Review: Sanity: Aiken's Artifact

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	GALLERY

by Brian Wright

(IDG) -- It's sad to see a good idea gone awry. But all the colored lighting and badass attitude in the world can't help Sanity: Aiken's Artifact rise to greatness.

Sanity has a lot of good things going for it: a promising comic book adventure story, a unique combat system, brilliant graphics, and the vocal styling of rapper Ice-T. Nevertheless, the arcade-style combat and limiting top-down perspective distract from the fun.

In the year 2028, a genetic researcher named Dr. Aiken invents a serum that taps into the unused portion of the human brain, giving test subjects amazing Psionic powers. Unfortunately, this drives the subjects insane and many turn to a life of crime, forcing the government to establish the Department of National Psionic Control (DNPC) to combat the problem. As DNPC agent Nathaniel Cain, you must use your Psionic abilities (or Talents) to fight villains, solve puzzles, and save the world from imminent doom.

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As a Psionic, you start with a handful of Talents and as the game progresses you gradually earn more powerful ones. Talents can be offensive (fireballs and lightning bolts) or defensive (shields and walls) and vary in power. Deciding which Talents to use requires strategy and different gamers will develop different styles.

Most of the puzzles in Sanity are clever and enjoyable, requiring you to use your various talents to complete Mario-style tasks, such as moving crates or jumping across platforms while avoiding spinning blades. The combat, on the other hand, quickly becomes tedious and often frustrating and actually manages to get in the way of the gameplay. The top-down perspective means that enemies often attack from off-screen and although Monolith has attempted to fix this problem by making combat areas smaller, this creates cramped and sometimes annoying battles.

Controlling Cain is done with the mouse, using the right button for movement and the left for using talents. The keyboard is used for selecting Talents and controlling the camera and can also be used for moving Cain - leaving the mouse free for aiming, which is sometimes handy during combat, but makes switching Talents on the fly much more difficult.

One thing Sanity does particularly well is showcase the power and versatility of the LithTech engine. Almost every color in the visible spectrum appears at some point in the game and rich textures like marble and wood jump off the screen with sparkling clarity. A moody soundtrack fits the game's atmosphere and the voice acting ranges from passable to laughable. The dialogue is also rather lengthy and you'll probably end up skipping through most of it. Sorry, Ice.

Still, Sanity is a good game with beautiful graphics, an interesting story, and clever puzzles, but a few flaws prevent it from being the amazing game it could have been.

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