

DirectX 6

75 MB HD Space

Testing Machine:

PII 350 o/c @ 400MHz

128mb RAM

Asus V3800 TNT2 o/c @ 175/200

Diamond MX-300 Sound Card

36x CD-ROM

Windows 98 SE

DirectX 6.x

Nvidia Detonator Drivers Ver. 2.08

Debriefing time

Umm... erm... uhh... I dunno. There's quite a few few good ideas in here, but they don't really pull it off very well. It's kinda hard to describe. I think this could have been very good, but not enough effort was put in. I haven't had a look at the technical specs on the game, but it looks to me like it's built on the Lithtech engine, like Shogo & Blood 2. Both of the latter games were good, Blood 2 in particular was awesome. The graphics in Redline just don't seem to take advantage of the engine. Skin and texture detail is good, but the models fail horribly. It's a pity, because there's potential here.

Car mode

There are, however, some nice to ideas which have been done well. The first is car mode. Throughout the game you switch between on foot and in your car. On foot is cool in first person view and is pretty standard. Car can be played the same, but it's a little difficult to see what's going on around you. I found playing in thrid person mode in the car made things a bit easier. Car mode takes a bit of getting used to. You control yourself with one set of keys and use the mouse to aim. I kept trying to turn with the mouse out of habit at first, but I got the hang of it after a bit.

Some nice scenery

The other one is your weapon(s). In other FPS, you pick up new guns as you go along. Not so in Redline. Technically, you start off with evrey weapon. You then get access after you've picked up ammo for them. Your weapon kinda flips, twists, adjusts and generally just transforms itself into the new weapon. Very cool. Takes the same amount of time as normal switching weapons, but looks wicked. The weapons themselves are fairly run of the mill though. The usual shotgun, machine gun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, etc...

Nuke 'em!

The game itself basically revolves around futuristic gang warfare. Your hero in the game is Rambo wannabe who takes on a bunch of weird alien type dudes who try to take over his city. He then gets hired by The Company (apparently he's been trying to get into The Company for a while) after they see what he can do. You then go on a minor crusade involving carnage, bullying and nuking nasty people in rival gangs. I haven't had a chance to test multiplayer yet, but I can't see it holding my attention for too long.


		65%
		75%
		70%
		?
		70%

Like I said, it's got potential, but it just doesn't look like enough effort was put in in order to pull it off. It's fun for a while, but eventually seeing guys running around with their arms semi-detahced from their bodies, you begin to realise that it doesn't really cut it. Give it a shot if you can get hold of it, but I wouldn't go out and spend money on it.