AGH Jaguar Review: I-WAR

by Atari

Oh, no.. not another combo space battle/exploration game. Don't we already have these games with Cybermorph, Hover Strike and Battlemorph? Players yet again head out into space (cyberspace in this case) through twenty levels while battling enemies and picking up pods. Your vehicle is an anti-virus tank that's been crafted to destroy mutated databases information that would otherwise travel smoothly along the I-Way, a world information network running from an Override Mainframe Supercomputer. Where the heck do these guys get plots like this? I'm sure they were trying to establish some sort of post-modern, cyberpunk reference, but talk about goofy.

You move around in a 3-D environment, flip a couple of switches, open a few doors, travel through a warp or two, and shoot at enemies that are difficult to distinguish from background objects. Even the crosshairs are difficult to manipulate. What you basically end up with is a game that has you get right in front of opponents and blast them away... there's really no strategy or finess that you can use in combat, since control is poor and aiming is difficult. Once you've picked up all the data clusters in a level, you move on to another stage.

If I-War expanded upon, or even enhanced the genre established by Cybermorph, we could have dealt with it. But this game is inferior in both the graphics and gameplay department, with the only redeeming feature being a split-screen, two play battle mode that's dull and pointless. The puzzles, the mazes, the texture mapping, the gourad shading - none of this really gells together as a complete package. The five different perspectives on three different anti-virus craft aren't going to make up for that either.


Title I-War
Publisher Atari
System Atari Jaguar
Graphics 5
Sound 6
Gameplay 5
Overall 5
Reviewer Keita Iida

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