Azurik: Rise of Perathia

Pros • Fairly intuitive control • Elemental powers are a good idea • Great voices	Cons • Takes too long to get many elemental powers • Lots of backtracking in big levels without much guidance • Combat gets old
Bottom Line Lacks the magic to be a top Xbox title. There's an episode of The Sopranos in which Christopher and Adrianna are managing a rock group known as Visiting Day. And what the hell does this have to do with Azurik: Rise of Perathia? Let me finish: Chris takes Visiting Day's demo CD to Hesh, who in addition to running a loansharking business, was also a big producer in the music industry. After listening to the demo, Hesh concludes it's not good. Chris tries to get Hesh to explain why, but he can't. He says that there's a certain kind of magic in good songs that "we can neither comprehend nor codify." While individual aspects of Visiting Day's music might be praiseworthy, "There is one constant in the music business: a hit is a hit, and this my friend is not a hit." I think Hesh's theory could apply to a lot of things. Movies. Books. Games. See where I'm going now?

You are Azurik, a Smurf-skinned apprentice Lore Guardian. The Lore Guardians protect four disks representing the elements--Water, Fire, Air, and Earth. Another disk, Death, has been lost until now. A renegade Lore Guardian named Balthazar has found it, and the disk has given him all sorts of ideas about ultimate power, godhood, and other things villains usually go on about. Balthazar starts a fight in which the disks are scattered across the land of Perathia, and your mentor Eldwyn gets a beatdown. Your task is to collect the missing pieces, gain elemental powers, and beat Balthazar and the various monsters that will try to stop your quest.

Azurik is your basic third-person action game somewhere in the vein of Heretic II. Azurik holds a staff that you use for two basic attacks: a swing and a thrust. If you jump and thrust, Azurik also does an overhead slash. As Azurik progresses through the game, he gains the ability to imbue his staff and armor with elemental powers (fire staff, earth armor, etc). These powers make Azurik tougher and his attacks more dangerous, but you've got to use the right element on the right creature. For example, some ice monster won't be too impressed if you hit him with a water-imbued staff. However, if you've used flame, you might do more damage. Similarly, a water-powered staff can put out a wall of fire blocking Azurik's path, and so on.

Later in the game, you can combine more than one element, such as fire and water to make steam. And it's all laid out fairly intuitively. Holding the left trigger indicates that you want to use some elemental powers. The buttons on the controller correspond logically with the elements--red is fire, blue is water, and so forth. Press them and release the trigger, and voila--magic occurs providing you've collected enough elemental crystals to make it happen. The left stick controls Azurik, and the right controls the camera.

This intuitive scheme and clever use of the elements are unfortunately not matched by the rest of the game. Let's start with graphics. Although the terrain has its share of I-wish-I-had-a-camera parts--like those lava flows and waterfalls, it doesn't look as good as Halo's outdoor environments. Ok, ok, very few things look as good as Halo. But that doesn't excuse some surprisingly crude animation. Azurik's moves never quite look or feel natural, and the enemies are animated especially simply. Once again we don't ask for the sophistication of DOA3's graphics, but the Xbox is certainly capable of more than this.

Gameplay wise, there is too much repetition, and not enough guidance. Even with the elements to spice up your attacks, it's still a matter of the same three moves. The fact that it takes the game a long time before it gives Azurik elements to play with doesn't help matters either.

The levels are huge, but not really in a fun way. You spend a lot of time backtracking and figuring out where you need to be next. There's a lot of tired find-the-key-find-the-exit play, and the game doesn't really guide you from place to place very well. For example, I came across an area with three levers, each requiring a key. From exploring, I had found two keys. None of them would work in this area. No real hint of where they would work, or where the proper keys were.

Save points are fairly common, but be warned, once you reload all of the creatures are back. So kill them all with the same three moves again. Control can be slightly imprecise in combat, and it's tricky to line up Azurik with the target. Swimming can also be hellish, because the camera tends to not want to sit behind Azurik. It either wants to look down at him, or look at him from below. Neither is particularly helpful for getting around.

Audio saves matters somewhat. They could have given Azurik himself more grunts and "yahs" when attacking, but the voices of Eldwyn and Balthazar are excellent.

Azurik does not have huge flaws that bring it down. It's a lot of little things that just don't add up to a sum I like. It's like something is missing--think of what Max Payne would be like if the graphics were just decent and there was no Bullet Time. There are people that will like this game, probably even love it. In that episode of The Sopranos, Adrianna loved Visiting Day and thought that had the talent to make it big. But I still say there is one constant in the game business--a hit is a hit, and this my friends is not a hit.

Info & Screenshots