Voodoo Adventure Casts a 'Shadow'

By AARON CURTISS

Oct. 14, 1999 12 AM PT

“Shadow Man” is a game with lots of promise and a fair amount of play. But in the end, the promise is left unfulfilled and what starts as a freaky voodoo adventure degenerates quickly into an above-par shooter that crisscrosses between the realms of the living and the dead.

For what it is, “Shadow Man” is more than fine. It does a nice job of dressing up a “Tomb Raider”-style shooter with some puzzle and adventure elements. But it could be so much more.

Players assume the role of Mike LeRoi, a 32-year-old college dropout who seeks protection from a gang of thugs by visiting a voodoo priest. Bad idea. The voodoo priest turns our hero into an amnesiac zombie hit man.

He is rescued by a voodoo priestess who helps restore his memory and gives him the power to move back and forth between the worlds of the dead and the living--Deadside and Liveside. Oh, she also demands regular sex. (Clearly, the game is not for young children.)

Anyway, it turns out that Mike--now called Shadow Man--must fight the Deadside forces planning, predictably, to take over the world.

With that kind of back story, a player should expect some pretty cool stuff. I mean, come on. Voodoo. The ability to straddle the line between life and death. A top-hat-wearing sidekick with a human skull for a head and the body of a snake.

When I saw all this at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, I was understandably impressed. And while the game still delivers some strong play, my initial excitement is now more subdued.

“Shadow Man” is available for the PC, Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation, but the graphics vary significantly from platform to platform. On a PC, the dank, dark confines of the beyond are rendered in exquisite detail. A Nintendo 64 outfitted with the Expansion Pak delivers pretty sharp images, but the PlayStation graphics are comparatively clunky.

In each version, play is tight. Although the perspective is third person, the camera does a nice job of following characters without intruding too much on the action.

The PC version of “Shadow Man” requires a Pentium 200 with at least 32 mb of RAM, 350 mb of free hard disk space and a 3D accelerator card.

“Duke Nukem: Zero Hour”

The nice thing about Duke Nukem is that he never pretends to be anything except what he is: a butt-kicking, testosterone-fed caricature. In “Duke Nukem: Zero Hour,” Duke once again sheds his first-person persona, allowing players to control him with a third-person perspective.

Maybe it’s just me, but I liked Duke in the first person--in part because it’s easier to insert myself into his seedy world. As with “Time To Kill,” it can be difficult to control Duke in “Zero Hour,” particularly when aiming. That could drive some novices nutty.

Otherwise, though, “Zero Hour” delivers unto Duke fans all of the grit and humor that got edited out of his first appearance on N64.

“Blue Stinger”

As gorgeous as it is, “Blue Stinger” for Sega Dreamcast quickly gets tiring. This adventure set on an island takes full advantage of Dreamcast’s superior graphics but even the most beautiful game gets boring if it’s not fun.

Pre-scripted animation sequences are part of any good adventure, but “Blue Stinger” relies too heavily on them. And then allows them to plod on far too long.

When players do get to control hero Eliot Ballade, he moves slowly and sometimes awkwardly. Bad guys are not that hard to put down and the puzzles are hardly first-rate. Those sorts of flaws make it tough to care too much what happened on Dinosaur Island.

That’s a killer for an adventure game, which demands players spend hours upon hours digging into the game. It should be fun and exciting. It isn’t in “Blue Stinger.”

“Jet Moto 3”

Despite now being the oldest console on the market, Sony PlayStation is far from dead. Games like “Jet Moto 3” demonstrate that programmers aim to squeeze every last kernel out of PlayStation before it gets replaced.

The “Jet Moto” series offers the sort of mindless romps that video games so ably deliver. Players pilot jet-powered hover bikes--think beefed-up speeder bikes from “Return of the Jedi”--over landscapes as diverse as Western canyons and volcanic islands.

Right off the bat, players notice the water. Designers have given “Jet Moto 3” some of the best-looking water in a PlayStation game. That detail and realism pervades the game--if one forgets that these are futuristic hover bikes.

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Essentials

Shadow Man

* Platform: PC/Sony PlayStation/Nintendo 64

* Publisher: Acclaim

* ESRB* rating: Mature

* Price: $39.99/$59.99

* Bottom line: Missed potential

Duke Nukem: Zero Hour

* Platform: Nintendo 64

* Publisher: GT Interactive

* ESRB rating: Mature