VGRC

Hideo Kojima is a household name to many gamers across the world. One of his creations, Zone of the Enders, features giant robots and a fairly gripping storyline dealing with war and maturity. Known mainly for the Metal Gear series, Kojima took it upon himself in 2001 to create a journey of one boy in a giant mecha robot, or Orbital Frame if you want to be specific, placed in a war-torn world. Filled with action thrills, and an anime inspired story and visuals, Zone of the Enders gives players the opportunity to blow stuff up as a giant robot.

The story opens into a 22nd century world, where humans have taken to the stars, away from Earth. But despite the technological advances that enabled this, life away from Earth is pretty harsh. Colonies orbit planets in this time frame, and on one particular colony orbiting Jupiter named Antilla, an organization known as BAHRAM approaches it with unknown but aggressive motive.

The Zone of the Enders universe gives entrance to the lead character of this particular game, a confused, frightened, and prepubescent boy named Leo Stenbuck. Himself and his friends are taunted and pretty much made fun of for being Enders - people who live away from Earth, or on the edge of human civilization. Battle commences on the colony, and Leo and his friends are caught in the crossfire between BAHRAM and the UNSF. Leo, perused by the enemy, and haunted in his own mind by the death of his friends, he flees and escapes into a building, stumbling upon an Orbital Frame and accidentally falling into the cockpit. It activates and Leo then becomes the Frame's runner, despite his own motives of being a somewhat pacifistic character, he is then thrown into the conflict with his new Orbital Frame, Jehuty.

Leo learns that he must then protect the colony, but to do this he must kill, although he hates death. He is told to take the Orbital Frame to a special place by a UNSF agent, where the frame will be taken to Mars to help in a battle, which Leo then says that will be his ''only'' task, and will try his best to do the means necessary to get the frame to this place.

The game itself is fluid, fast paced, and easy to control. The game isn't exactly ground breaking, but it's still good for what it delivers. Jehuty is responsive to input on the controller, which in itself isn't exactly hard. The controls being simple work extremely well, seeing as you have to react quickly to enemies on-screen. The game offers a tutorial to how to do moves and what button does what, but it's pretty simple to either read the manual or to get stuck into the game and learn from there. Although the tutorial isn't exactly necessary, it helps to make the game somewhat complete, and also gives an insight to what Jehuty can do.

ZOE's missions are pretty damn simple and to the point, and the game manages to be somewhat challenging without being extremely frustrating. The AI is pretty good and does the job well. The enemies are smart enough to group up at times and attack as a unit, instead of individual mech's charging in on you. There are moments in the game that save it from being too repetitive, and one of these is a SOS Mission, where a town will call for help and you can go down to the town to do battle and help save people. However, while fighting enemies, you need to be careful so that you don't damage buildings and accidentally kill survivors that you are meant to be saving. Your performance is then graded judging on how well you did at the end of the mission.

Completing the game gives you access to the game's two-player mode, which allows you to pick an Orbital Frame from pretty much every enemy you face in the game, apart from most of the bosses. The variety involved in the selection of your mech gives a set of advantaged and disadvantages such as speed, armor or overall firepower, which helps to balance the game. The two-player game is quite fun and varied, compared to the single player game which I don't think 6 months from finishing it first time round you would be playing through for the 5th time or so, I can assure you that playing the two-player mode gives a fresh fix on things and you will be still duking it out with friends in the next 6 months or so.

The game itself is not perfect. The controls are fast and fluid, and slashing through hordes of enemies can be somewhat fun, there isn't much depth or variety past this. There are alternate weapons to use in the game, but to be honest I don't think you'll find yourself using them apart from a few times to see what they are like, as you will find yourself primarily using your blade and light rifle. Bosses are something different from the otherwise pretty much boring set of enemy mechs to be found in the game, which only seem to differ in weapon sets and sizes. The game itself at a glance is really traveling from town to town blasting enemies and collecting items.

But although the game can be pretty repetitive and boring at times, the game still is very solid and enjoyable. A point to mention that is featured in the game is the RPG inspired 'level-up' feature. Jehuty will level up at various points in the game after killing a certain number of enemies, and in RPG's a higher level character is stronger than a lower level character, this is also shown in ZOE, as Jehuty gains strength from level to level. Although this isn't exactly groundbreaking or anything particular exciting, it adds a small touch to the game that RPG fans may enjoy, although the system isn't directly in depth.

The actual world surrounding you is rendered very nicely, filled with good lighting effects and impressive animations from the characters and mecha. The environments seem repetitive, but they are rendered well and give sight to how a mass produced colony may look like. The mechs themselves are rendered beautifully, and each has individual detail painted on to it. Compared to today's standards, this game isn't exactly ugly, but probably the complete opposite. The CGI, again, isn't breathtaking, but it does it's job and gets the story across to the player, which mainly what the game is about - the story. An interesting point to mention is that it seems no matter how many enemies are on screen, there doesn't seem to be any slow down, anywhere. Even if Jehuty is darting around in all different manners, there is virtually no slow down.

In terms of audio, the voice acting isn't anything special, sometimes lacking in the emotion department, but it gets the job done. The music is extremely well done, and suits the mood of the game nicely, incorporating fast paced electronic beats in times of intensity, but it then slows down to something similar to harmonic strings that gives a nice opposite feeling to the intensity beforehand.

The game, no matter how repetitive it can get, is actually damn fun, and it shows how PS2 games should be made. Despite it's average play time of around 6-7 hours on an average gamer, the two-player mode saves the game from any lack of replayability, and adds some replay value to an already majestic game. The fact is that Zone of the Enders can get repetitive and offers nothing particularly new to the genre, the game itself is enjoyable and solid, and should be in anyone's collection to those who are willing to try it.