Gaming Target - Xbox: Malice

Written by Chris Reiter on April 28, 2004

Final Glimpse: After weeping you a river and building your memorial with my own flesh and blood (decoration purposes), you think you can waltz back into my life, Malice, like you're going to run it all over again?! Nice.

Lost in the sea of countless delays, Malice was in fact considered to be one of the gaming industry's most promising exclusive launch titles for the Xbox more than two years ago. Back then, Malice was one of the many random titles Microsoft had opted to throw its money down on for publishing rights, as it continued to assume a dominating approach toward establish itself in the market. With the system's launch only churning out one undisputed cash cow (Halo) that to this day remains as the best reason to own a Xbox, for whatever reason Malice had been dropped from the company's hands soon afterward. The game was then picked up by Sierra Entertainment. Along with the shift of publishers, a second system was then granted to take a ride on the Malice bandwagon. That system was and still is today the PlayStation 2. But after a year and a half of waiting for Malice to come into fruition, Sierra just up and left their new baby in the dust. It's been over since months since that happened. In a stroke of luck, however, Malice was given a second chance...or more like a third or fourth one. Paired together with the game's original developer, Argonaut Games, Malice has recently been acquired by its third and final owner Mud Duck. Let's just pray now that the inaugural release month for June is going to mean something to Mud Duck and the property's history to those who've been waiting for this momentous occasion all this time.

Malice is in malarkey, really deep too, and she requires some assistance. Let's look at the facts. She's a goddess whose head was just bitten off by Nefarious Rex, a fire demigod gone crazy. Death ironically restores her life to her, giving her a new head to boot. Upon Malice's return, she discovers that aside from Rex being insane in the membrane, he's also set the world ablaze and has split its singular timeline into many. What a mess! Choose to help Malice investigate the mystery behind her murder, take down Rex's lackeys, and restore order to the world's frame of chronology, or...death won't feel so bad once you've already gone through it the first time.

Having not changed a bit (or too much at least from what can be collected), Malice is indeed making its final approach to consoles this spring. Plain and simple, Malice can be summed up as a platform title that will combine plenty of action elements in between its get-to and going ahead scheme. The character of Malice is, as usual, noticeably an interesting one. She's an adorable, red-haired runt who because she's a goddess, or was a goddess, or is a goddess reborn...she has these magic abilities. They will manifest via four various characterizations Malice will be able to channel into (including a cat-thing) as she'll flow through the streams of time to defeat whatever resistance awaits. While details are still sketchy even up to this point about the use of her godlike powers, and her final and ultimate form, there is Malice's other specialty, the weapons.

Like all reincarnated goddesses', Malice will get to be as badass as she wants to be while brandishing such tools of destruction as a Clockwork Hammer, the Mace of Spades, and the Quantum Tuning Fork: each weapon of which will be provided with their very own unique functions. The Clockwork Hammer, for example, can be used to thwack enemies over the head with, be swung in circles to destroy all surrounding foes, or motioned to just run them all over by way of pushing forward like you would with a lawnmower. And if that's not enough to whet your appetite, in Malice's totality of 22 levels, there'll be variable puzzles to expedite -- though, very little is known about those as well.

Back when Malice was going to release at the end of 2001, the game was literally stunning. Bright and colorful, Malice started out pushing the envelope then with extremely large levels that detailed all mannerisms of objects Malice would then be able to navigate past. The use of dynamic and real-time shadows in the game was particularly Malice's strongest drawing point. Lately, however, it's a question of whether or not Argonaut has actually done much to continue improving what it had already started working on more than two years ago. It's not even certain if Argonaut used the duration in the game's break time between last summer's cancellation and this winter's reinstatement to touch up on the game in any way. Malice's latest screens seem to say not so. Sadly, the issue as to whether or not Gwen Stefani and the rest of No Doubt will be reprising their original roles for the speaking parts of characters in the game, including Gwen Stefani as Malice, has not been addressed.