To say that the offerings from Take 2 Interactive Software are diverse would be something of an understatement. The programs they featured at CES ran the gamut from diabolic adventure to pre-school fun.
Certainly the game with the largest budget of the Take 2 lineup is HELL: A Cyberpunk Thriller. How else could they have been able to hire talent like Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones and supermodel Stephanie Seymour? The sinister plot puts the player on the run from the theocratic government, who may actually control the gates to Hell! Nicely rendered graphics, lots of celebrity action and a storyline guaranteed to really tick off the Moral Majority. Who could ask for anything more? You can expect HELL to surface in October.
Star Crusader puts the player in the middle of an interstellar war. It combines lots of arcade-style action with military strategy and a cinematic plot. As a star crusader, your mission is to expand the influence of the Gorene Empire, but you can play on either side, and choose from 11 different ships and over a hundred missions. The CD-ROM version will feature digitized speech and a cast of professional actors.
However repulsive the word "edutainment" may be, it is the best descriptor for Assault on Everest. Some unidentified thing has crashed near the summit of the world's highest mountain, so the authorities send in Dolph Lundgren to find out about it. Hey wouldn't you? Anyway, don't think you can just go out and rent Cliffhanger instead of playing this. There's a lot of strategy and puzzle solving, as well as lots of factual information about Everest itself, transmitted through Dolph's laptop computer. Assault on Everest will be available this Fall for the PC CD-ROM.
The supernatural world stays well-hidden from most people, but not from the prying eyes of the members of Bureau 13. In this game, based on the successful pen and paper role-playing game, the player takes a team of paranormal investigators into a series of challenging and chilling cases. There are combat and puzzle aspects, and the solutions change based on the skills of the assembled team. The soundtrack is CD quality, complete with lyrics! Look for it in the Fall.
Bill Cosby's Picture Pages started as a great educational television program, and will now be the debut release of Child's Play, Take 2's new youngster-oriented division. Cosby's character Mortimer Ichabod is ever-present to lead the player through games that teach logical and creative thinking, relationships and patterns of thought, and basic reading skills. Picture Pages is a CD-ROM designed for children ages 3 to 5 and will be available for the PC in October and for the Macintosh in November
