Rez

Posted Mar 1, 2002 by TBO.com

Updated Jan 18, 2008 at 04:28 PM

System: Sony PlayStation 2

Publisher: Sega

Reviewer’s rating: B

Game type: It’s a “musical shooting game,” whatever that means.

Kind of like: That really trippy part at the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey” set to trance music. And you get to shoot stuff.

Best feature: The game’s quirky controls and visual design are a breath of fresh air.

Worst feature: The gloss of novelty dulls rather quickly, leaving you with a rather ordinary shooter.

The bottom line: Judging from the back of the box, the bedrock of this futuristic shooting game is the fairly intriguing notion that its rhythmic soundtrack should sync with the player’s actions.

You’d create your own music by shooting enemies to elicit a snare-drum sound or a burst of synthesizer as needed.

Of course, it doesn’t quite work out that way. You get no bonus for obliterating your foes on the beat, and even when your shots are syncopated they’re automatically “released” in time with the pulsating music. In short, the interaction between gameplay and soundtrack is tenuous, at best.

But the game’s stylish sensory overload of light and sound — and the resulting frenzy of button-mashing — is not without its charms. The controls, while extraordinary, are easy to master and the 50 levels combine the better elements of old-school shooters with an abstract, postmodern design.