Trespasser Part 2

Published by Electronic Arts




Written by Jason Cross

Many people were expecting to have free reign to roam wherever they like on the island, but this isn't the case. The game is divided into levels, which are fairly linear in that they have one entrance and one exit and you can't ever return to a previous level. This is actually a good thing - it keeps the game flowing in a predictable direction and prevents what would definitely be a problem with people not knowing where to go next.

Beautiful Tropic Site B

We've heard a lot about Trespasser's 3D engine. It's quite different than most 3D engines used in shooters and high-action games. The outdoor areas of Trespasser (and 90% of the game takes place outdoors) are quite amazing, really. Rather than having i ncredibly basic landscapes with a few sparse trees, Trespasser lets you see hundreds of trees far off into the distance. Objects close to you are incredibly detailed - you can almost feel the grain of wood or the rough face of a stone. As objects get fu rther from you, they are replaced with less detailed variations, but they never quite go away. You can pick a tree that appears as a whitish silhouette on the horizon and walk all the way over to stand in it's shadow. Speaking of shadows, nearly everyth ing in the game casts a shadow, including buildings, dinosaurs, trees, boxes...everything but yourself (for some reason).

Sounds are handled with equal aplomb. Weapons sound exactly as they should, dinosaurs growl and scream, footsteps sound different on different surfaces, and more. 3D sound plays a huge part in the game, and both EAX and A3D APIs are supported. Playing with a good 3D sound setup really enhances the play experience. Music is used very sparsely, only playing at rare pre-determined places, but when it does play it's excellent orchestral music worthy of the silver screen.

The slick graphics and sound really come at a price, though. This game is the greatest hardware hog yet, requiring some very serious computer muscle to play well. While everyone has a different opinion on what is a "playable" speed, I really don't expec t that anyone with a machine slower than a Pentium 2 233 with 64MB of RAM will find it tolerable. While the software mode looks amazingly good and runs only a little bit slower than using hardware acceleration (which is available via Direct3D), every lit tle bit helps. 3D cards that do good AGP texturing will work much better with Trespasser than PCI or AGP 1x cards, due to the frequent texture swapping and huge texture variety in some levels. Even people with fast computers can expect some areas to slo w down quite a lot, especially with "only" 64MB of RAM. I played mostly on a P2-450 with 64MB, and quite often the game would freeze for 3-4 seconds of disk access when I fired a new gun, or turned quickly in a dense area. Ever since doing the Initial I mpressions bit several days ago, I've been flooded with e-mail from people describing their system to me and asking "how will it run for me?" I'll say this as plainly as possible - if you don't have what is considered to be a pretty fast machine by today 's standard, don't bother. I honestly can't imagine playing on a P166 with a Voodoo 1 card and 32MB of RAM. Those with a 266MHz machine and a pretty new 3D card (Voodoo2, TNT, Savage3D, Banshee) should find the game playable. Fortunately, the ex ploration and adventure nature of the game actually works for it...if this was an action game, it would be unplayably slow even on the fastest machines. It's annoying that, even with a 3D card, the dinosaurs don't benefit from filtering, so they look pretty blocky up-close.

Check out more of OGR.COM's review of Trespasser: What are some of the problems with the game?