GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Mediocre
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 02/18/1997
- Updated on: 05/02/2000
- Released on: 12/31/1996
- Originally published on GameSpot: XS (PC) Review
GT Interactive is a company known for publishing great action titles: id's first-person shooters Quake and Doom, 3D Realms' Duke Nukem, and their latest successful publishing effort, SCi's SWIV 3D. But that kind of stellar line-up is almost impossible to maintain. GT Interactive inevitably had to disappoint hard-core action gamers, and that particular disappointment manifests itself in the form of another SCi title, XS.
You know disappointment is waiting just around the corner when you boot up an action game that purports to be "the ultimate gladiatorial combat simulator," and instead of getting you straight to the matter at hand - such as, say, killing other opponents - you're treated to long-drawn-out FMV sequences of the aforementioned killing. After making the appropriate set-up alterations in XS, you are introduced to the evening's combatants in yet more FMV sequences - creepy cretins with names like Lee Harvey, Jake Velocity, and The Vamp - and then you're launched into the arena.
The AI seems at least partially sentient at the outset: Your CPU opponents actually engage in shoot-outs with you, defensively peeking out from behind walls and then dodging around corners. But there were times when I caught some of them hammering away at the patrol droids (who lurk around shooting contestants at random), seemingly undistracted by the unrelenting stream of deadly rockets I was unloading into them. Overall, the AI, although it tries to be innovative and does succeed on some levels, is a bit erratic.
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