E32000: Hands On With
Illbleed
Has
Climax Graphics learned from Blue Stinger?
May 13, 2000
I
think the premise behind Illbleed is absolutely brilliant.
Essentially House on Haunted Hill - the video game, I’m surprised
that no one has thought of it before. A challenge to survive the
night for millions of dollars, your goal is to survive a mansion
filled with thousands of horrifying events. Fall victim to one of
those events or have a heart attack and your game is over. Pretty
damn cool isn’t it?
I love horror movies and I love horror games, so you know I was
in front of the machine faster than a speeding bullet (well almost,
there was a bit of line, it seems that I’m not the only guy into
this squash). A less than active intro (re: a simple title screen
with a flashing “press start” tickling the eyes) and we were
underway.
The first item that caught my eye was the heart monitor at the
bottom of the screen. A picture of an actual beating heart, this
little gauge provides a constant reminder of your pulse. It was
actually a very cool thing to watch as the closer to danger my
female character became, the higher her pulse rate grew. Out of
nowhere a giant worm creature attacked me and before I knew it I was
crawling for my life in avoidance… after about five minutes of cart
and mouse… he got me.
I was a discouraged broken man. No matter what I attempted to do,
all I could pull off was a terrified crawling move, (either on her
back or on her hands or knees) eventually being ravaged by his
massive crushing jaws. The weapon I had (a baseball bat) didn’t do
too much good against the hulking tube abomination, but I didn’t
figure out how to utilize the control scheme until it was too late,
may own fault. I don’t blame the unnatural, non-responsive
controller set-up one bit.
The camera angle needs work too. Set to automatic for the
E3 demo, the eventual product will have multiple angles
for you to choose from. Unfortunately, the auto-follow had quite a
few problems keeping up with the terror events going on, and often
times left me trying to figure out what just sapped some of my
energy. But hey folks it’s early!
Graphically, the game is hilarious… as in very good. Far superior
to Sega’s other Horror title D2, the well-rendered polygon
visuals seem to be taken straight out of a Joel Shumacher film.
Entertaining and humorous takes on monster attacks made me giggle
more than cringe, but that’s simply because the onscreen action is
so cool I really didn’t have much of a choice. The sheer amount of
blood that sprays out from your wounds in the game is outrageous,
and worth checking out solely on that merit alone.
That’s the best way to describe Illbleed: early. Not
officially on the shelves until the end of the year, the developers
have a solid idea behind them, barring any real production obstacles
and some fixes to the camera engine this one could be hot!
--Jeremy Dunham,
Contibutor,
IGNDC
| 
.gif){kind=small}
.gif)
