156. EOE: Eve of Extinction (Yuke's, Playsation 2, 2002)

EOE: Eve of Extinction is a 3D character action game from Yuke's, the Japanese developer of many wrestling games. The game stars a boring looking dude named Josh who worked for a huge medical corporation with his girlfriend, but went rogue when he found out they were a front for world domination. They built a weapon called Legacy that can absorb human souls (or something), and this weapon is currently hosuing the soul of Josh's griflriend. This plot reminds me a lot of game #112 Maken X, though this is definitely not as cool. Josh sounds A LOT like Raiden from MGS2, but with more of an attitude, and he has 2 fanny packs on his butt. I looked it up and he shared a voice actor with Liquid Snake...huh.

You start the game with 3 weapons: a sword, a staff, and your fists. Each weapon has 2 atatck buttons but each of these just put out a kind of limp 2-hit combo that does not feel good to use. The fun comes when you switch between these weapons mid-combo, as the more powerful moves and longer combos are only available though weapon switching. That said, the combat is not exactly super deep or tactical, you can get by mostly by mashing attack and switch weapon. Beating each of the game's seven levels awards you with a new weapon, so I have to assume the combos get pretty crazy once you're up to 10 weapons.

The levels themselves are pretty blocky and uninteresting, and enemies are never much of a hassle to fight as long as you keep attacking. The jump is poorly animated, but you can jump so high that I'm having too much fun to care. If only you kept your momentum after jumping, this game might have gone from decent to good. The cutscenes also frequently include Die Hard Arcade-style QTEs (though they are much more lenient in their timing).

3/5, the bones of a cool game are here, but the whole thing is very rough around the edges