KISS Preview

I desperately wanted this to be a review of the finished game, and even though the CD had 'Review Code' hand-written on it, there were enough bugs within the game that made me decide to limit this to a preview, rather than a full-blown review. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game, and I see others have treated this code as review code. It gets no marks for originality, or for breaking new ground within the FPS genre, but it is a lot of fun. Split into four sequences where you play a member of KISS (thinly disguised as a spirit or something) you have to play through each of the four acts to complete the whole game. It helps if you play through in order keeping to the storyline, although this is not strictly necessary.

The big selling point of this game (besides the obvious connection with KISS and their 1998 album Psycho Circus) is the plot that you follow throughout the game, with each episode (there's four per section, with a boss level at the end) preceded by a cut-scene fly through of the level you're about to face. You can skip this cut scene if you wish, however it does serve to give you an overview of what you're about to face and where the various artifacts and other powerups are before you get into the game itself. The basic premise of the story is you have to save the world from the Nightmare Child by conquering each of the elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Working through each episode you'll gain various powerups (which are the point of the game) turning you from your plain-old ordinary mortal into an all-powerful member of KISS - or an Elder as they describe it in the game. More on this later.

The Engine
Much has been made of the use of the LithTech engine, or rather a heavily modified version of it. The LithTech engine is perhaps best known for it's use in Blood 2, and for the promise that it showed as a contender for the crown held by id with their Quake engine. One thing that this engine has above the Quake engine is world interaction on a level gretaer than just 'run over to collect', much like the heavily modified Unreal Tournament engine used in Deus Ex, or the Dark Engine developed by Looking Glass for it's own titles. If an object on the screen can be interacted with in some way, your crosshair will change slightly and a little graphic will appear giving you a clue as to what to do. The most common are pickups such as health and ammo, the graphic appearing as that of a hand picking something up. If there's a door you can open, you get a little image of a hand pulling a lever. And if you can break something, you get a little grpahic of a fist breaking wood.

I installed Blood 2 again to see what differences there were between the two versions of the game engine (Blood 2 used Lithtech v1.0, Kiss uses v1.5) and was very amazed. Most people when talking about game engines use heavily technical terms and descriptions. I don't. To me, playing a game engine is all about the feel of the engine as I'm playing it, and the potential tricks that can be employed within the confines of the game. Blood 2 and the original LithTech engine was a very good attempt at a game engine. The problems that were evident then, such as the bouncy feel of the player controls, abolutely no momentum when jumping (most disconcerting - you stop moving when you release the forward button in mid-air) and the feeling that somehow the movement, player point of view and so on weren't quite right have been rectified.

Quake 1 was a fast-paced game, Quake 2 was rock-solid and Quake 3 felt rather spongy (it still does to be honest). The Dark Engine also felt rather spongy, and, well, round. Kiss Psycho Circus feels sharp. A lot of work has been done to ensure that playing the game you don't get hung up on the architecture, and if you logically think you can interact with something in a particular way, you can. For example, in one area is a small fence. Not only can you jump over it, you can jump on it, and because it's made of thin strips of wood you can destroy it as well.

Jump distances have been looked at as well, with the basic player character not being able to jump very high, and certainly not onto large crates with ease. The second powerup you receive though is a set of 'magic' boots, making the higher jumps possible. This adds a sense of reality to playing the game, as you progress not only through the game but in player ability.

The engine has also grown the ability to deal with large open spaces with ease, both inside and outside. Admittedly KISS doesn't make much use of this, though there are some areas that would make the Quake 3 engine chug a little. Environmental effects have also been included and much expanded on, with the obvious ones like fog being introduced. Oddly enough, if you start the game with Episode Three, you could be forgiven for thinking that the engine was so bad it needed fogging to limit the draw distance, since the beginning part of the level is shrouded in mist. This actually serves to heighten the single player experience.

One other thing that has been accomplished in this game is vertigo. Does anyone remember Jedi Knight and the sense of enormous heights that that game engendered? Well, it's been replicated in this game through clever use of map design and the distance fogging effect. Episode Three, on the docks - down is a looooong way down...

Tweaking the gameplay using variables in the engine is almost too easy. The preview version included a nice little text filed detailing all the variables used to calculate various things like maximum health, maximum damage, splash damage and so on. I'm going to hope that this is removed before release, otherwise setting the default health for all monsters to 1 will mean the game isn't very hard.

The Graphics
It's obvious that a lot of work has gone into the creation of this game, not just from the balancing act they've done with the engine, but the actual work put into the models and the graphics as a whole. I haven't seen anything of the reality textures seen in Kingpin (the warehouse level was so realistic it literally took my breath away), however the various textures used are well thought out, well constructed and very well used. Even though the beginning of each episode takes place in the same building (albeit slightly modified each time to ensure consistence with both the story line and the character you're playing) the texture sets used differ, in some cases quite dramatically.