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Death by Degrees - Hands On Preview
Chris Leyton
12/01/2005
Nina Williams stars in this rather confused Tekken spin-off...
Spin-Offās to popular franchises are often enough to send the warning sirens into action, you only need to recall the dreadful Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub Zero to realise how detrimental such a title can be to an established franchise. So itās the turn of NAMCO to exploit the Tekken franchise, with Death by Degrees starring the feisty Nina Williams; can this break the mould, does it have any hope of changing our opinion?
From our playtest with the latest build of the title, the game appears to be a strange amalgamation of various genres, perhaps the description of āResident Evil meets Metal Gear Solid meets Tekkenā would be an easier depiction of what the game entails.
Set prior to the first Iron Fist tournament featured within the original Tekken videogame, Death by Degrees focuses on the events that lead up to Ninaās involvement within the long-running contest. Centring on a secret organisation identified as the Kometa, which is known to hold a powerful weapon named āSalaciaā and has been deemed as a deadly terrorist threat. The action begins aboard a luxury cruise ship, where the executives of the Kometa organisation have gathered in anticipation of an underground fighting contest. Sent in to investigate the organisation and the threat that they pose, Nina enters the tournament and becomes its champion. However itās not long before Nina finds herself imprisoned, and discovers that a fellow agent assigned to the mission has gone missing.
Naturally the emphasis on the game is placed on combat, with the developers incorporating a combat-system that utilises both thumbsticks for 360 degrees combat in a manner similar to Blade 2, Rise to Honour and several others. To be fair this method hasnāt enjoyed a great deal of success in the past; however Death by Degrees looks likely to be the best implementation of this system weāve seen so far. The game features an incredible variety of manoeuvres utilising both thumbsticks, ranging from standard punch-kick combos to Ninaās trademark submission techniques. In a nod towards the RPG genre, combat grants you experience points which can then be used to unlock even more techniques, encompassing a list that would make even the mighty Bruce Lee blush. Finally combat also boosts Ninaās Focus Gauge, which when full allows Nina to pull off a special attack mode, presenting an X-Ray image of your opponent and allowing you to target vital organs for an instant kill.
This time around Nina can rely on more then just her own fists, with the ability to wield a variety of arms such as SMG, Swords and Melee weapons; whilst naturally the game also includes the customary stealth kills that seem to have become a necessity with this type of game.
This in a nut-shell describes the vast majority of the game, however as we stated earlier in the article, Death by Degrees is a strange combination. The game features an extraordinary amount of Resident Evil styled obscure puzzles, such as picking up a cog to open a door later in the adventure. Nina can also scan the fingerprints of fallen opponents to gain access to secret areas, although we didnāt get the opportunity to check this feature out in too much detail. The mishmash of ideas creates the feeling that the game doesnāt really have a true identity, whilst the action of continuously pressing the X button to uncover items (ala Resident Evil) leads to a very antiquated feeling as though youāre playing the very first PSOne titles ā“ weāve certainly come along way since that!
Another aspect that continues to further the general mess of the game comes in regard to the camera system. Employing fixed camera angles predominantly in a manner similar to the Resident Evil series, players can shift this with the R2 shoulder button to a more traditional third-person perspective which also allows you to rotate the camera. The strange aspect comes from the fact that holding onto the R2 button also makes Nina run, creating highly frustrating moment when youāre trying to sneak up on somebody and thus want manual control over the camera but scream out load when the running movement alerts guards to your location.
Other moments of extreme frustration stem from the sheer lack of choice presented to the player, often you have to solve things the way that the developers intended, and thatās that. One particular example relatively soon within the game saw Nina acquire a set of infra-red goggles; a short distance afterwards the goggles are automatically operated and present you with a series of lasers to navigate through. Having inched through the laser grid, I mistakenly tapped the direction control instead of holding on to it and watched in disbelief as Nina pulled off an evasive manoeuvre and rolled into the laser grid ā“ fair enough, until a machine-gun turret stirred into action and promptly nailed down Nina with no opportunity whatsoever to evade this or duck for cover. Again no major criticism (apart from my gaming skills), until the game restarted right back towards the start of the level ā“ the moral of the story is to make sure to save wherever you find a checkpoint.
To make matters even worse, having finally got back to that area and made sure to cross the grid slowly on the second attempt, I was greeted with the same problem on the opposite side of the room ā“ this time however we were having to walk towards the camera, nigh-on impossible and confounded by the fact that changing the camera behind Nina makes her run, which is certainly not advised for trying to inch your way through a laser-grid; oh the frustration, which certainly wasnāt helped by the game asking if we wanted to āChange the Level to Beginner?ā
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