Constantine review (Xbox)

You'll use your weapons to fight a variety of demons. Most of these guys are straightforward. You just shoot them until they drop. But you'll also run into rooms full of possessed rats, as well as face off against possessed humans that require you to beat them up until the demons leave their bodies. Then you must shoot these demons before they can possess other corpses. Additionally, you'll encounter some boss fights. These boss fights are OK, but they're usually easy and are heavily reliant on simply learning a pattern and then sticking to it. The game repeats this same formula from start to finish, and while it's of a decent length, you're barely provided with enough incentive to finish it once, let alone go back for a second run.

Constantine has the look of a budget game. Graphically, the best part about it is the player model, which looks a fair amount like Keanu Reeves. The in-game model actually does a better job of presenting Constantine than the cutscenes do, though the cutscenes aren't too shabby. Hell also looks appropriately "hellish," with a constant reddish glow and plenty of exposed fire. It's just too bad the frame rate can't keep up with the rest of the game, though. This is a much larger problem on the PlayStation 2 than it is on the Xbox, but at times, Constantine seems like it's barely crawling along in single-digit frame-rate territory. This is, for lack of a better word, bad. It's also too bad, because the rest of the game looks pretty decent.

The sound in Constantine is about as good as you'd expect. It gets the job done with fairly basic gunshot effects and decent music, but that's about it. The voice acting is well done in some spots, but it's a little weak in others. Constantine sounds like he was voiced by two different Keanu Reeves soundalikes, one of whom actually sounds a lot like the real thing and one of whom sounds more like someone trying to do a funny impression of the real thing. The uneven nature of the voice work detracts from the game, overall.

Constantine works. It's generic in its design, the third-person shooting isn't anything you haven't seen before, and the spellcasting isn't interesting enough to set the game apart. As a result, Constantine would work much better as a budget offering. So if you're looking to spend $39.99 on an action game, there are better choices out there.