Be an Avenging Angel in 'Messiah'; Slash-Em-Up 'Maken X' Unexciting

By AARON CURTISS

June 22, 2000 12 AM PT

At the risk of being sacrilegious, the messiah is a diaper-wearing angel named Bob. And he’s come Earthside not only to save the planet, but to stop the madmen who run it from opening the gates of hell in the hopes of getting to know Satan better.

Such is the premise of “Messiah,” the most imaginative and inventive PC action game in a long, long time. The world has gone to pot where “knowledge and personality are just a dollar symbol away” and “life is a cheap commodity.” Sounds like Los Angeles on a bad day. Bob is here to put it right.

Now, plenty of games have put players in the role of avenging angels. What better way to make a violent, gory game seem like something more than have all the heinous acts perpetrated in the name of some good Old Testament smiting of the wicked? But no other game has done it so well.

In his native state, Bob is not much of a warrior. He has no weapons. No armor. But he does have a special talent that makes “Messiah” so cool: He can take over the bodies of anyone and make them his puppet. So when Bob falls from heaven, he slips into the body of a cop.

If that were all there was to “Messiah,” the blasting would commence shortly after Bob’s arrival and we’d be treated to a fairly standard third-person action game. But the genius of “Messiah” lies in its demand that no one body can do it all. Bob must slip from vessel to vessel so he can make his way through the madness that humanity has created.

Cops are great for blasting things and people. Commanders can get places mere cops cannot. Scientists have access to labs. Ordinary folk can move about unnoticed. All of this makes Bob a very versatile little guy. Sometimes he’s shooting at stuff. Other times he’s just passing through.

The key to success is in acting like the body Bob inhabits. A scientist who grabs a gun is going to be greeted by a squad of angry cops. Cops who start shooting their buddies are going to end up at the wrong end of a service pistol. So Bob has to be careful. The bodies he inhabits are mortal flesh.

And jumping from one body to another is no easy task. He must leave the body of his current vessel and then dive into the body of his next. Being outside leaves Bob exposed and the natural reaction most of the characters in the game have to an angel aiming to take over their body is to shoot at him.

The worlds that Bob explores are beautiful and foreboding and the action they hold is unrelenting. It’s impossible to dwell too long in the game’s cerebral elements because dawdling puts Bob at risk of being discovered. So players have to think on the fly.

Brilliant.

The system requirements are not for the weak. “Messiah” requires a Pentium II 233 with 64 mb of RAM, 600 mb of available hard disk space and a graphics accelerator with 8 mb of RAM. The publisher recommends a Pentium II 300 with 128 mb of RAM and a graphics accelerator with 16 mb of RAM. I played on a Pentium II 333 with 128 mb of RAM and a 3dfx Voodoo 3 2000.

“Maken X”

Body snatching also drives the story of “Maken X,” a thoroughly below average first-person slasher for Sega Dreamcast. Notice the wording: First-person slasher. In an effort to find a niche in an over-crowded genre, designers replaced the big guns with a big blade that has a mind of its own.

See, the aforementioned sentient sword is actually an artificial life form called Maken. Its talent is the ability to extract “psi”--the human spirit that resides in another dimension--from other characters and modify it.

Confused?

Don’t worry. Players can do just fine if they understand only the following: Earth is in danger; they are a Japanese girl named Kay Sagami; they possess a big sword that can take over the bodies of bad guys by brainjacking them.

Basically, it all boils down to a first-person adventure that could have been really exciting and innovative. But the game quickly degenerates into a series of close-contact knife fights--except some of the bad guys brought guns. Players slash and slash and slash some more as they work through mazes that are nothing special.

So simplistic are the fighting sequences that players just have to tap the X button on the Dreamcast controller to slash. Combination move? Tap X a few times quickly. All of this means players can succeed fairly well by hitting X madly every time a bad guy comes into view. Worked for me.

Add to all this a series of animated sequences that are just plain awful--I mean, the characters’ mouths don’t even move when they talk--and “Maken X” amounts to a title that really should not have been released.

“MediEvil II”

In these, the waning days of the Sony PlayStation era, it’s nice to see games like “MediEvil II” to remind us how much life the system has in it. With just four months until PlayStation 2 hits store shelves, it would be understandable for designers to focus their attention and energy on the new 128-bit system.

But they have not forsaken the millions of PlayStation owners who still want to get the most out of their rigs’ remaining days. “MediEvil II” follows the adventures of Sir Daniel Fortesque, a long-dead warrior from the 13th century. In the original game, Sir Dan was awakened from his eternal slumber to fight the wizard Zarok, who had summoned an army of the dead with the intent of world domination.

This time, Sir Dan’s remains are on display at the Great Museum in London and he is rousted to fight off an evil industrialist named Lord Palethorp, who has stumbled upon the same book of spells that Zarok used to muster his army of the dead.

Sir Dan’s job is to send all these walking corpses back to the netherworld. It’s tougher than it sounds. Because all these skinbags are already dead, killing them is problematic. Lopping off a head or an arm only slows them down. Like Monty Python’s Dark Knight, the only way to stop these guys is to dice them up into bite-size bits.

“MediEvil II” is more than just a simple slashfest, though. Players can remove Sir Dan’s head and put it atop a hand, which scrambles around in search of goodies. Or players can put Sir Dan’s head on a new body to engage in some underworld boxing. The range of weapons and play modes is incredible.

Besides, it’s really funny. Along his journey through London, Sir Dan gets help from a wise-cracking ghost named Winston, buys weaponry from The Spiv and falls in love with a mummified Egyptian princess who thinks the upside of having internal organs removed is it gives her “the most amazingly trim waistline.”

That’s quality.

Aaron Curtiss is participating in a Times management training program, where he currently serves as assistant to the senior vice president of advertising. He has no financial dealings with the companies he covers. To comment on a column or to suggest games for review, send e-mail to aaron.curtiss@latimes.com.

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Essentials

Maken X

* Platform: Sega Dreamcast

* Publisher: Atlus

* ESRB* rating: Mature

* Price: $60

* Bottom line: Below average

MediEvil II

* Platform: Sony PlayStation

* Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

* ESRB rating: Teen