Restricted Area
A rare PC RPG that isn’t an MMO. Is it worth your hard-earned shekels?
Tags: Restricted Area Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Jul 18th, 2005
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Restricted Area (title page) | 1-2 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action RPG | Yes | ||
 |
Restricted Area faces an uphill battle. It has no glitzy license or pre-established series upon which to rely for automatic sales. The publisher, Whiptail Interactive, isn’t as well-known as Microsoft Game Studios, Konami, SquareEnix, Sony Online or a number of others I could list here. And it has not enjoyed the benefits of a huge ad campaign that includes TV spots and sponsoring a WWE pay-per-view.
 |
But despite all these factors, Restricted Area is an RPG worth your time. Set in a cyberpunk world just under 100 years into the future, you play an outlaw for hire, sent on missions no one else will take, in areas overrun by post-nuclear mutants and other ghastlies. Learning who to trust and who to keep a distance from will aid you well, though the game’s payoffs are not always immediate.
 |
The graphics are the loveliest you’ll find this side of a pixel-shading-capable graphics card. They are propelled by the powerful IRIS engine, a two-year development project created specifically for this game; it enables real-time visual and environmental effects that include dynamic lights and shadows, rain, fog, smoke, dust, fire, water, explosions and reflections, all of them mighty fine-looking, too. It’s eye-candy for those of us who don’t yet have a pixel-shading-capable PC.
 |
An advanced combat system allows you to switch weapons on the fly and keep up the pace of the game; there are four players to choose from, enhancing replay appeal. The developers promise an “unlimited number” of computer-generated subquests and levels, to make playing through each time just a bit different and unique. And there are 75 skills to explore in the game, each of them with 10 skill levels, for an impressive amount of character-development depth. Through branching storylines based off dialogs and cut-scenes, your relationship to other characters can actually change over the course of the game, with noticeable in-game impact. For example, you rely on one character as your fly-boy, getting you from the city to a restricted area and back again. Initially, he’ll ask for 25 percent of your money as his fee. As the game goes on, there will be opportunities to treat him nice or blow him off; treat him nice and his fee will go down, sometimes dramatically; blow him off and they’ll skyrocket. And that’s just one example.
 |
Smartly designed, the initial dungeons are challenging but not too long, allowing you to act smartly to avoid an unsuccessful mission. As you grow in power, the dungeons get deeper and harder to beat. Playing it smart with your skills can balance out the challenge level as it escalates. For example, I decided I loved flamethrowers, so I poured a lot of my points into those related skills and pretty soon I wasn’t dying in mid-dungeon anymore. Especially after pouring some money in to having my flame-thrower revved up by the local arms dealer. Of course, I was playing as a character who excelled in weaponry; three other characters are available, each with their own individual strengths, to add variety to the style of play.
 |
Once you get your character fully pimped out, the game really takes off, becoming more about story and less about survival. The basic storyline is a solid conspiracy/high tech concept piece that bears some resemblance to movies like Bladerunner and The Matrix. While the essentials of each mission are not startlingly original (fetch this, save that person, blow up something) it is in the telling where lies the art. Fast-paced, enjoyable and addictive, Restricted Area is designed for the PC gamer who desires console-style immersiveness.
 |
Now, the game can go online, via GameSpy, and that allows two-player cooperative play. Although restricted to only two players and although the main mission does not play into the online version of the game, there’s plenty of fun to be had via online mode, though it is by no means an MMO on the scale of Guild Wars. Think of it as more of an old-school online play option; it’s not the main thrust of the game, but you can enjoy it with a friend. While MMO-addicts may not find it very appealing, they have dozens of games coming out every year now to scratch that itch; Restricted Area is a primarily-offline RPG for those of us who don’t like paying forever, or tying up our internet connection all day, to play a game. Although Restricted Area is 56K-friendly, it plays more smoothly over a broadband connection due to the graphics-intensive nature of the game. Still, it’s one of the top offline PC RPGs of the year so far.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
| + Solid, mature storyline with a cyberpunk setting. + Top-notch graphic/game engine, two years in the making, created just for this game – with no pixel-shading required! + Deep, immersive combat and player-development systems. + Fun to play, well-designed missions that grow in challenge as you grow in power. | 8.7 |
| What Doesn't | |
| — Some will find the online option rather limited; go play an MMO! — An awful high potential for mid-dungeon death in the first five hours of game play. | |
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Despite the odds stacked against it, Whiptail Interactive delivers a solid offline RPG in a year dominated by MMOs. Restricted Area is definitely worth your time and money. | |
[ Post the first comment | View related posts ]
Tags: Restricted Area
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Jul 18th, 2005 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
