Apocalypse

By the late-’90s, the gaming industry had built up a noticeable inferiority complex. Developers, journalists, and hardcore fans lamented that video games were starting to pull the same audience and sales numbers as a Hollywood film, but weren’t getting anywhere near the recognition. Full Motion Video games tried to ape motion pictures directly and failed, so now expensive production values and “cinematic gameplay” were seen as the next way to legitimize video games (and draw in more customers, of course). It makes sense that Activision decided to headline its upcoming action title with one of action movies’ biggest real-life stars.

Meanwhile, Bruce Willis was enjoying renewed popularity post-Pulp Fiction. He leveraged this by accepting just about any project that would let him play a smarmy, squinting wiseass. When Activision came at him with just such a role – plus the chance to be at the forefront of an entertainment revolution – he accepted with squinty interest. And let’s also be honest; games were finally bringing in enough revenue to afford him. It’s why he’s starring in a game now, instead of some FMV title from 1993.

The plan was ambitious. Willis went through cutting-edge motion capture sessions to pin down his saucy swagger. His face was laser-scanned and mapped upon a digital character model, apparently an industry first. He allegedly recorded “several movies” worth of game dialogue, all to portray Trey Kincaid, your advanced AI mercenary sidekick.

Wait, sidekick? The late-’90s also saw a mostly-stumbling push for advanced NPC intelligence. Players had been demanding smarter teammates (still going on today), while processing power had increased enough for developers to believe they could pull it off. Half-Life and Unreal got an outsized amount of praise for having soldiers that didn’t just run directly at you, Daikatana‘s infamous AI buddy system was a flop, and Kingpin tried to get hire-able NPC mercs to prove their worth. Even GoldenEye tried to bring classic Bond Girl teamwork over from the films, though Natalya ended up significantly less useful than she was in the movie.

Well, advanced AI clearly didn’t work here. Apocalypse fell from a 1997 release to November 1998, while the sidekick part was quietly dropped. Marketing spin was that “people would rather play as Bruce Willis!” but that doesn’t cover such a major course correction that threw out years of work. Also, all that recorded dialogue was meant for a supporting character. The original plan had you controlling a nerdy nano-scientist, while Willis the Bruce was your ass-kicking defender. Now, he’s both – a desperate researcher on the run after being imprisoned by global cult leader, The Reverend. Shifting Bruce to the sole protagonist, well… Apocalypse tangibly feels like a game made from pieces of a different project.

Neversoft was hired to turn these scraps into a finished game in under a year. What they’ve come up with is a flashy roller coaster ride. Apocalypse was out to modernize the dual-stick shooter, with all the wildly dynamic camera moves that 3D characters and environments unlock. You change perspectives almost as often as you change weapons, following Trey from high and behind as he plows through mutants in the sewers, from the side as he dodges guards shooting through glass windows, or even from the front as he runs toward the camera with a boss in pursuit.

Levels are stacked with destructible objects and waves of ineffective bad guys. Pixelated blood sprays from blasted troopers, while exploding crates send fire sprites and polygons flying. As long as you’re moving forward, action will be rushing up to meet you. If you only have a standard PS controller, you’ll control Trey with the D-Pad and use combinations of face buttons to aim in eight different directions. It’s the exact same setup as Super Smash TV and it works just as well. If you have a Dual Shock, now you get the full range of moving and aiming. This seems the intended way to play, though it was occasionally tough to keep the right stick on target as the camera whizzes around.

There are eight weapon pickups with limited ammo for all. Flamethrowers light dudes on fire, the Rip Laser’s lightning stream magnetizes to enemies, while rockets and grenades cause heavy damage to breakable architecture and vehicles alike. The manual claims certain weapons are best matched against certain enemies, but I didn’t see this in practice. Low-level goons fly apart in bloody chunks without much effort, while only the flamethrower actually seems to stun foes. No powerup lasts very long, so you’re mostly grabbing what falls out of a blown-up crate and dumping it immediately into whatever’s around. You can switch weapons with L2 to save favorites for later encounters, but you’re regularly given powerups just before they’ll be useful.

Apocalypse has some great moments, to be sure. Bruce blasts his way across Fifth Element-inspired rooftops, neon city streets, murky sewers (it’s the ’90s!), and some later hellish landscapes. You’ll get neat 3D effects throughout, like following him straight down as he hops among ledges in a pit, across crumbling platforms in a wide-open cavern, or between flying cars while the floor is literally lava. You’re also (usually) allowed to set your own pace. No level is timed, with both new bad guys and new camera moves only triggered by moving forward. The 3D environment lets you hang back instead, trading careful fire with distant enemies or checking around for secret stashes. There’s no barrier shoving you along to the next screen.

Graphics mostly hold up their end of the bargain, with impressive draw distances and frequent use of eye-catching colored lighting. There’s some dithering, but it’s manageable, with a variety of textures that generally hold up (barring unavoidable warping). Plenty of 3D enemies get packed onto the screen at once, laying down fields of fire with frequent explosions as cover gets destroyed. The tradeoff is a highly inconsistent framerate, with noticeable slowdown when many things are happening at once. The rooftops and final level probably show this the most, regularly dropping frames into the teens. It’s never unplayable, while the visual showcase looks great for the era and is worth the lost frames.

All that praise given, I didn’t love the game. I can’t remember if I owned it in 1998, but I definitely at least rented it, and my experience today still matches my memory and the middling contemporary reviews. Despite taking under two hours to beat – plus the ability to save to memory card after each level – I found I had to constantly force myself to pick the game back up and tackle the next level. I just wasn’t looking forward to playing it.

First, the plot is all over the place. They couldn’t hide how awkwardly re-edited it was. There are Four (nano-tech) Horsemen of the Apocalypse that you will fight as bosses, and that’s about as far as you can understand on the cutscenes alone. The manual does a commendable job of setting up the full backstory, while some voice-overs help give direction to scenes that were clearly rendered for something else entirely. But overall, don’t expect to follow the plot through the game alone. Nor should you expect a satisfying resolution. After defeating the Big Bad, you get an abrupt, confusing cutscene. At best, it’s teasing a sequel that never came.

Next, I think there’s too much focus on spectacle and not enough on gameplay. Weapon powerups are fun, but they’re drained in seconds. Meanwhile, your default machine gun has infinite ammo, excellent rage, and reasonable damage. You can kill anything with it, given enough time, and never need to let up on the trigger – the Dual Shock rumbles so steadily that it loses all meaning. Playing feels much the same, shooting dudes until it loses all meaning. Enemies simply run into range and you hose them down. I would drift off into mindless patterns of strafing left and right while throwing lead downrange, which was good enough to dodge most attacks.

Generous health, extra lives, and frequent checkpoints mean no one’s out to make this difficult. Bosses are piss easy. Weapons and health drop before and during the battles, while, at most, you’re asked to hop over some incoming energy waves or hit L1 to roll away from homing missiles. Nearly every enemy shoots a plasma ball that you can dodge easily enough with the left stick, or make it to some cover when you can’t. Hard mode seems to remove some health kits (or replaces 50% kits with 20%), but doesn’t change enemy numbers or attack patterns. It can get kinda brainless and repetitive.

Platforming challenges show up, but just get in the way.  R1 jumps, with some ledges allowing Trey to grab on and hoist up. What starts in early levels as easy hops over broken bridge pieces, or optional leaps off the path to grab pickups or extra lives, later becomes precision platforming with instant death if you miss. The War Factory is the greatest offender, asking you to jump between floating blocks or leap over rapid patterns of blocking energy beams. Most of my deaths across the whole game came from these panicked jumps, or occasional troubles with the camera shifting as I was lining up.

Audio’s biggest letdown is Bruce himself. If nothing else, you have no idea who he’s talking to. A lot of the buddy comedy lines get placed to make it seem like he’s speaking to you, the player, but quips like “Hold me!” before a dramatic fall just don’t work in this context. Many lines are audibly cut from longer dialogue. I don’t imagine we’ll ever know just how many lines got thrown out, but most of what’s left are woefully generic tough guy tropes. “Oh, you want some?” “Suck on this!” “These guys need a little more LEAD in their diet” and so on. “I… feel… GOOD!” seems the only line he has left for picking up a medkit, while “Strap one on, it’s time to jam!” (wut?) gets deployed about every time you pick up a new weapon. Eventually, Bruce gets excited and starts humping something. It seems like a lot of end-of-session freestyling that they threw in because nothing they sat down to record fit the game’s new direction.

The soundtrack features System of a Down,  Poe (also mo-capped and underused as a boss/Trey’s ex-wife), and some lesser-known alternative bands, but their songs are limited to giant, Times Square video walls occasionally placed in levels. No video is longer than exactly one minute, while its associated audio only plays in a very limited radius around the wall – leave the radius and the music stops instantly, like Leslie Nielsen tripped over your stereo’s power cord. Despite this engine famously being reused for the Tony Hawk games – and that playing giant music videos on walls would be ideal for those games – its limitations kept this tech from being used again.

Back then, I remember thinking the PSX title One did this style of 3D action better a year earlier – probably owing to being developed as a solo action shooter from the get. This game, remember, is what Neversoft was able to cobble together and get out the door. In that context, Apocalypse is fairly impressive. It looks great, has a good amount of variety, and plenty of steady action. But a scattered plot, limited enemy types, and some brainless gameplay punctuated by annoying jumping sections definitely drag it down. Bruce shouting recycled one-liners in my ear didn’t make me appreciate his presence, and it’s not like he’s large enough in-game to see his face anyway. Neversoft did a good job with what they were given, but maybe “good” was the best anyone could hope for out of this troubled development.

 

The Good

Loads of action with a dynamic camera that keeps the visuals interesting. Great use of color and shadow. Weapon powerups are useful, though short-lived.

 

The Bad

The buddy comedy setup sounds way more interesting than this, but I can’t really miss it when it never worked in the first place.

 

“Can’t we just be friends? Noooo, we can’t!” – Bruno Willis