Hybrid Heaven

One of the problems of writing previews of videogames is that there are times when the game's creators really don't want to give away anything about it before it comes out. This is the case with Konami's Hybrid Heaven; the Japanese giant has been attempting to keep a Phantom Menace-level ring of steel around the game.

However, being nasty journalistic types whose job it is to prise out snippets of information and piece them together to make a story, sometimes even without having to make stuff up, we've found a few rusty holes in the ring of steel and sneaked inside. The big news is that Hybrid Heaven will make use of the Expansion Pak, so the final game (currently due in June, although it may slip back to September) will run in hi-res if you've got one of the little red-hatted devils inside your N64.

Something that Konami really was determined to hide was the storyline. Well, they tried, they really did. But suffice it to say that there are Face/Off-style bodyswapping shenanigans going on, with the hero of the game unexpectedly finding himself in the body of someone intimately involved in sinister genetic experiments (creating the titular hybrids) and a plot to do away with the President of the United States. Of course, the fact that you don't know jack about said sinister genetic experiments rather gives the game away when people start asking for your advice.

When things go west, Hybrid Heaven's unique combat system comes into play. It's a mix of beat-'em-up and an RPG turn-based system, where tactics are paramount. Do you, for instance, try to wear down your opponent with a succession of rapid, but not all that powerful, strikes, or do you hold back to build up your power bar for a devastating attack, and take the risk that your adversary will get in first and knock you down while you're poncing about? Attacks at your disposal include all the old favourites like uppercuts, roundhouse kicks and sweeps, as well as a range of defensive moves. You can also make use of weapons and equipment to even things up. The system may sound odd, but something similar worked just fine for Parasite Eve on the PlayStation, so there's every reason to believe Konami will be able to pull it off.

About time! Finally arriving a full year late, Hybrid Heaven is one of those N64 games that seems to have been in development forever, although at least it hasn't been as delayed as Earthworm Jim.

So, what's it all about? All kinds of strange and seemingly contradictory reports about the plot have come out since the game was first announced in 1998, and now that we've got the game and can see for ourselves... well, they were pretty much right! Hybrid Heaven has a complicated, twisting plot that's as contorted as a contortionist's lower intestine. The lengthy intro sequence drops a few hints about what lies ahead, but by the time you start the game, not only do you not control who you thought you were going to be controlling, but it turns out that even your character doesn't know who he really is!

Without wanting to give too much away – a lot of the fun of the game comes from actually discovering each new twist in the narrative – the overall plot involves a race of aliens who are creating clones of human beings (the hybrids of the title) and gradually using the clones to replace the originals. John Slater, who after a considerable number of plot revelations turns out to be the game's hero, is a US Secret Service agent targeted for replacement. Since Slater also happens to be a Presidential bodyguard, the aliens' ultimate aim starts to become clear...

Going Underground

Although Hybrid Heaven has a similar filmic atmosphere to that of Konami's PlayStation hit Metal Gear Solid, it's a different kind of game to play. The stealth aspects of MGS are more or less gone, apart from a few sections where you have to dodge the sensor beams of security robots, and Hybrid Heaven relies more on exploration than problem-solving and cunning assassinations. For the most part, puzzles in Hybrid Heaven are of the 'find key to unlock door' variety, though there are a few more imaginative brain-teasers as you get further into the game.

Where Hybrid Heaven really differs from MGS is in its combat system, which is unique on the N64. It's an odd but surprisingly effective mix of real-time beat-'em-up and RPG turn-based combat. You can attack your enemy at any time (and he/she/it can do the same to you), but it's advantageous to wait until your power bar at the top of the screen has fully charged. The higher the bar, the more damage you can cause. You are initially given just a short list of attacks to make your choice from, but as you gain experience the list gets longer and more damaging.

Defending is done in a similar way; when your opponent is about to strike, the word 'WARNING!' flashes on the screen and you have to choose quickly whether to block the attack, try to dodge it or attempt a reversal and sneak in a quick shot of your own. If you take damage, you can use items in your inventory to regain your energy. There are also special items and weapons that increase your attack strength or improve your resistance to damage, but these are in short supply so you need to use them wisely.

More RPG aspects come in at the end of a fight, assuming you won – death is the only alternative! If an enemy used a new attack move on you, you gain the ability to use that move in your next fight. Your strength and power also increase as you gain experience.

Different parts of your body – arms, legs, head, torso – have different attack and defence ratings, so if, for example, you keep using your right arm in battle, it will gain strength faster than your left arm will. To make yourself as effective a fighting machine as possible, therefore, you need to balance everything out. Besides, if you keep on walking around with a huge right arm the mutants will make fun of you.

Ugly Muthas

Hybrid Heaven is a huge game. Konami reckons that it will take a first-time player at least 30 hours to reach the end, and when you factor in the inevitable deaths that will knock you back to the beginning of a stage they're probably not wrong. It's also huge in a scale sense – the underground complex is vast, full of cavernous chambers packed with mysterious machinery rumbling away. This does bring up a complaint, though; there are quite a few areas where you're just slogging through miles of empty corridors a la Turok 2. Apart from the annoying sentry robots, which are easily disposed of with your worryingly weedy little gun, nearly all of the enemies are lurking inside rooms. Naturally, to get through the game you have to go into all of these rooms. Although the combat system is reasonably painless (certainly compared to the drawn-out torture of a game like Final Fantasy VII on PlayStation) it does get tiresome when you know that to reach your next objective, you're going to have to trudge through half a dozen more or less identical battles to get there. Most of the time fights can't be avoided once you enter a room, and if you try to stay away from the enemy and run for an exit, you'll often get hit by a 'surprise attack' where your adversary dives in from behind and inflicts even more damage on you!

What this amounts to is that combat takes up far too much of the game. You want to be unravelling the plot, encountering new and ever-stranger creatures and locations, outwitting the aliens and generally saving the world, but instead you end up punching out dozens of monsters that look scarily like inside-out horses. Since the strength of the enemies grows roughly in proportion to Slater's own power boosts, the further into the game you get, the longer the fights take to resolve. Though Hybrid Heaven is a far better game, you can't help having nasty flashbacks to the battles in Holy Magic Century.

Camera Shy

Hybrid Heaven is ultimately a game that could – should – have been awesome, but like many N64 titles it suffers from a range of small but cumulatively damaging flaws. Aside from the over-reliance on battles, the game is also affected by the poor camera – the amount of control you have over it is limited, and at times it jumps unexpectedly to a new position and leaves you unsure of exactly which direction you're facing. Not good in sticky situations! Without an Expansion Pak the visuals tend toward the muddy side, but with it the framerate suffers considerably. Slater's controls are a bit clumsy too, and his gun is very hard to aim accurately. He's not light on his feet either, often banging into walls or blundering over mines because he can't turn fast enough. In many ways, Hybrid Heaven is like a sci-fi version of Castlevania – not so much because of the way it plays, but because it's teetering on the brink of greatness yet doesn't quite make it. That said, it's still a good game, with an enthralling storyline and no small number of surprises along the way, so if you've completed Zelda and Castlevania this is the obvious next choice for adventure fanatics.

The acronym 'RPG' usually seems to elicit one of two different responses depending on whether you're actually an RPG fan or not. You might visualise hobbits, goblins and trolls, huge medieval armies sweeping across rolling green landscapes, castles, princesses, wizards and magic. You might, on the other hand, envision hours of something these lines – rock monster attacks. He rolls a seven. You take 300 damage. You attack. You throw an eight. You miss. Monster attacks. You take 432 damage. You die.

Whichever category you fit into, be it RPG-fan or RPG-hater, you're unlikely to visualise a futuristic cityscape where armies of genetically engineered half-human freaks terrorise all and sundry while shadowy figures wield powerful high-tech weaponry. When most people think of RPGs they generally have the old Tolkien/Middle Earth kind of thing in mind, when in fact RPGs encompass all kinds of genre. Parasite Eve on the PSX brought the console RPG into the present, and Hybrid Heaven looks set to send it into the future on the N64.

Set in a futuristic cityscape where the world has changed beyond that which we now know and mysterious forces are running things, Hybrid Heaven deals which genetics and conspiracies (of course, mysterious forces could actually be running things now, because if they were mysterious then we wouldn't know, would we?) A few issues back we covered the basic storyline behind the game, so this time we're going to deal with the combat system because anyone who suffered through the truly awful battles in Holy Magic Century (sorry Konami, but they were) would be forgiven for feeling a bit dubious upon learning that Hybrid Heaven also uses turn-based combat.

However, fear not, because the combat system in this sci-fi adventure looks to have had considerably more thought put into it. As with Holy Magic Century, battles commence when you enter the vicinity of an enemy. This takes you into Battle mode, where three separate gauges display the power, stamina and hit points of you and your opponent.

The power gauge affects the amount of damage that each attack causes, so the higher the gauge the more you hurt them. Stamina has the same influence when performing the various throw techniques. Hit points are obviously the most vital gauge. With each attack the HP total drops, and when it reaches zero, someone dies.

Similar to the aforementioned PSX title Parasite Eve, in Hybrid Heaven your character can move around during combat. When you want to attack you press A and you then get a choice of different attacks from an on-screen menu. Obviously where you're standing when you choose to attack influences your range of options – you can't grab them if you're standing six feet away, unless you're Reed Richards! Similarly, when an enemy attacks you a menu appears giving you a choice of several different defensive manoeuvres.

New moves can be learned as your character progresses through the adventure, and of course there is a massive range of energy and projectile weapons to collect on your travels. One innovation is that your character's limbs become stronger or weaker depending on how much you use them. If you consistently use your right arm for punching, for instance, then that arm will become stronger than the left one – just like it would in real life!

Quite how well this combat system will fit in with the overall atmosphere of the rest of the game still remains to be seen, but Hybrid Heaven looks like it's shaping up as potentially the best turn-based RPG on the N64 so far... although that's not really saying much, is it?

Konami has started work on a potentially exciting action/RPG, Hybrid Heaven. Unfortunately, very little is known about the game at this point. What we do know is that game-play takes place in full 3-D worlds (similar to Nintendo's own upcoming action/RPG, Zelda 64). Hybrid Heaven takes place in a dark and distant future. Early screen shots of these environments look extremely realistic and promising. As you explore the open worlds, you will run into some not-so-friendly creatures. The game will then shift to a separate screen to act out the battle seguences. Here, you'll be able to punch, kick, shoot or use any number of other moves and technigues to win (the game will also include a special Two-player Battle Mode).

We will keep you updated on this interesting title as the game progresses.

Explore a dark world of genetic mutants, political intrigue and mind control deep below the "Big Apple" in Hybrid Heaven. Konami's cinematic, 64-Bit answer to Square Soft's popular Parasite Eve for the PlayStation.

After gunning down an unarmed secret service agent at the urging of a mysterious, disembodied voice, the player's character, Diaz, is ushered through a New York subway tunnel by two men in black into a bizarre subterranean world populated by scientists, robotic sentries and unspeakable genetic experiments gone awry.

An unwitting pawn in a plan to assassinate the president. Diaz must piece together the fragments of his shattered memory if he is to escape his underground prison and foil the would-be assassins.

in Hybrid Heaven's field mode, the player is free to explore the game's n 3D environments, avoiding hazards, discovering computer passwords and gunning down floating robotic sentries with a laser pistol. Pass in front of a mutant's field of vision, however, and you'll enter a battle mode similar to Parasite Eve's. In this mode, Diaz is free to run around a limited environment while scrolling through RPG-style attack options. At the touch of the A button, a window will pop up asking if the player wants to attack or use a weapon. If attack is chosen, the player can choose from an array of punches and kicks, which vary in power and chance of failure. If you're too slow, your opponent will gain the upper hand, forcing you to defend, dodge or counter its attack.

A power gouge at the top of the screen, which governs Diaz's attack power, decreases with each attack but replenishes over time. Unfortunately, the gauge begins at zero, forcing you to run around avoiding your opponent until it is sufficiently charged. A separate stamina gauge located below the power gauge influences which throws Diaz is capable of performing. Win a fight and your character's parameters--hit points, attack strength, defense, etc.--will automatically increase. What's more, Diaz actually evolves as you progress through the game, gaining new attacks based on which techniques are used most often.

Hybrid Heaven's real time cinemas have a highly cinematic look and are chock-full of rapid cuts, camera moves and, thanks to Konami's powerful compression techniques, a surprising amount of speech for a cartridge game.

The first game of Its type available for the Nintendo 64, Konami's "hybrid" offering is almost guaranteed to enjoy heavenly success when it hits store shelves in May.

Hybrid Heaven is an intriguing action/fighting game with a twist. Whenever you encounter an enemy, you fight hand-to-hand in turn-based battles--but you pick your attack (punch, kick, or throw) from menus! You start with a few moves in your repertoire, but can learn more as the game progresses.

So what's the story? You play as Diaz, a seemingly ordinary man who's attacked by two men in the subway. While escaping his pursuers, Diaz happens to stumble upon a strange underground lab filled with alien/human hybrids.

As for features, Hybrid Heaven has a third-person view, several characters to talk with, and puzzles to solve. The game's 11 giant areas are broken down into subsections, which each contain a password that you must find in order to proceed. So far, the game is intriguing--but it remains to be seen whether this Hybrid of fighting and turn-based RPG elements will succeed.

A sci-fi action/adventure game, Hybrid Heaven guns onto the N64 with gameplay that's a cross between Parasite Eve and Legend of Legaia. You play as Diaz, a man caught in the mysterious underground of New York, whos being hunted by hybrid creatures and cloned humans who'll stop at nothing to keep their secret When you encounter enemies, the game shifts from explor-action to turn-based fighting as you move around a set battlefield while selecting attacks and counters from a menu. Hybrid Heavens cool blend of game styles packs a lot of promise for its May release.

Konami left Nintendo 64 owners in the lurch by making Metal Gear Solid a PlayStation exclusive, but the company's follow-up, Hybrid Heaven, plays like a gift from above for N64 fans wanting a high-quality adventure.

The Truth is in Here

HH opens in a mysterious underground compound infested with mutant monsters. The intriguing plot uses Resident Evil-style cut-scenes to reveal a deep-seeded, X-Files-ish conspiracy in which world leaders are replaced by alien impostors. Even your own identity is in question!

Hybrid Heaven uses the Expansion Pak to deliver crisper textures and a deeper focus in its hi-res mode, but the staccato camera may leave you playing the more fluid low-res mode. Either way, the expansive compound is oppressive and varied, the fearsome monsters move realistically, and the impressive face textures almost make up for the lack of voices. Meanwhile, HH s crisp sounds do justice to the weapons, environments, and monsters, while the dynamic score responds to the action to create a cinematic experience that ranks in the upper echelon of N64 titles.

Hybrid Interface

HH features a quasi-turn-based fighting style: Although the battles are fought in real-time, you attack or defend through menus in frozen time. Each of your limbs independently improves in strength, while weapons, combos, and advanced attacks become available to you later in the game. The superb "battle mode" fighting interface, which is also available in the two-player contest, is simultaneously unique and intuitive. However, the regular controls (especially when you try to jump) prove trying and are often further hindered by some awkward camera angles. Also, the map overlay has no directional indicators or persistent memory, making it relatively useless.

While it's no Metal Gear Solid, this game is a challenging, exciting, and cinematic game. Adventure fans will enjoy their stay in Hybrid Heaven.

Konami is set to move onto the RPG battleground yet again with Hybrid Heaven. Set in the future, Hybrid relates the story of Johnny Slader, a special operations team leader who has been sent into the city to take care of a little military mess namely, mutants created during a military experiment aimed at creating super-soldiers. Hybrid's battles will take place in predetermined movie cut scenes; you find a monster, choose a position to attack, pick your battle option from a menu, then watch a cinema of the battle's result. Sounds interesting, looks cool, but will it satisfy the complex role-playing urges of action/RPG fans? We'll see next Christmas when we go to Heaven.