Ayen's Reviews #6: Broken Helix

[Ayen]

Broken Helix is a third person shooting game developed and published by Konami and released on the Sony PlayStation console on May 21, 1997 to North America. It stars the voice of none other than Bruce Campbell as Jake Burton who is sent to Area 51 to defuse a couple of bombs put up by a mad scientist. Let’s dig into Broken Helix.

Gameplay: Broken Helix has tank controls much like the original Resident Evil games. Meaning that up is always forward, down is backwards, and left and right turns him around albeit slowly. You have a bar for health and a bar for energy and armor that takes damage saving your health until it goes down to zero.

You can cycle between third person shooter and first person shooter, which is mostly because in the game’s early development it was meant to be a first person shooter, but they changed it to third person shooter, but they left the option so you get the best of both worlds.

The game has different energy weapons you can choose from, starting with a stun weapon before you get one that can actually kill people. After stunning an enemy you can jump on them and that for some reason causes their whole body to explode. You can also toggle between being nice and being mean to certain characters when you talk to them, changing the tone and wording of Jake when he interacts with other characters. Be careful though as this can sometimes cause a game over or leave you at a dead end with no place to go. More on that later.

The game plays in real time, and there always seems to be a timer whether you see a timer or not. At the beginning you have twenty minutes to defuse the bombs in Area 51. Then you have an invisible timer that counts down when the marine group Black Dawn is chasing you through the base. You also have a timer when you take a pill to protect you from poison gas that covers up the whole area in level three. This game loves time limits for some reason.

Depending on how you play can change the course of the game entirely. You can say ‘screw it’ to the bombs and go down to the third floor where the bombs will explode, and the surviving marines will work with you in killing everyone at the base. Venture too far from the main marine or don’t follow orders and it triggers a game over where they kill you. You can also choose to do an escort mission with a reporter allowing her to interview Fitz. You can choose to work with him or a scientist named Reese on level six. There are a lot of choices to make and it changes the ending of the game accordingly.

Story: The game takes place in the year 2026 and begins with Jake giving narration about the nature of his mission. He also explains that his father worked at Area 51 and died mysteriously in a plane crash when Jake was nine.

Like I said the game has choices you can make that change the course of gameplay. The game has four different endings based on these choices and it’s very compelling seeing each plot line play out. You can choose to kill the Queen alien in the game, join her, work with Fitz, or work with Black Dawn who doesn’t know you’re the man they’ve been ordered to kill. There are a lot of game over scenes as well depending on how you die. For example if you shoot Fitz, or Reese, it triggers a game over screen. The latter of which will be an alien blowing up the whole Earth. Wow.

Graphics: I hate to say it, but the graphics are ugly. I’m not holding this game to a modern day standard either, these graphics are bad even by 1997 standards. For example games like Tekken, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider came out around the same time as this game and they all blew it away in the graphics department. I don’t know why they chose to go with polygons and other design choices, but they did, and it has not aged well.

Another aspect of the game is the voice acting. While Bruce Campbell is great in everything he does, the rest of the voice acting isn’t anything to write home about. It’s not bad per say, but it’s not good either. I’d say the voice acting is average with the exception of Bruce Campbell himself.

Flaws: Where do I even begin? The game has horrible tank controls that have aged horribly and the lighting is so bad in certain areas that you can’t even see where you’re going unless you have the map out. Speaking of the map, it covers the whole screen. Why? Why can’t it just be in the corner somewhere? That’s how other better games have done it, so why not this one?

This game is also very unforgiving of mistakes. If you mess up by missing an item or talking the wrong way to someone you can end up at a dead end where you can’t go back and you can’t move forward, but does the game just end? No. The game goes on like you still have a chance to beat it when you don’t, and if you so much as save by that point you’d have to start the game all over again. Why not just trigger a game over screen when this happens? They give you a game over screen for virtually every other scenario.

Also when you’re working with Black Dawn in the fourth storyline scenario of the game, you have a hard enough time staying close to the main guy because Jake won’t even walk properly. He stumbles and stuff and you almost get a game over screen because you can’t walk right for some reason. How do you mess up on something as simple as walking?

The platforming is another thing that is horrible in this game. Jake is delayed in his reaction time and he can’t make jumps that should be easy to make. Luckily there are only two major parts in the game that require platforming, but they are a chore to get through even if you’re really good.

Summary: Broken Helix is a game I want to like. I really do, but the cons outweigh the pros in my mind. The game is so hard to get a handle of that it takes several different tries to get it, and there is so much cheap death that it’s sometimes isn’t worth it. You can get lost easily, and the voice acting outside of Bruce Campbell doesn’t carry the story that well, but the story itself is worth seeing unfold if you can look past all the glaring faults that make this game unbearable at times. Nothing more to say than:

Try It!