Boktai
- May 29, 2003 00:00 AM PST
Bold experiment in portable gaming, or clever ruse to get game geeks out in the sun? You decide.
When Konami director Hideo Kojima isn't busy creating beautiful vistas for Z.O.E. or coming up with new animals for Solid Snake to eat in the next Metal Gear, he devotes his spare time to Boktai�one of the neatest ideas for a Game Boy title ever conceived.The Boktai cartridge contains a solar sensor that detects whether you're playing the game in natural sunlight and how bright the local surroundings are. This can have grave effect on the game�you play a young vampire hunter with a solar gun and a mission from above to defeat the undead ravaging your planet. Your gun (as well as the assorted frames you attach to it) runs off the solar sensor, and if you run out of juice, you'll have to find some brighter location (in real life) to recharge your weapon. The game's got an internal clock, too, so Boktai's challenge factor can vary widely depending on when�and where�you play.
As the preview version Konami sent over showed, Boktai is a very singular game even without all the solar technology stored inside. At its roots it's an action RPG, but the viewpoint's rather strange�a 90-degree isometric view that creates an artificial sense of 3D as you explore the game's castles and highlands. Although Boktai does have some internal provisions for gamers who live in total darkness, many areas of the game are far more enjoyable if you actually take the time to play them outside. (This admittedly makes taking screenshots difficult, since GamePro's offices are 100-percent free of natural light. Hmmm. Excuse us while we think about this for a moment.)
