Ground Zero Texas

We've penetrated the dregs once again. This week, its name is Ground Zero Texas. I feel bad for lambasting what obviously seems like a lot of effort on the part of the developers and the film crew (but not the actors), but this is just a hokey shooting gallery with some crummy full-motion video footage strung up to try and justify the purchase price. I have, admittedly, played a few FMV games lately that I genuinely enjoyed, but this doesn't even make the top twenty (then I shudder to realize I've played twenty of these games!).

El Cadron, Texas is the setting of Ground Zero Texas, which may or may not actually exist; a quick search on Google Earth yielded half-assed results. Strange things have been happening in El Cadron; people have been going missing. Of course, the horrible secret that binds you to this hellhole is one of cosmic proportions; the town is crawling with hostile aliens disguised as humans! After receiving a briefing from your tough-as-nails-but-still-mousses-his-hair captain, you are shown to the armaments; four giant particle beam cannons mounted innocuously around the town. As if the aliens aren't going to figure that one out.

You will spend the whole of your time with this game switching between the four cannons via a remote camera feed, watching heart-wrenchingly poor acting, and shooting the occasional space man in Western duds. It's kind of a body-snatchers thing going on, which roughly translates to, "Alien costumes cost THAT much, huh?". They mosey into the camera's line of sight, slowly pull a silly-looking space ray out of their holster, turn, and fire. Once you dispatch them, they scream and fly back a few seconds after the blast hits them. The worst are the old lady aliens, which fall over and make a sort of gagging noise as the dollar-store prop gun falls out of their hands. I really can't say enough about how horrible that acting is in this thing; that is, until I write my epic 1500 page tome (I'm in talks with Ken Burns to make it into a thirty part series for PBS!).

There is little left to discuss that could be this games saving grace. In fact, I could find no saving grace, so there you go. Sony Imagesoft and Digital Pictures have done it again; they've created a game that no one, save the guy ripping it apart ten years later, remembers. I thank Allah that it was only six bucks.