REZ for the Playstation 2 review





Happy New Year! YAY! Its 2010! So yeah, happy holidays, everyone. I was thinking about doing a different kind of game. I wanted to do something fun, but artsy and musical. I mean, I already enjoy some games’ soundtracks, but I wanted to do something that was sort of based around music and a different experience. Then it came to me. A game I have heard and read about for so many years. I think it was time to pull up an early PS2 gem known as REZ. Now, I know that it was also for the Dreamcast in Japan and the PS2 here in America. How well does this gem stand up in today’s fast-paced gaming?

The story kind of reminds me of something like Tron. A computer program known as Eden has taken over the system, and is threatening to shut it down and cause massive chaos wherever Eden controls. You play as a hacker, and your role in the game is to take down Eden and save the system from mass chaos caused by Eden’s insanity.

Rez is a third-person rail-shooter, where you control an avatar and go through 5 levels and shoot down enemy ships and fight a boss at the end. Your main form of attack is a lock-on system, where you lock onto enemies and shoot a laser at them. You can gain two kinds of power-ups. The first one is to make the avatar stronger and upgrade to a new form. The other power-up gives you an overdrive attack that shoots out multiple lasers. A cool thing about shooting everything in this game is that it makes a sound and not an explosion or some stereotypical rail-shooting sound. It’s really cool when you have 6 enemies targeted, and then after killing them, they make a kind of beat to the background sound, which is pretty cool, in my opinion.

I like the overall look of the game. It has vector-like graphics, and basic 3d shapes in it also, which all combines to a pretty good-looking game for an early PS2 game. The music is very techno and fun to listen to. It reminds me of Daft Punk in a way. The difficulty is kind of ranged, depending on what kind of gamer you are. If you are a casual gamer, then you might have some trouble when you get to the third level. If you are a hardcore player however, you could easily go through the 5 levels that are in this game. I like how the developers at Sega thought about this, since the game is open to pretty much most gamers.

However, there are some gripes that I have with this game that holds it back a little. The way you get hurt in the game is interesting since you go down a grade if you get hit until you’re at your weakest. While I like the idea of that, it just makes it annoying, since it takes a long time to upgrade yourself in the first place. It is also very hard to see what is coming at you sometimes, due to the vector-like graphics. While I respect that it’s a third-person rail-shooter, I don’t think it would hurt if you could move around a bit like in Starfox 64 or something. The game is really short, only having 5 quick levels. Hopefully, people back then didn’t have to pay a lot for a short 5 level game.

Overall though, Rez is an enjoyable experience, and I say if you can find this game for a cheap price, pick it up. It’s a fun game that you can play, then put down, and play after a month or so. You can also get a remake of Rez known as RezHD off the Xbox Live Store.

This game gets an 8 out of 10.

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