Brave: The Spirit Dancer

7.0
Good

Gameplay	6.5	"Brave is tougher than he looks. "
Graphics	7.0
Sound	7.0
Value	6.0

By Alan Jordan

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I am normally incredibly lenient when doling out review scores. I can find positives in the worst of games and I can extract some amount of fun out of just about anything. However, Brave: The Search For Spirit Dancer is just something which I cannot get anything out of. I have tried playing this game till I gave myself a migraine but it just drove me crazy, I was ready to jump out of a window or start throwing things at the television. It made me crazy.

Why though? What could make a game so bad that it actually has almost made me break the cd in half? Well lets have a look at who the game is aimed at. One look at the cover and you’ll see that the game is obviously aimed at children. An overly cute young Native American lad is sent on a mission to find the legendary Spirit Dancer. Ummm, great. The game’s plot is formulaic, bland and well I don’t know how many more quests to find some old bloke I can take. A game aimed at kids then, remember that.

Now imagine me, a quite accomplished gamer if I do say so myself, getting so frustrated at a game which is aimed at children because he couldn’t figure out what to do. Now admittedly, us lucky games reviewers sometimes don’t have the all important manual, but a game aimed at children should be easy enough to figure out? Right? Well no actually, my flatmates and I,(none of whom are children by the way) got completely and utterly stuck while trying to get past one mission because we just could not figure out how to “mimic a ravens cry.” We tried all manner of button presses and combinations, we pressed every button on the PlayStation 2 controller, I was even keen to do a rain dance to see if that triggered off the amazing raven cry, but no matter what we tried, could we mimic a raven cry? Hell no.

So that’s right, a game obviously designed at children defeated three twenty somethings and left me crying for mercy in a way in which no game but Ninja Gaiden has ever done.

Besides the amazing “raven cry” debacle, the controls as a whole didn’t feel particularly good. Camera movement felt overly “floaty” and Brave himself jumping did not feel good. Jumping is an integral part of any platform game so that is more points in the negative column for Brave and his posse. What else can Brave do? Well I managed to uproot a stick from the ground, light it on fire and smack a few ravens around the head because I was jealous of their “raven calling” ability. That was fun for a good two minutes before the migraine kicked in again and I had to walk away from the PlayStation 2 to start this review.

Graphics in the game are simple although they do have a certain charm to them. Everything is overly stylised which is unspectacular but I have seen worse graphics on the PlayStation 2. At least the animation is smooth enough and there are no horrible frame rate drops.

Sound too is fairly average although unspectacular. The music is what you would expect from a game based on Native American culture and the voice acting is solid enough. Sounds effects too are nice enough, although I imagine I will be having nightmares about “raven calls” for months to come.

Now I’m sorry if this review has been overly negative, but this game has been a bad experience for me. I I’m sure if you love platformers, you will get something from this but to be honest, I would steer well clear of this game if you value your sanity.

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Reply

On 2 September 2008, 04:05PM Posted by kupo kid

hows this for LATE!
dude, wasn't there a tutorial thing where you went into the semi-cave thing?