It’s a fairly simple layout to memorise, with various different levels and places to go, such as the Lab, Mac’s Shop and the Battle Terminal.īut it is here where I started to get annoyed with the game, as there is absolutely no indication of what you need to do. You’re in the underground world – the hub world for the characters that you need to interact with and shopkeepers you need to deal with and so on. Once you’re in and past the cutscenes (which have quite possibly the most comical dubbing I’ve ever seen – we’re talking 1970’s martial art film style here), the screen opens up to become full again and you’re in charge of Alpha. The screen is in the 4:3 format and only in the middle portion, there’s simulated screen roll and it’s like being back in the early 2000s. So, on firing up and logging in, the whole vibe of the startup screens is unashamedly retro. This is my first real use of the Play Anywhere scheme, and I can see now why everyone was so excited about it. This works absolutely brilliantly, and as the game isn’t graphically intensive, I can even run it on my low end laptop with an Xbox controller plugged in, allowing my progress to be kept from either platform. However, the remake finally saw the light of day in May 2017, and has been developed as a cross play title with Windows 10. This game also seems to have been something of a poisoned chalice, as the studio that were first charged with bringing the game up to date, Darkside Game Studios, were shutdown when Microsoft cancelled the remaster, citing monetary issues. Even our character, Alpha, looks emaciated and almost skeletal, a long way from the normal, heavily muscled sterotypes of game heroes. This is obvious in the graphical style, which is heavily stylised, with all the characters almost looking like caricatures of regular NPCs. Microsoft sought to use this game to try and get the game playing public in Japan onboard with the Xbox, bringing in the director of Panzer Dragoon, Yukio Futatsagi, to design and produce the game. I never played it in those days, being a PS2 boy, but despite its lack of critical success, the game went on to garner a large cult following. The original game of Phantom Dust was released way back in 2004, for the original Xbox.
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