Messiah Review

Dave Perry's masterpiece is finally finished against all odds and after months of postponing. The project Messiah was conceived some three years ago when Dave first mentioned a game with a revolutionary graphical engine and a unique concept. We have no idea what in the world went wrong, but this game would certainly be much better off if it had appeared at least a year earlier. This way we got a controversial game instead of a big hit.

Unlike most games, the protagonist in question isn't a muscular superhero with a Rambo complex, nor a psychotic soldier with half of US military arsenal in his right pocket: It's just a little barehanded angel named Bob, sent by the Lord somewhere in the beginning of the 21st century to prevent the imminent self-destruction of the Earth. Bob has the capability to posses any living being and control its actions. So, instead of classical weapons, Bob uses the special capabilities of the characters he possessed - armed guards and cops are used for combat; scientists are used for opening passes; the workers for safe passage through high radiation zones. The way to the chief villain is long and painstaking and requires skillful use of given characters to be completed. Bob can also exist out of hosts, but he is just a sitting duck that way because he is too slow and conspicuous (I always thought angels were supposed to be invisible). On the other hand, his tiny, chicken wings are useful for flying short distances and descending from great heights.

As you probably have already concluded for yourself, Messiah is a refreshingly peculiar game. Still, it remains an action game with the golden rule - Shoot first, ask questions later. The game is also rich in scenes of extreme violence, not at all suitable for the youngest of players. It will often impose problems that require some thinking, which makes it look like an adventure from time to time. On some later levels, you will be able to possess animals as well as humans (rats, for instance, vital for finishing certain levels, and giant mutants). Each new character opens a variety of new possibilities and combinations, which does make the game more difficult, but nonetheless more attractive.

The control system is a bit too complicated and ill adapted to the keyboard, so I sincerely recommend you using a joy pad or some other control device with as many programmable buttons as possible. The graphical engine is truly outstanding with its real-time detail level shift capability. The player doesn't have to configure texture and lighting effects quality, number of polygons and other, often ambiguous graphical parameters before starting the game. Instead of that, the game sets all those characteristics depending on the current frame rate. This eliminates all possible slowdowns in animation and performance drops occurring when a large number of polygons are present on screen.

Messiah, unfortunately, has several inconvenient bugs that should never appear in a final release of a game, especially not after all those years of development. The levels seam somehow incomplete with overlapping textures, and the game occasionally simply locks the computer down, leaving you no other choice than to go for the reset switch... Let us hope the patches will solve these problems. The general impression is also affected by the difficulty of the game caused by incoherently stated missions and weird problems with even stranger solutions. This can make playing quite frustrating, so I will recommend Messiah only to the somewhat older and more experienced players in search of a properly challenging game.