Hybrid Heaven Review

Interesting Story
Decent Control
Innovative Fighting System

Some Players Will Dislike the Fighting System

Right out of the starting gate, don't rush out to buy an Expansion Pak for this game. The high-resolution graphics drops the frame rate to its knees, while prettying up the visuals. Give me gameplay over frame rate any day. Hybrid Heaven's story line will be considered by many as it's greatest strength; you will definitely be intrigued with the twists, turns and revelations of the plot. However, you have to give this game a chance and play with it for many hours before you begin to understand what the developers were striving for. The fighting controls are turn-based (as in an RPG) which is the oddest style of fighting I've ever seen. That's not to say it's bad, it is just incredibly different. When you are confronted by an enemy, you must choose your attack: punch or kick (later you can combo attacks). You select either the right or left limb that will do the attack and you watch the animation of your character assault the other player. When the enemy wants to put the boots to you, you are then on the defensive and must decide whether to guard, step away or counter the attack. Getting hit loses health, while connecting attacks builds up hit points for each limb. You can also learn attacks from enemies which is a cool idea, because the amount of moves available to you later in the game is pretty staggering. In fact, this game almost becomes a wrestling RPG with some of the moves and combos that you can inflict on your enemies. At first I detested the fighting method, but as I played, the battle mechanics grew on me. I found it oddly compelling to sit back and pull off some whacked out moves without having a heart attack over confusing button mechanics. I can honestly say, and trust me on this one, if Hybrid Heaven had featured a real-time kick and punch fighting style, it would be dead in the water. Thanks to those blasted little C buttons, fighting games blow chunks on N64.

On the story front, You play as Mr. Diaz, who just happens to be involved in a bizarre plot to replace the President with a human hybrid. I don't want to give much away but I will say this; it takes a few hours into the game to begin to understand just what the heck is going on. There are still two things I'm unsure of after playing this game: 1) Why does Mr. Diaz where that stupid face paint? 2) Is Cameron his significant other? Oh maybe Hybrid Heaven II will reveal all...

As you make your way around the complex, you'll have to open doors, shoot bots, find card keys, crawl under detection devices and talk to various scientists. Your basic weapon is some sort of blaster device that has all the "ooomph" of a flea fart. It's so weak! The camera is cooperative about 60% of the time, meaning that for 40% of the time you won't be able to get a bead on where you are going. The puzzles in Hybrid Heaven won't stump you for long, so neither your cerebral cortex nor your thumbs will get a work out playing this one. But perhaps a change a pace from the norm isn't such a bad thing.

Graphically, this game is pretty dull. Thanks to the trade-offs of using the Expansion Pak, N64 games are becoming as persnickety as PC games. If the Expansion Pak is going to make the game play poorly then, leave it out! Speaking of poorly, you have got to check out some of the monsters in Hybrid Heaven. They are laughably bad. Most look like disfigured basketball team mascots. If their bizarre look is supposed to instill fear...whoops. They seriously look like guys in costumes. Mr. Diaz shouldn't have been beating them up, he should have been handing out candy and telling them not to eat any apples before getting home and having mommy check them. Hilarious!

When playing this game at E3, all I could hear was that metallic clanking of footsteps while Diaz walked up and down those ladders. Since most of you have never been to E3, I can tell you that it's LOUD, and yet I could hear those clanks as clear as day. Sure enough, when playing HH at home, those clanks were obnoxious! Is Diaz wearing tap shoes? Why are they so loud? Is he trying to alert everyone? Other than that there is hardly any voice work at all, leaving you to do a lot of reading. Musically the game is decent, but nothing spectacular.

The biggest fault with Hybrid Heaven is that it might turn off prospective players quickly in the first hour or so of gameplay. At that point there aren't a lot of moves to choose from and the story isn't even close to reaching high gear. Hybrid Heaven is like a good cup of tea, you've got to steep it for a while before it's ready. The camera is naughty and the mix of gameplay styles takes a while to get used to, but give this game a chance. It's no Metal Gear Solid and I guess it wasn't meant to be. In the end it is far from perfect but worth a good long look.

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