Tech N' Gadgets

Friday, April 10, 2009

Hanuman: Review

Today I got my copy of Hanuman which is India's so called first game on PS2 (Actually it is Singstar Bollywood) and published by Sony. I spent Rs. 499 for that which is not a bad price for a PS2 game. People might argue that we should sell it in 100-200 range to beat piracy but Aurona/Sony is not copying the DVDs, they are making it..they are making a game and any PSx owner will happily pay this much.
The game starts neatly with nice looking menu and all that. Before I could launch the game, I launched credit screens and I was excited to see over 70% people in the list whom I know.




After that, I started my game and it all starts with badly shaded stylized Hanuman model and he calls the terrain as huge. I tried to explore things and water was really bad (Splash sound was good though), trees were bad, grass was just a green carpet and fruits looked yuck. The English is so badly spoken (Sorry kid, no offense but it's against those who asked you to speak in that manner) that we feel like as if it's ages old way of speaking English.



Somehow there were pre-rendered movies for even the smallest movement and loading these videos took 40-50 seconds each time and then again when video is over and we get back to our gameplay.

There are serious errors with player movement. It flies having nothing under it and it keeps on climbing wall, even if it's over.



Then in the game after some stupid acrobatic action and nine loading screens, you find a cave and then there was combat with jackal. It was unique kind of stuff...just move your club in the air and if jackal is nearby, he'll get hit without even getting in direct contact with club and if you stand idle then they'll just move around you but will not hit you. After you hit these jackals, you get orbs and those are definitely good.




Once you are done with these jackals, you enter the cave to reach next level where you find a man who's stuck and Hanuman helps him to come out of that (all in cutscene) and that guy takes Hanuman home and since Hanuman has lost his memory (Nowhere told but assumed), man names him Vanabalakam (Jungle Boy). Hanuman is part of a happy family.



Now that family really puts Hanuman to torture and asks me to get fruits for food. Just imagine how many? 5-10-15-30-50-70..........100 and that was like WTF.


In my journey to 100 fruits, I encountered many other problem areas like this guy is walking at the same place:


There were some Tarzan like stunts which just looked and felt out of place completely.



Finally after 38 fruits and 16 loading screens, I had to call it off. I want to trash it but for once, I want to finish it but those 100 fruits will always haunt me and I'll always be scared. SONY :(