Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: The Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian

Written by Chris Reiter on September 30, 2002

Full Review: His sting is worse than his fight.

Most often, video games based on theatrical releases are converted into playable form and then rushed out to ship along side or around the time of the movie's date. With The Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian though, it's a different story. Instead of sticking on the same route as past movie to game conversions, Universal Interactive has put The Scorpion King on hold for players until the time of last spring's action flick to be unleashed in time for the fall for the occasion of its DVD presentation, in a game that takes you through the eyes of a warrior into the pits of adventure and back.

For those who have seen The Scorpion King in theaters already, you'd know that it was a prequel to what was to become in the series of The Mummy flicks. Ironically however, the game itself is much a prequel as the movie was to its former storytelling, starting out from Mathayus's beginning: training to become the legendary Akkadian assassin the film portrayed to be. Like a fresh fish set out into the ocean to adapt with it, you are hired for your first mission as one of the strong, the brave, the elite Akkadian tribes on your way to put an end to the life of one king who has ended the life of another. As it turns out, just like in the movie Mathayus is tricked, enslaved, and has broken free to prove his worth and avenge those to his sacred origin of one man against many, only knowing that he must emerge the victor.

The Scorpion King isn't anything too new in the already growing market of action and adventure titles. The setup is that you're the man; you're the maker. You kick ass and take names by the numbers. From one area to the next, you flex your muscles swinging around weaponry aside from pummeling many with special attacks to bring down herds of relentless sword wielding guards, attack dogs, poisonous cobras, brute bunches of cave trolls, Egyptian hyenas, and many more. There are quite a few problems in this gameplay design, however. What it basically is, is that each level is made up of different rooms, or in other words fragments of spaces you need to unlock. Each time you defeat a set of enemy gangs in one lot, a bolted door opens itself to you and you'll traverse onto the next space for the same exact fight you had just experienced -- except with maybe a few more or less number of enemies, maybe a mixed bag of specific enemy types, or just another one of the many often timed battles, where you need to defeat a large amount of enemies in a difficult matchup going up against a time bar to eliminate every single enemy in the perimeter, or else you'll have to try all over again if you decide to head backwards from the door in which you came.

Believe it or not, there is a good reason for heading backwards through your travels, since it's in fact the only way to save your progress. Every cleared enemy spot not only unlocks doors, but also permanently stays battle free for the rest of the adventure. And the ability to save your game is without its ease with no auto save feature built into the game menu. As tough as Mathayus may be, the stretch between one save spot to the next squeezed into a multitude of "areas" is too risky to continue on the journey when there may come a time ahead of you when you'll find yourself killed by the cheaply crafted fighting figures The Scorpion King throws in aimlessly. It's not just always four or five bad guys you need to rid yourself of; most of the time the number of deaths you'll have to deliver grows astoundingly from enemies that pop out of no where -- literally! So you may think you have just swept the floor in that one alleyway, but then a few more guys come in off screen to test your wits. This regeneration process occurs very often and wouldn't be so much a nuisance to handle if not for the faulty camera and character control.

Entering into one of the new game locations, you'll be facing yourself. By that I mean the camera likes to pivot on Mathayus from the start of the entryway. But almost every single area also begins with a fight. You're not looking for the enemies; they're looking for you. Like a magnet, you attract attention immediately, so the problem is that first you'll want to turn the camera into facing the enemy. Although this won't always happen because the camera locks itself into places where it shouldn't, and leaves you struggling with diffusing the camera while you're taking heat and battling enemies that surround you every time in every direction. And what makes this formula so nerve racking is that you can only attack forward with most of your arsenal. The game lends out several kinds of blades, gauntlets, and even staff weapons from an ordinary stick to a metallic spear. Eventually you come across more powerful tools to use by locating them in chests throughout the immense levels. Though, you don't get to keep every device earned, and the game recycles its storage once you come across the next chest.

Guessing, the battle system involves you attempting to determine where an enemy is placed on the screen. Since the camera is hardly of use if ever, and being equipped with your newest offensive and defensive material, Mathayus is able to slide forward in a dash attack, perform jumps and pound maneuvers, block incoming heat, pick up and toss enemies backwards, create combos with hand or weapons, throw pottery forth, or simply knock out all surrounding enemies in a magical whirlwind with the use of a special attack. None of the control operations are ever hard to pick up on, and are all relatively straightforward throughout the rest of the adventure. Still, you're only given the freedom of moving forward with your attacks. With the camera positioning itself in awkward places at times -- in places where you or the enemy become invisible, the battle system leaves it up to you to complete more work than needs be.

There is more to just one fight after the next, though. Hidden within most gameplay sections lay rubies and health and stamina restoration icons. Killing enemies is just one way of gaining health or stamina, which provides a refill to your meters that keep you going throughout the gameplay and allow you to continue performing special attacks. But there's also pots and cracked locations laid across the ground and above on rooftops that contain inside them either health icons, stamina icons, or rubies. These rubies add to the replay greatly in unlocking bonus materials, from conceptual character and level art and even related videos to the game such as the trailer from E3. Those who are skilled and interested enough may want to search every single inch of the level for the myriad of secrets that can be yours.

In general, The Scorpion King can be looked at and be taken into consideration to appeal to the eye. The tiniest of details like sand that kicks up as you run across its surface, water splashing and swerving as you move through it, or carts that roll off and towering flame stands that fall over after knocking enemies straight into them give the game the effect that you're there in the action of the film. Substantially however, the overall prospect of everything on screen is without its best effort in plain and simple design textures. The Rock's character, Mathayus, is well crafted with muscle structure, and body design that makes it as though he actually looks like how The Rock literally materialized onto the silver screen as his character. A pasty skinned surface leaves his texturing to be otherwise anything but overly great, and in the long run his character is nothing close to being a technical marvel. Enemy models are basically the same with low quality textures, and really, are the same guys you'll see and fight over and over again. Only so often will you ever achieve to find enemy characters differ from one another, creating repetitive imagery of stale figures in the process.

While decent, the animations in each character never shift into more than a few various gears. Other than Mathayus's plentiful amount of techniques from the swift motions he makes as he spins in circles swinging a blade, moves his arms diligently in combos with the fierce power of the gauntlets, and hoists enemies from the ground level and slams them backwards in a hold position, the look and feel of enemies stay predictably simple becoming boring after some time. If anything, it's the shading and lighting in every lengthy environment that hand the game its plausibility. Passing to and from many selections of night and day areas of sandy city streets, within palace walls, amidst flaming buildings torn to ruin, and even down through the depths of a prison mine, the darks and lights cast upon you seamlessly clothe and strip themselves from Mathayus's body in great fashion. Like with the character models though, these areas of exploration are made up of bland, repetitious structuring that looks good as a whole from some areas containing different elements from others like pools, fountains, torches, boxes, statues, amongst other things, but in all doesn't cater to a quality of excellence.

Repetition leads on through the sound department in each one of its different areas. A score of Egyptian drum pounding and flutes take shape and litter the background up with but a slim selection on tracks. After listening to mainly the same good but not great rhythm here, there, and everywhere -- you too will feel disappointed by its never-ending presence. Also slightly in a loop but not as much, the enemy voice acting during the gameplay catches itself in a wave of little expansion. Enemy guards shout nothing but a same set of generic tones from, "Get him!" and "Where do you think you're going?" Mathayus's character also slips a few cheesy lines into the gameplay, but not nearly as much as the characters that you can kill. It's during the in-game movie scenes where The Rock, A.K.A. Dwayne Johnson, actually steps in to fill for his fictional character to bring this additional tale of The Scorpion King to life. And, amongst a group of other greats, including Mark Hamill, the cast does a fine job at giving worth to the game's mess of starring roles.

Ending on a sound note, there's a bevy of sounds to be heard in the game that qualify for great delivery every time. You can hear the footsteps of you and your enemies charging across stone, sand, dirt, wood, and even liquid terrains. Between them, the differences vary in effect. In other places, like roaring and flickering flames, clashing of steel against steel, moaning and groaning from beating the life out of your adversaries, the thumps of an arrow pounding against your shield, and even the slithering of a snake as it creeps up behind you can and will happen, making The Scorpion King a treat in some respects.