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By Contributing Writer Jimmy Payne Rating: Good Slave Zero is like a typical roller-coaster ride: It starts off slow, it gets really exciting half-way through, and then it's over before you know it. Slave Zero's single-player mode is fun from beginning to end thanks to the ever-changing missions. Most of the missions differ from one another, and they manage to involve more than simply blowing stuff up. It's also nice that you can switch between first-person and third-person perspectives, and you can also tweak the control set-up to your liking. Another thing that prevents Slave Zero from getting boring is the constant one-way conversation with your teammates. As you go through each level, your teammates will tell you where to go next, help you out with destroying certain bosses, and create tension. The tension comes when there's a dangerous situation and the dramatic, incredibly believable voice acting kicks in. The Artificial Intelligence is excellent for the most part. The enemies seem like more than mindless drones when they do things like dodge your incoming fire. If you hide, enemies will search for you slowly and then call their buddies over once they've found you. The only problem with the AI is that it doesn't quite know how to handle circle-strafing. You can make most enemies look like morons simply by running around them in circles, and on one occasion an enemy actually froze and let me kill him as I circle-strafed. The bosses are also vulnerable to circle-strafing, and this tactic seems to be encouraged because the bosses usually stay in the middle of the arena. The weapon selection in Slave Zero is decent, but it's not one of the game's strongest points. While there are a decent amount of weapons and they are spread out nicely throughout the game, they have all been done before. For example, anyone who has ever played Quake 2 will make the connection between the Hellspike and the Rail Gun. In addition, the graphics don't offer as much eye candy as I expected them to. They don't seem to be a whole lot better than N64-level graphics. The only thing that prevents Slave Zero from being worth buying is the fact that it's way too short. Just when you start to really get into it and think it's a must-have game, it ends. Let's hope that Infogrames makes a sequel with online capabilities and a much longer single-player mode. Send your thoughts on this review to jimmy@mastergamer.com
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