THE MARK OF KRI
Original Release: Sony, 2002, PlayStation 2
An early PS2 hack-em-up from Sony that experimented with a number of unusual elements
The Mark of Kri (PS2, Sony, 2002)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: PS2 Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
The Mark of Kri is an interesting, now mostly forgotten experiment by Sony from the early years of the PS2. It's fundamentally a linear beat-em-up, but implements its own unique little unconventional combat system and sauces the whole thing up with added elements like stealth kills and archery sniping as well as the unusual fusion of Disney-style art with Conan attitude and all manner of detailed and brutal kills.
So if it's interesting and original, why is it forgotten? One word: jank. A whole lot of it. It's frequently painful to play, and a lot of its ideas are interesting on paper but don't come off in practice.
So we're dropped into this odd Mongol-Polynesian-African hybrid world, of the sort you saw a strange amount of in early-mid 2000s Western fantasy games ... I think the source of that was trying to ape the aesthetics of the Elder Scrolls games, but the similarly eclectic Tamriel came off as more coherent and appealing than these games did.
Anyway, we play as some hulking islander hanging out in some village looking for work. Aside from a little training area for learning the basic controls of the game, the small interior of the village tavern serves as your little hub between levels. You go through a series of linear levels, each initiated by talking to the right person in the tavern and then walkin' on out the door when you're ready.
Initially, the game comes across as little more than a somewhat clunky 3D swordy brawler with an odd "spirit raven" mechanic tacked on. The game nearly always throws you up against mobs of 3 to 10 enemy mooks at a time, and the unique combat system has you "sweep" the right analog stick to highlight up to three you want to focus on at a time; each is then assigned one button which will have you automatically attack them when pressed as long as they are in range. Pressing in on the right stick cancels your current target selections and lets you re-focus. And if you select fewer than three enemies, you can use the unassigned buttons as "combo enhancers" that let you do more powerful attacks. You can also parry by holding R1, something that the enemies are extremely fond of doing right from the beginning.
Since this concept was never used in any other games before (and none that I can think of offhand since), it's far from immediately intuitive and really takes some time to come to grips with. If it was just a matter of a learning curve, that wouldn't be so bad. But there's a whole scoop of jank mixed in that never goes away no matter how familiar you get. There's never any real "flow" to moving between enemy targets, who are mostly just turtling and parrying everything you do anyway. It always just feels a little sloppy and random. The "combo enhancers" are almost never worth using as they're so fussy about actually registering. And there's the added complication of your sword automatically sticking in wood or clanging off stone and unbalancing you ... guess what the enemies are always hanging out near?
And the camera is always kind of crap, with minimal control over setting your view ... and that's even before you get to the baffling "raven" mechanic. You have this spirit bird that sits on your shoulder, at points throughout levels you can send it to a "vantage point" with the L2 button. Occasionally this is needed to pick up hidden items or hit switches to open doors, but the most common use is as a scout-ahead to see what enemies are waiting for you up the path. In the first level this seems rather pointless as you have to just blunder into battle with the enemies along your linear road anyway, but the utility becomes more apparent in later levels as the "stealth kill" and archery elements are worked in. The big problem is the bird sometimes takes it upon itself to start flying to a vantage point while you're right in the middle of combat for no apparent reason (certainly not due to pressing L2); this changes the camera angle to following the bird flapping slowly along while you're still being sliced up by the mooks! You can cancel out of it by pressing Triangle, but it can really disrupt you at the worst possible times. And even when the feature is working as intended the bird is just TOO SLOW as it lazily flaps from point to point.
So if you left off after the first level, you'd walk away wondering how anyone could have ever liked this game; it just seems like more sloppy early 00s polygon action with a needlessly confusing and frustrating combat and camera system. The good (or at least slightly better) stuff is gradually rolled out over the following levels. The second level introduces the ability to sneak up and do stealth kills. The third level gives you your bow and sniping from a distance. The fourth level introduces Tenchu-like "drop kills" from above. The fifth level gives you the "taiha" weapon which is a big whirly sword more adapted to crowd control. The sixth level you get the axe and ... wait, that's the last level and it's over already?
Aside from the fact that the fun stuff is parceled out like this, the fun stuff isn't always so fun because it suffers from its own jank. For example, the basic stealth action (almost as fundamental to the rest of the game as the basic combat is) is just broken in several different ways. It simply doesn't work reliably (basic stealth kills) or doesn't work the way it's supposed to at all (multi-button stealh kills when guards are close together, which I could never get to actually register). The net effect is for most of the game you feel like you're playing one annoying tutorial level after another that doesn't work quite right, and then it's suddenly over ... I'd estimate maybe eight hours of playtime available here at most, but much of that having to replay levels over and over due to general difficulty paired with the jank elements.
The aesthetics are a mixed bag too, the general incoherence of mushing a bunch of Southern Hemisphere elements together aside. Sonty reportedly brought on some former Disney animators to give it that "violent Lilo and Stich" sort of feel, and you can really see it in some of the character designs and interstitial art. The main character is well-animated and has quite a range of detailed kill animations, but the enemies mostly are indistinct and leave a lot to be desired. There's also an ongoing narration that's a total ripoff of the wizard from the Conan movies that does not come off well, just because it's such an unimaginative direct copy. And the music is mostly boring background tribal drumming.
In the end it's a package of experimental ideas that were alright on paper, but almost all of them just didn't come off well in execution. I don't know how the glowing reviews for this at the time looked past the sheer amount of jank you're always being asked to put up with; it's bad even for 2002, and Metal Gear Solid 2 had just set the bar for "stealth action" the year prior. The "enhancements" beyond the usual beat-em-up package (like the stealth and archery) all have their annoying qualities, but the real killer is just that the core combat is sloppy, annoying and prone to random camera weirdness. Add in the repetitive nature and super-short length and it's one to avoid IMO, but it really seems to have its fans out there.
Comments
Post a Comment