You can call me a blasphemer if you like, but I didn't like Resident Evil. Maybe I just didn't get it. Maybe I wasn't able to see past the fact that this was an early game on the Sony Playstation console, as the graphics and sound were definitely dated. I couldn't identify with the plot, I was extremely annoyed by the game loading between rooms, and I found the inventory system cumbersome. I do give it credit for jump-starting the horror game genre, but that's about all.

Wait a minute here ... you might be asking yourself why I'm discussing Resident Evil in the Galerians review. The answer to that question is very simple: I found Galerians to be a cheap ripoff of Resident Evil, retaining all of the elements I couldn't stand and adding very little of interest. Although I disliked Resident Evil, I would rather play it for weeks than spend one more minute playing Galerians. It really is that bad.

What's Going on Here?

If there's a high point for Galerians, it's the plot--but given the ratings in the other sections, that's not saying much. In the game, you play Rion, a young teenage boy who wakes up in a hospital with no memory of the atrocities that have happened to him. Through the miracle of technology, you have been given psionic powers, which can be recharged by using injectable vials. Your goal is to use these powers to escape the hospital, discover your past, and stop Dorothy (an artificially intelligent supercomputer) from populating the world with her slaves. The game does a fair job of telling the story through flashbacks, interactions with other characters, and documents found scattered around different locales. Unfortunately, any enthusiasm for the story that I might have felt was extinguished within 30 minutes of starting the game, due to the miserable gameplay.

Overall Plot Grade: B

How Did it Sound?

In a word, annoying. The in-game music, which varies slightly depending on your location, is just plain boring. It tries to be dark and techno-menacing, but all it made me want to do was turn down the volume. The in-game sound effects are another thing entirely; all of the locations seem extremely quiet, except for the sounds of your footsteps, which seem unnaturally loud. At least walking on wood sounds differently than walking on metal or grass.

Of course, there are also the battle noises. Once you play Galerians, you'll fondly remember the lovely sound of Rion screaming and groaning as he shorts out. I found one of the "bosses" that you must beat to finish a level so irritating that I literally muted the sound, and it didn't seem to affect the game very much, if at all. The power indicator on your psionic attack is at least at the correct volume.

The only other sound of note in the game is for inventory manipulation. The beep made when navigating your inventory is absolutely ridiculous--far too loud and grating. A final note--the introductory movie/theme song is a repetitive epilepsy-inducing festival of techno mixed with vomiting noises. Very nice.

Overall Sound Grade: D+

How Did it Look?

After the recent successes of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and Fear Effect, it is apparent that developers have taken the Playstation platform to the next level with respect to graphics. Galerians, however, remains firmly entrenched in mediocrity, with the exception of the movie sequences--but I'll get to that momentarily. Character movement is fairly pixelated, and to my untrained eye, looks worse than the characters in the first Resident Evil. The environments your character walks through seem strangely empty, and they lack detail from every angle.

With respect to the movie sequences, there was obviously some effort put into them--the animation is smooth, and the backgrounds are representative of the gloomy atmosphere of the game. There are problems, though, with the believability of these movies--for example, during one of Rion's flashback sequences, his mother is showing him a "beautiful" ring on her hand. No problem there ... except that she's wearing the ring directly over one of her knuckles. This may be nitpicking, but it seems to me that with the hours of time spent putting these movies together, someone should have noticed that, since the hand is the only thing on the screen! I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed these tiny inconsistencies if the game had been any fun at all, but that's where this game really falls down--see the next section.

Overall Graphics Grade: C-

Was it Fun?

Playing Galerians is like chewing on aluminum foil. I have never played a game that was as lacking in fun as this one.

While playing Galerians, there are three status bars in the upper right corner of the screen. The top bar represents hit points, the bottom bar represents your stock of active psionic power, and the middle bar represents your "Aggression Points." The drugs you inject to combat the bad guys in the game cause your aggression to increase--once it hits maximum, you "short out," with two effects. The first effect is that the regular enemies in the game are hit with a massive psionic blast, causing their heads to explode, or at the very least instant death. The second effect, the consequence of this mental drain, is that your hit points begin to drop until you take a dose of your favorite calming drug, Delmetor. Delmetor is not in very plentiful supply, so if you short out without a stash of Delmetor, you're toast. This gimmick would be very successful except for a very critical problem--while exploring your surroundings, your Aggression Points continue to increase, regardless of what you are doing. This added time constraint, to put it simply, is the reason this game is terrible. When I play a game, I like to explore my surroundings, taking my time to notice the hard work by the developers--but in order to win this game, you have to rush through it. Who cares about the story, or the characters, for that matter--you better hurry, pal, or else you'll die.

What's the problem with hurrying? Well, at your standard walking speed, there's no possible way to finish this game. I could crawl faster than Rion walks. You can run, by holding down one of the control buttons, but with this added speed comes a lack of control. Turning Rion while running is like turning a large truck--he requires a pretty significant turning radius. The only problem with running everywhere is the delay between rooms. Open a door, wait ten seconds. To climb stairs, you must press the action button (just like RE) and another ten seconds are gone. In fact, I think the time between rooms is even slower than in Resident Evil, and I didn't think that was possible. Playing this game is an alternating sequence of "hurry up" and "wait for load" interrupting any sense of urgency and replacing it with irritation.

Galerians did fix one of the most irritating problems with RE, the limited inventory--but only for regular items and keys. It's true that you have unlimited space for documents, pictures, keys, and other items of interest while you're exploring, but there is still a limitation on the number of drugs and tablets you can carry. Come on, Crave, that's ridiculous. I can carry four large pieces of metal without any problems, but when it comes to one more little pill, I don't have any more room. It follows, therefore, that even if I've just found enough Delmetor to keep me going for another half an hour, I have to come back to the room to pick it up later because my medicine pouch is full of psionic attack drugs.

Oh yes, I almost forgot! For the sake of example, let's assume that you have the key to open a particular office. During your explorations, you find a door, and when you try to open it, the only message you receive is, "This door is locked." The key you found is not automatically used when you walk up to the door--you must specifically select the key and use it on the door. What if you don't know that this room is the office that matches the key? Too bad. The object manipulation system in Galerians is pitiful. How about another example? Walk up to a computer terminal, press Action, and the game tells you, "There is a computer terminal here." You have to use Action a second time to access the terminal. I walked away from a number of critical game objects, thinking that my efforts were sufficient to activate them, when in fact, another Action press was still necessary.

There was one feature that I found intriguing--in addition to psionic attack powers, Rion has the ability to "scan" different objects during the course of the game. If you are missing a key for a door, scanning the door will give you a hint as to where that key can be found. If a door is unlocked, scanning it will give you a preview of the upcoming room. Scanning objects that you find during your exploration will sometimes reveal in-game movies that more fully explain the storyline. Once I discovered this, I began to scan everything to explore the plot, but stopped shortly thereafter--scanning objects increases your Aggression Points, so the lack of Delmetor forced me to be very selective in my scanning.

Galerians does have some reasonably interesting puzzles, but given the time constraint I mentioned above, it becomes necessary to solve each puzzle twice--take the time to figure it out the first time, reload, and then rush through the process you went through the first time as fast as possible to conserve Delmetor. Solving the puzzles twice becomes two times too many. Add to this mix the fact that the "bosses" are far too difficult, and you know exactly why I used a walkthrough for the majority of the game--let someone else figure out the fastest way to finish each stage so I don't have to replay long segments of it. Crave/Ascii advertises on the outer packaging of Galerians that there are 50+ hours of gameplay. They neglect to mention that 15 of those hours are spent replaying sections you've already explored, and 10 of those hours are spent waiting for rooms to load.

Overall Gameplay Grade: F

There is no possible way that I could recommend this game to any adventure gamer. Since there are some mature themes, as well as graphic violence, in this game, it's definitely not for the kids. The gameplay was enough for this adult to toss it into the recycle bin. I think I'll replay Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver or Zork Nemesis to wash the bad taste of Galerians out of my mouth.

Final Grade: D