In 32-Bit Market, Sony Rig Is Worth Every Bit

This may be bad form, but I challenge anyone out there to find a better game system on the market today than Sony’s PlayStation. Less than a year old, PlayStation is my hands-down winner in the fight for the 32-bit game market.

In the past, I’ve stopped short of making such sweeping statements, but too many people have asked in recent weeks how best to spend their cash--especially since Nintendo won’t be stepping up with its 64-bit machine until the fall. So here it is: If you buy just one new game system this year, make sure it’s PlayStation.

The folks over at Sega kept saying that their competing Saturn would eventually match PlayStation’s performance once designers got the hang of the Saturn’s more complicated architecture. They also predicted that PlayStation games would quickly hit a plateau.

Neither has happened so far. Even though Sega got a three-month jump on Sony in delivering the system to the United States last year, many of the games still look rough and play poorly.

And PlayStation games just keep getting better and better.

Consider a batch of three I recently played: Krazy Ivan, Assault Rigs and Cyberia. All give PlayStation a great workout and should make cost-conscious players glad they parted with their hard-earned simoleons.

Krazy Ivan is perhaps the best of the bunch--or maybe it’s just that any game that starts with a riff from the disco classic “Le Freak” gets my vote right off the bat. In any case, this first-person shooter looks and plays the way Activision’s Mechwarrior should have looked and played on the PC.

The game tells the story of a schizophrenic Russian soldier whose weapon of choice is a Steel Cossack, a giant body armor that makes RoboCop look like a wuss. The plot: Blow up the bad guys and rescue the good guys. Simple stuff, but a true hoot.

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From dead-on visuals and crystal-clear, full-screen, full-motion video to rocking Dolby Surround sound, Krazy Ivan is technically as close to perfect as they come. Control is smooth and seamless.

Likewise, Assault Rigs takes a technically elegant jaunt through some virtual landscapes that roll and scroll so smoothly they look more like they came off a workstation than a TV-top rig.

The gimmick here is virtual reality without all the nausea-inducing headgear. And it pretty much works. Objectives are simple: Blast opposing tanks and collect goodies. If I had a bigger TV, I’d swear it was real.

Finally, Cyberia is a short stroll down memory lane for me. Last year, a buddy and I spent a glorious Cheeto-filled evening in front of his computer playing the PC version of Cyberia while our wives watched some sappy movie where everyone has a British accent.

The folks at Interplay ported Cyberia directly onto PlayStation, so while the dazzle factor is no longer as high, it remains a darn good game. One thing that still annoys me, though, is the relative ease with which characters bite the dust.

I’m not just saying this because I suck. It’s just that there are far too many ways in Cyberia to end up at the good old Game Over screen. Granted, the game automatically saves progress at key points, but it gets a little tedious waiting to reload every five minutes.

So, if you’re lucky enough to have a few hundred smackers burning a hole in your pocket, spend it wisely. Folks who appreciate high-end gaming that offers technical brilliance won’t go wrong with PlayStation.

And, no, I don’t own any Sony stock.

Staff writer Aaron Curtiss reviews video games regularly. To comment on a column or to suggest games for review, send letters to The Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311. Or send e-mail to Aaron.C[email protected].