The Final Word game review

Ghen War -- Sega

The once helpful Ghen who fled to the Earth for shelter from their conflict, have now turned and are bent on destruction. You are a member of a maintenance crew in deep space who are the only people who know the truth of what's going on. You must fight the Ghen across the solar system in this 3-D, first person perspective game. Sega presents Ghen War for play on the Saturn.

E.Phoenix
Hey... somebody must have spanked the coders at Sega: VF2, Sega Rally, and now the impressive Ghen War. Sega is demonstrating that the Saturn is a pretty powerful system after all. Ghen War unfolds with some excellent FMV that lays the foundation for a really cool story. One of the impressive things about this game is the way the enemies act: beetle-like tanks bob and roll over the rough landscape and if you blast an enemy on a mountain the schrapnel rolls down the side. GW is very strong graphically with very smooth movement and exceptional character animation. Of the music, the in-game industrial-style snippets are pretty cool but the intro music from our friends, the "bygone dogs", totally blows (guys... what's with the cheese metal all of a sudden). Even though the "bygone dogs" are credited with all the music, I'm pretty sure that they did not compose or perform the in-game music because some of it appears on a CD sampler that Sega handed out at last winter's CES and the Ghen War song isn't credited to them. Maybe they just changed their name. I just don't understand why they are Sega's pet band all of a sudden when their style of noise just doesn't fit the games in which they have appeared. Anyway, back to more important things, GW's difficulty level is just about right (pretty damn hard). I hope Sega is finally on a roll with softs that justify the Saturn and help clean up what is, in my opinion, Sega's tarnished reputation.

R.I.P.
Cool... So far, this is one of the most gripping action-type games I've played on this platform... ok, well it's the only game of its kind that I've played the platform. But it's good! The cinemas are really good, both graphically and story wise. The actual game environment is very rich in details, and all of the enemies not only interact with you, of course, but they interact with each other. For instance on one level I blew this huge robot to hell with a missile of which the shrapnel and blast ripped apart the enemy next to him, and put a crater in the ground. Needless to say, this impressed the hell out of me. Overall, the graphics in the game are cool and really help pull you into the game, as do the sound effects. As far as music and sound goes... well... the Bygone Dogs are to blame. And as far as the theme song goes, it's bad -- bad meaning sucks (are they really trying to rip of the sound of several bands at once, or can they just not play?). BUT, as far as the incidental music of the levels, the music is fantastic. Maybe the Dogs should stick exclusively to incidentals... then again, Spencer Nilsen produced them on this game so... maybe it was a fluke. ANYWAYS... forget about that. This game is really good, so if you like first person perspective (Doom-like) games, then you have got to pick this one up.

------ 43.5/50 -------		--E.Phoenix-	---R.I.P.--
Graphics		4.5	5.0
Sound		4.0	4.0
Gameplay/Control		4.0	5.0
Longevity/Playability		4.0	4.5
Overall		4.0	4.5
Total		20.5	23.0

(12/95)