Death By Degrees
Quite possibly the worst high-budget game in years.
Published: February 22, 2005
It's obvious that Death By Degrees had a little money thrown behind it. It's also obvious that the development team had some talent. What isn't so plain to see is why the hell the first solo effort for a Tekken character is so hideously bad. Clunky controls, massive load times, piss-poor storyline... It's like a vortex of suck, and it's an experience no gamer should have to go through.
When Nina Williams is brought in to aid British soldiers in a joint CIA/MI6 operation aboard a private cruise ship to help locate a random thing that nobody bothers to really point out upon establishing the storyline (who needs motivation?), things quickly spiral out of control and Nina quickly begins randomly tracking down keys and cranks and fingerprints, all the while kicking ass with the 360 degree free-fighting right analog stick control scheme a few games have attempted before with equally disastrous results.
DBD spends half its time loading (literally; the game has a loading screen about every 10 seconds or so) and the other laughing at you as you fumble around clumsily, trying to figure out why the pre-selected camera angles change about every two seconds, and camera-relative controls with them. Nina stumbles around ladders, falls into water, scrapes along walls like she's trying to walk home from some frat house kegger, and generally just bungles her way through the various levels of the ship trying to figure out what's going down.
Along the way, you'll fight a handful of bosses, most of them rather clichéd and all of them annoying, thanks to unresponsive controls and frustrating environments. The very notion that the analog sticks could be used for the kind of split-second reactions necessary to avoid weapons fire or quick attacks is ridiculous, and this game actually forces you to try to use them anyway.
Normally, tapping the right analog stick in any direction will let Nina kick that way, while tapping the left analog stick will allow her to sidestep, roll, or dive out of the way. The problem is, the right analog stick doesn't allow you to change directions fast enough, and the dodging is utterly useless, only responding perhaps half the times you try to trigger it.
Put simply, everything about DBD is clunky. The menu screens are a chore to wade through, the map is a muddled, confusing mess, and the combat is sloppy in the most ideal situation. Even Nina's Focus-powered moves, which allow her to pinpoint vital parts of the body like bones or organs and shatter or cripple them feels gimmicky. This is a failed experiment by very definition, and while I can appreciate what Namco tried to do, the result is a complete mess.
The first thing you'll probably notice about the game is the graphics. From the opening cinemas to the in-game models and texture detail, things are clean, high-res and had an exacting hand when they were assembled. Unfortunately, the next thing you'll notice is either a) the loading screens that pop up for everything including a cutscenes that last all of two and a half seconds, b) the constantly changing fixed camera angles that require re-centering the left analog stick to avoid walking into a wall (unless you hold down R2 for a panhandle-style third person perspective, but then you can't sneak around), or c) how friggin' slowly everything seems to move. For an action game, things are unbearably languid, from opening the map or menu screens to picking up and using items to just opening doors.
When you're not throwing you controller down in disgust, you'll probably be reaching for the mute button on your remote. The music that rolls in during combat is typical guitar-driven noise, but the rest of the soundtrack has a more ambient, almost droning quality to it. It's actually not bad, and at times the voice work that melds with it during cutscenes can almost make you forget that once you get back into the game, you'll be wrestling with the controls and camera again -- usually in some kind of boss fight if you just watched a lengthy cutscene.
Aside from some impressively detailed CG (it looks like Namco's A-team that normally works on Tekken did the pre-rendered bits), there's just not enough in place here to make this worth checking out. There was an honest effort, and you can see where the developers tried hard to offer something new, but it should have been obvious even early on that this concept wasn't going to work. Perhaps the next Tekken spin-off will fare a little better, but this one had no place becoming a full game.
When Nina Williams is brought in to aid British soldiers in a joint CIA/MI6 operation aboard a private cruise ship to help locate a random thing that nobody bothers to really point out upon establishing the storyline (who needs motivation?), things quickly spiral out of control and Nina quickly begins randomly tracking down keys and cranks and fingerprints, all the while kicking ass with the 360 degree free-fighting right analog stick control scheme a few games have attempted before with equally disastrous results.
DBD spends half its time loading (literally; the game has a loading screen about every 10 seconds or so) and the other laughing at you as you fumble around clumsily, trying to figure out why the pre-selected camera angles change about every two seconds, and camera-relative controls with them. Nina stumbles around ladders, falls into water, scrapes along walls like she's trying to walk home from some frat house kegger, and generally just bungles her way through the various levels of the ship trying to figure out what's going down.
Along the way, you'll fight a handful of bosses, most of them rather clichéd and all of them annoying, thanks to unresponsive controls and frustrating environments. The very notion that the analog sticks could be used for the kind of split-second reactions necessary to avoid weapons fire or quick attacks is ridiculous, and this game actually forces you to try to use them anyway.
Normally, tapping the right analog stick in any direction will let Nina kick that way, while tapping the left analog stick will allow her to sidestep, roll, or dive out of the way. The problem is, the right analog stick doesn't allow you to change directions fast enough, and the dodging is utterly useless, only responding perhaps half the times you try to trigger it.
Put simply, everything about DBD is clunky. The menu screens are a chore to wade through, the map is a muddled, confusing mess, and the combat is sloppy in the most ideal situation. Even Nina's Focus-powered moves, which allow her to pinpoint vital parts of the body like bones or organs and shatter or cripple them feels gimmicky. This is a failed experiment by very definition, and while I can appreciate what Namco tried to do, the result is a complete mess.
The first thing you'll probably notice about the game is the graphics. From the opening cinemas to the in-game models and texture detail, things are clean, high-res and had an exacting hand when they were assembled. Unfortunately, the next thing you'll notice is either a) the loading screens that pop up for everything including a cutscenes that last all of two and a half seconds, b) the constantly changing fixed camera angles that require re-centering the left analog stick to avoid walking into a wall (unless you hold down R2 for a panhandle-style third person perspective, but then you can't sneak around), or c) how friggin' slowly everything seems to move. For an action game, things are unbearably languid, from opening the map or menu screens to picking up and using items to just opening doors.
When you're not throwing you controller down in disgust, you'll probably be reaching for the mute button on your remote. The music that rolls in during combat is typical guitar-driven noise, but the rest of the soundtrack has a more ambient, almost droning quality to it. It's actually not bad, and at times the voice work that melds with it during cutscenes can almost make you forget that once you get back into the game, you'll be wrestling with the controls and camera again -- usually in some kind of boss fight if you just watched a lengthy cutscene.
Aside from some impressively detailed CG (it looks like Namco's A-team that normally works on Tekken did the pre-rendered bits), there's just not enough in place here to make this worth checking out. There was an honest effort, and you can see where the developers tried hard to offer something new, but it should have been obvious even early on that this concept wasn't going to work. Perhaps the next Tekken spin-off will fare a little better, but this one had no place becoming a full game.
