This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on July 27th, 2019.
Hello, and
welcome to PlayStation Basement! I am in the middle of moving from one house to
another, but there’s always time for a game review. PlayStation Basement is a
weekly review of an odd or obscure game for the original PlayStation. Games are
rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Now, let’s go!
Continuing
with another game about water (after Depth
and Aquanaut’s Holiday) for the
summer, this week I have Critical Depth
to review. Unlike the previous games in this summer mini-series that featured
psychedelic weirdness and tropical paradises, this is a vehicular combat game
from the creators of Twisted Metal
and Twisted Metal 2, SingleTrac. The
developers did not work on Twisted Metal
3 and made this instead. Critical
Depth was published by GT Interactive in North America and Europe in
October and December of 1997 respectively. I remember seeing this game but
never rented it or bought it until a few years ago. I get this game a bit mixed
up with Shipwreckers! and Dead in the Water. I’ll be taking a look
at those further upstream, but, for now, we plunge into the depths.
The cover
art is pretty decent in either region. In both regions, Jack Keon’s Lockjaw
attacks Joe Skullion’s Death Sled. The North American art has the battle in
full color within some dark depths, while the European release has everything
under a layer of blue. The North American release has a logo like old, aged
metal, and the European release features a wavy, water display. The North
American release also has a big red sticker (printed on the manual itself
though) letting the viewer know that this game is “FROM THE DEVELOPERS WHO KNOW
VEHICULAR COMBAT!”
Graphically,
I’m not particularly impressed with Critical
Depth. It’s overall average for the PlayStation and this type of game. The
ships look decent but small. The arenas are a bit murky and don’t contain many
details. Color is extremely limited. The polygons shift quite a bit during gameplay,
but the frame rate is consistent and snappy. The menus and UIs are a bit dull
too. It’s still fun seeing a ship ahead be destroyed as another opponent flies
overhead though.
The sound is
also not much really. I found the sound effects pretty standard. They’re
nothing too amazing or bad. The music goes for a cinematic-epic sound,
something like Indiana Jones, but it
loops too often during some of the tracks. It’s hard to have sweeping, dramatic
pieces of music when they occur every twenty seconds.
At the most
basic, Critical Depth is Twisted Metal 2. You can pick between
several different characters including the Lovecraftian Order of Nishroch, the
deranged TV host Captain Cutlass, and the environmentalist organization Earth
Hope. The characters’ stories develop throughout the single-player mode which
is all about collecting pods, mythical items that boost a sub’s power and open
up a portal if all five are collected. Each level requires the player to
collect all five pods and go or the portal. Pods can be collected by ramming an
enemy, destroying them, or hitting them with a shaker weapon. There are tons of
different weapons to use other than the shaker to fulfill these means just like
in Twisted Metal. In addition to
shooting, the controls enable you to push one of the face buttons to do one
action or double-press it to do a more powerful version of that action. For
example, the square button accelerates, but double-tapping it turns on a turbo
feature. This is true for breaking (double-tap to reverse), tight turns
(double-tap to slide), and shielding (double-tap to use reflective shield) as
well.
The extra
complexities don’t stop there, and this gave me some trouble. Since the
vehicles are all submersibles, the game also includes more three-dimensional
aspects than cars do. Enemies could be above or below you, and I had to do some
extreme maneuvering to get out of a lock-on. I had some trouble with the
lock-on system myself, as it’s not like Ocarina
of Time or other games where you snap on to the enemy. It’s a soft lock-on,
and it was hard for me to manage when a few enemies were clumped together in a
cramped arena. I had difficulty managing my ammo, shielding, and following a
target all at once, but I think that with more practice, I could get used to
this.
Critical Depth has a decent amount of
content. The characters are all pretty interesting, so it’d be cool to play
through all of the storylines. There are bosses to fight, and unlockable
characters to unlock by completing certain objectives. The game also includes a
co-op story mode and two multiplayer modes: one where you collect pods and one
where you do not. The developers were not wrong to title this game in the way
they did.
Critical Depth receives a Good.
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