Slave Zero Demo

Reviewer: GhostRider

Publisher: Accolade/Infogrames

Game Engine: Ecstasy Engine

Genre: Action/First Person Shooter

Size: 64.2 MB

System Requirements:

• Windows 95/98

• DirectX 6.0 (DX6) or higher

• Pentium II 233 or better

• 32 MB RAM

• 260 MB available hard drive space

• 3D accelerator card with DX6 compatible drivers

• DX6 compatible Sound Card

Evaluation System:

• Windows 98/Service Pack 1

• DirectX 6.1

• Pentium III 450

• 128 MB RAM

• Asus V3400TNT/TV (nVIDIA Detonator 2.25 drivers)

• Diamond Monster Sound MX300 (Aureal Reference drivers)

This first (or third) person shooter from Accolade/Infogrames appeared to be very promising, but ended up disappointing , to say the least.

In the game you are a citizen warrior, risen from a secret base in the sewer system of futuristic Asian mega-city. Your mission: Become one with the captured 'Slave' unit (a giant robot ala Mech Warrior named Slave Zero) and destroy the evil would be ruler of the world and his Slave Army.

Installation was easy and without error. The graphics were first rate, and the sound was excellent. However the game play at resoloutions of 800x600x16 and above (if you can even call it that) was virtually non-existant. Another annoying thing about this demo was that the option to change resolutions from the in game menus just would not work. Changing resolutions required editing an .ini file in the demo folder.

The game suffered from continual mouse lag and slowness in general. Even when the video settings were set at 800x600x16 with features such as mip-mappping, tri-linear filtering, bump mapping, etc., etc., turned off, the system overclocked to 558MHz and the video card overclocked to 120MHz core/125MHz memory, the game was still choppy and labored.

Overall, the whole thing left me frustrated. Nothing like being teased with what looks to be a kick ass demo, seeing great graphics, then not being able to play!

Even though the release notes said that the game was "...not fully optimized yet and requires a P2 233 or equivalent to function acceptably", I don't see anyone with a CPU slower than 400MHz being able to derive any pleasure from this demo.

The demo did look promising, but I just can't recommend it. If you get a hold of this demo on CD-ROM, you may want to take a look. We'll wait for the game to hit retail shelves and take another look at it then. Maybe by that time Slave Zero will be optimized and game play will be acceptable or hopefully even good.