The year is 2083. As a result of environmental pollution, most of the earth is now covered by vast wastelands and contaminated deserts inhabited by horrific mutations and dangerous outlanders. Thankfully, there are still a few large cities in which the whole of the world’s population resides. All these giant mega cities are ruled by one global government, which is weak. As a result of the global government’s weakness, the major corporations of the mega cities have become a law unto themselves. These mega corporations want Outlaws for hire. Outlaws are your modern odd job vagabond. They venture out into the wastelands and contaminated shelters/fortresses/prisons performing different tasks for whomever they were hired by. These areas they venture off to are inhabited with mutants/outlanders and are deemed dangerous, so they are called Restricted Areas.
I’d like to introduce you to Restricted Area, an RPG title from Master Creating. In Restricted Area, you assume the role of four different Outlaws: Johnson (a former weapons expert), Victoria (the first known human with magical powers), Kenji (a master sword-fighter), and Jessica (a talented computer hacker who is always in escort by a flying robot drone). Each of these characters has their own set of unique storylines and missions.
Gameplay Ala Diablo?
"There’s no castles to explore or catacombs to plunder, but you’ll find Restricted Area to have an engine that strongly resembles Blizzard’s hit RPG Diablo"
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There’s no castles to explore or catacombs to plunder, but you’ll find Restricted Area to have an engine that strongly resembles Blizzard’s hit RPG Diablo. The point-and-click scheme might seem a little bit primitive, but it actually makes for one intense gaming session. All you really need to play Restricted Area is a mouse. There are commands on the keyboard, but they aren’t at all necessary. You can configure the three mouse buttons to do whatever you want- move, attack, etc. I had mine set up so one button moved, the other fired, and the scroll-button used a skill. If you’ve played Diablo, you’ll know that this is exactly that with a futuristic theme thrown on top. Thankfully, Diablo was an excellent title. The level-up system is just like Diablo as well, using experience points to attain new levels and skill/attributes points being awarded as a new level is reached. Each character has two sets of skills- universal skills, and personal skills. Universal skills are skills that every character can have- health regeneration, luck, etc. Personal skills deal with the character at hand. For example, if you are playing as Johnson some of his skills are damage boosts for different weapons; it’s all relative.
Beautiful Cities, Desolate Deserts, Bloodied Prisons, Oh My!
Restricted Area sports some beautiful graphics.
"Using the IRIS engine, which is the fastest and most powerful engine ever written for an isometric game, Master Creating was able to put together some amazing visual effects including shadows, rain, fog, smoke, dust, fire, water, explosions and reflections."
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Using the IRIS engine, which is the fastest and most powerful engine ever written for an isometric game, Master Creating was able to put together some amazing visual effects including shadows, rain, fog, smoke, dust, fire, water, explosions and reflections. They all look wonderful- especially the explosions! The environments give the game a truly great and eerie feeling. I wouldn’t classify this game as a horror game, but there are some freaky looking foes to take out. It’s also a quite bloody game. Blood gets everywhere as you slaughter your enemies, and puddles of blood flow out of the dead bodies after they’ve been dead for around 20 seconds. Now that I’ve made half of my readers puke, I’d like to tell the other half that this game has wonderful animation and it all flows very smoothly. I only had a few minor graphical errors, the main one being slow down when running through the main town. I had a couple other small glitches with my flame thrower- the flames weren’t where they really should have been, but it was barely noticeable. The game can get amazingly intense, and I experienced no slowdown even when there were enemies all over the room. I’ve seen at least 50 enemies on-screen at once and haven’t experienced an ounce of slowdown.
"One thing that did bug me, however, was that the cutscenes looked like a catastrophe. They literally ran, most of the time, frame-by-frame"
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One thing that did bug me, however, was that the cutscenes looked like a catastrophe. They literally ran, most of the time, frame-by-frame. I’m still not quite sure if it’s just my computer or if they for some reason need an unusually powerful graphics processor to play them well with. Either way, it really got on my nerves. Like Whiptail’s monstrosity of a game, Psychotoxic, the CGs were very poorly rendered and very bland. Other than that, the visuals are pretty clean.
The Life Of An Outlaw
Restricted Area focuses on mission-based gameplay. You begin the game in a futuristic town-setting where there are various shops that you will frequent regularly. In these shops are the shopkeepers whom you’ll get to know very well as you progress. There are a few different agents around town who walk around holding briefcases- these are your bosses. You go to them when you want a job. When they assign you a job, they’ll tell you what it pays and send you on your way. Now it’s time to head over to Jason’s docking bay. Jason is a local transporter with a very nice ship that you can fly to your mission locations with- however, he must fly it and he requires a hefty percentage of what you make off the missions - 25% for me. You are allowed to bargain with Jason before your first mission, but he wouldn’t accept my low offer of 10% so I ended up with 25%. As you complete missions, you gain a reputation. Vice versa, if you die during missions or fail the goal, your reputation decreases. Reputation can mean a lot of things- better missions, more interesting conversations, better loan offers. Shakur, the local pimp and loan taker allows you to take out loans according to your reputation. As you progress through the missions, you will earn experience and level up your Outlaw. Over time, they become very powerful and nothing can stop them! Missions range from several different categories: Termination (basically becoming a Hitman for a day), Persuasion (convincing someone to give info to the person you’re working for), Mutant Cleaning (killing all the mutants in a facility so the company you’re working for can use it again), Rescue rRescue a person in peril from all the mutants), etc... Certain agents will have completely different missions, where as others will have default set missions like I just mentioned. The difficulty is all relative to the pay.
When you receive your pay, you are free to spend it on whatever you want. You can buy new weapons from the weapons shop, upgrade your equipment or just save your money for something special.
Invisible Implants?
One of the features I always liked in Diablo was being able to equipment on the character sprites. Unfortunately, you’ll see none of this in Restricted Area. Implants are accrued throughout the game whether you find them or buy them from the Doc. You would think that all these cool implants like cyber arms and metal legs would show up on your character, but they don’t. It’s like that with every item in the game except weapons. You can’t change your character’s appearance at all whatsoever, which was a sort of downside.
What’s So Good About Killing Mutants, Anyway?
You would think gameplay like this could get pretty tedious, right? Right. Restricted Area definitely lacks the fun and adventure that Diablo has. Almost all the environments you play in are the same. All the maps have different layouts, of course, but the environment ae always the same. There are some minor differences, but it all boils down to a dark and dingy prison or shelter full of dead bodies. You sometimes begin missions outside in a desert-like area, but you’ll never find any plush forests or waterfalls in this game. Diablo is short and sweet- 15 levels of intense action. Restricted Area seems like it goes on forever with the tedious mission types and similar environments. I’ll admit it’s quite a challenge at times, but when you die in the middle of a big mission be prepared to be very upset. In missions where you must rescue or escort someone, it’s a serious pain to see them killed because they will randomly run into groups of enemies. Even though you weren’t wounded, you fall over dead just because they died. Not only unrealistic, but horribly stupid. Sooner or later you are going to wonder: Why am I playing this game anyway? Sure, it’s fun...but aren’t the cinematics supposed to be rewarding? It’s more like torture to watch them frame-by-frame, anyway. I do have to admit, nothing beats busting out your best flamethrower and unleashing hell on a 10-pack of mutants. Seeing them all burn at the same time and fall over dead is amazingly satisfying.
Authentic Prostitute Voice Models
Restricted Area has a wonderful variety of sounds for each set of enemies. I still wonder how some people manage to create these sorts of sounds! They all sound very creepy and always make you want to blast the living crap out of them. The voice talents over at Master Creating fit their roles perfectly- I’d especially like to note that Jenny, the local prostitute’s voice was done in 100% authenticity. She sounds just like the girls I know here in California! I can’t argue much with the audio in Restricted Area
Worth The Buy?
At an MSRP of $39.99, I wouldn’t quite recommend buying this title. If you could rent PC games, I would definitely say give Restricted Area a rent and see if it’s what you really want. It is definitely what it claims to be, a "..good mix of fast paced action and intricate RPG storylines..." but the tediousness of it will cause many gamers to put this one on the bottom shelf. It was definitely fun for the first 15 hours, but when I came to hour 20 it just began to become boring. If you can get your character past level 50, I salute you. It’s actually possible to level up to level 100. I’m guessing it would take 150 hours of hardcore mutant-cleaning to reach that status. The game’s lasting appeal is somewhat bland. You are rewarded with new implants, customized implants, new weapons, customized weapons, and credits, but there is no real sense of accomplishment once you beat it. The fact that each character has a different story really does add to the lasting appeal and makes this title worth buying to a certain degree. Do yourself a favor, try the demo before you buy it. If a mutant hack-and-slash fest is your type of game, this may be a keeper.
