Haven: Call of the King

Written by Chris Reiter  on December 16, 2002

Full Review: Call me back later, okay? I've got sexy Leslie on hold!

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Innovation is what game developers and gamers alike all want out of life. Everyone's indulged the wealth of so many game creation types already that they're sick of doing the same thing over and over again -- and for what? For a measly coin, diamond, or another cheap propagandistic collectible that's surely the main cause of some poor fool's loss of birthday money. Midway knows this. What Midway knows is that not every game has to play by the rules. Sometimes you can bend them, or better yet, change them around if you'd so choose to. That's just what they've done, together with the thinking minds of Traveller's Tales, they've taken the platform genre and stirred it up some in their brand new release of Haven: Call of the King.

There is a world out there, where mankind has been enslaved. These people who were once a happy crowd are now under the rule of the alien Vetch, who has instilled fear and gained control over all by injecting them with a virus, requiring them to vaccinate their bodies every so often if they wish to stay alive. Yet, all hope isn't lost for man, as it's been discovered by Vetch that there is one glimpse of shimmering light still twinkling right underneath his shrouded gloom ridden universe. Haven is his name. A young man, an inventor, and one who's about to set foot out on the journey of a lifetime in order to save his friend Jess and the rest of the world while he's at it from the clutches of Vetch's wretched forces. Save the day or slave for days? It's an easy question, but an answer that will be a tough act to follow through.

Being completely original isn't as easy as it might seem. There's the critics out there looking for all of the game's faults in what makes the release cut so differently above the rest, and then there's the buyers interested in dishing out some hard earned cash for what just could be the "must have" experience they've been so longing to play. The point is though that Haven should offer players something they've never felt before. What it basically ends up being is a new platform game that's not so much anything but what you've tried in earlier and similar games, but it also branches itself down directions other platform releases haven't begun to tap.

Almost instantaneously you're zapped straight into the action from avoiding a tunnel's collapse to knocking out brutes by putting to use Haven's metallic mag-ball weapon (or also known as a yo-yo). Remaining in the palm of your hands at all times, this "yo-yo" is Haven's primary attack at a close range. Upon certain times, you'll stumble across areas in which you can obtain a laser wrist weapon for a limited period of time, but the mag-ball will always stay as the game's biggest focus. Aside from your regular dose of enemy encounters (from robots to giant slave drivers), there's also pile upon pile of breakable vases that'll often at times become an integral part of the gameplay. Different colored vases do different things. The green ones for example, when smacked with your yo-yo attack, lets you in on some hints for how to take on the particular situation you're facing while exploring through the game's third person view. And while there are some vases that aid you, such as the white ones that usually case hearts for a sip of health, or blue ones that allow you to hop inside in order to pop out and reach items placed high above it, there are others that are meant to slow you down -- ones that explode within moments of nearing them.

Where a great deal of destructive vases guard your path to items you need to collect (cogs to start machinery, hearts to refuel life, blue orbs which power Haven's shield energy, etc.), most of the time the adventure and platform essence of the game becomes a slate for trial and error in whether or not you can survive dealing with enemy attacks all the while using your short range weapon that is actually not all that easy to use. Using the mag-ball, you must manually position Haven in the face of whatever target you want to take out. Most enemies have some form of a defense mechanism and at the same time can fire laser energy to lessen your chance of making it through. And because you can only do one thing at a time, in either masking your body with an energy shield -- which depletes the longer it stays out in the open, or attacking the surrounding bad guys, you must be quick and thinking one step ahead of the enemy every time you play.

Running and jumping around, hunting for items and fighting the good fight isn't all Haven's about, however. Really, Haven's a game that fits almost every type of genre there is into one goodie bagging. If you like your share of racing games, you'll find it here. If you like action games, there's plenty of stuff to do. How about First Person Shooters? Try rolling down a railway and blasting flying ships into bits of nothing by using a turret, or taking out fleets of pirate ships with your own. There's even a scenario where you must become a firefighter by strapping on a jetpack to hose down a burning village from ruin. Still though, the game is pretty basic when it comes to its bundle of diverse gameplay elements. If you're expecting Haven to be a Halo, a Grand Theft Auto, and a Mario amongst other big name titles all wrapped into one, it's not like that at all -- even though the shift in gameplay styles is entertaining to say the least.

With so much change, you'd probably expect the gameplay controls to peel from one layer onto the next. Surprisingly enough, the control issue remains relatively the same throughout the course of gameplay genres. Only, the control mechanics are not exactly easy to master. Haven has a camera issue like most platform games. The biggest issue being that it tends to lock up on the player in areas where it shouldn't. Dealing with the camera isn't totally a problem, because it can move just about anywhere you'd like it to move by utilizing the right analog stick. Moving the main character himself isn't overly difficult either, with running around coming from the left analog stick, sliding by way of the L1 button, jumping emanating from the X button, and the aforementioned attack and defense maneuvers from the square and circle buttons. The main disappointment though is that attacking enemies in the close range arena comes off as a little touchy (like, you may end up sliding forward right into harm's way), and you'll have to learn to take control of it if you want to get through to the end.

Essentially an average playing game, Haven's visuals follow suit. It's not that the game's that bad to inhale in all at once, it's that with so much going on in one place at one time, I don't know how to explain Haven's quality of quantity. See, Haven's simple. From character models to the game worlds themselves, staring at the game won't give you the quality of the Mona Lisa, but instead is more like an interactive Saturday morning cartoon show. Starting with the characters, there are literally tons of them. Meaning, everywhere you travel to in the game, you'll probably find mounds of individual models doing something or another in each single game area. In the mine level for instance, workers chop away at the ground, while others walk around busily with enemy guards and immense robots storming through the land's boiling lava stream. But with the actual structuring design in the way people's body and clothing screams the origin of a baseline shade of mediocre, there's a lot of room left for desire to be had.

Nicely done is the game's stock of animated traits given to the chosen many character types. Haven graces the screen by moving around like a real human would in his shoes: from expressionistic facial movements to the matter of playing around with his mag-ball when idle, Haven appears pretty good in shape and in form. Other characters too submit motions quite well, in the way guards realistically block your attacks, tiny aircrafts buzz around you and shoot your passage to death, or the way in which they fall over after they've been knocked unconscious from your yo-yo spin, there's a lot of fine character proportions in each neck of the woods. Beyond that, the game worlds look alive with characters -- both good and evil -- interacting inside of different segments all around it. The textures within these areas are good, but not great. You may stumble across a rocky measure of surface, where inside the depths of a robot factory you'll see a lot of gray and boring areas. Even under water there are some cool effects that sort of in a way bring the water to cool looking, such as sprouting bubbles and liquid visions, but it's the lower quality of visuals that make Haven somewhat of a downer. Where all else fails in the dark though, there is light. Haven does have some pretty good lighting and shadowy effects, in areas where if you walked up magma, you'd see the perfect semblance of glow surrounding Haven's body as the dark creeps up behind him, shadows that latch themselves onto game characters wherever they may go, and like with the glowing shield and how laser beams ricocheting off of it and back onto enemies are most entertaining events to sit back and watch.

Of a lesser pursuit, Haven's sound aspect doesn't follow through very well, unfortunately. Some's bad, some's good, some's just downright annoying. The game's musical nature is somewhat of a mixed bag. Haven packages a soundtrack that fits the adventure theme of the game well enough, from lightened melodies, to medium, and finally edgier paced rhythms, you're bound to find the music to be tolerable in a way that you won't want to shut it off, and yet there's nothing too memorable about any of the tracks. Affecting everything, everywhere there's countless sound effects to have heard just as much. Whether it's when you're swishing underwater, running along surfaces aplenty, taking and emitting fire, breaking explosive pots in pieces, or breathing in the environment around you, the sounds heard within the game don't disappoint much, even though they're not exactly the best of what gaming has to offer.

Just as well with all of Haven's sound elements, the voice acting lends itself out amongst a slew of talent that while in some areas is good, its entirety is blatantly mundane and nerve racking in certain cases. For the main cast of characters, it's as if each voice-filling persona sort of doesn't fit the bill. Sure they're decent, but the voices used don't really seem to inspire the story all that much in actually wanting to progress any further. Also used are voiceovers for spots in the game where it'd be much better if they weren't as repetitive, or better yet, removed entirely. In one case, there's an area in Haven where you must extinguish a burning village. All the while you'll listen to screams of helpless villagers going on and on, and on and on crying in a manner in which would tend to destroy anyone's concentration.