If you had told me, before I played Johnny Mnemonic, that someone would one day create an "interactive movie" that was worthy of the name, I wouldn't have believed it. Sure, I thought it COULD be done, I just didn't think anyone would do it. The criteria: superb quality digitized video with fast, full-screen playback on something this side of a Cray; good writing and acting; and some innovations in the use of branching video, to make it fun and interesting to play - kind of like a game.
Finally, after any number of fumbles and miscues, who should come knocking on my "interactive movies only" mail slot? Sony Imagesoft. Their ESPN sports titles were okay, they did a couple of nice multimedia products, and have had a string of decent-to-excellent platform games for the SNES and Genesis, but aside from being a part of the Sony "we can do anything we set our minds to" brand, there was no reason to suspect that they could produce a product that could revolutionize a genre everyone and his brother has been trying to make work since 1993.
Then, much to my surprise, I played the game.
The video quality was superb. After playing this, I begin to suspect that there are an awful lot of people out them who don't have a clue about QuickTime. On a reasonably-equipped machine (and by this, I mean a high-end 486 with 8 MB, a fast double-speed and a good high-color card), the video plays smoothly and looks excellent. (A warning, though: the video was digitized in true color, and QuickTime dithers it on the fly, so low-end systems will not get the benefit of hand-optimized palettes. Playing Johnny in 256 colors is sheer masochism.) On a P-75 with 16 MB, a quad-speed drive and a 2 meg video card, you get full-screen playback with no hitches. Seek times between scenes are minimal, even on a double-speed, so you are never forced to stop suspending your disbelief.
The script, based on the theatrical motion picture, which was based on the short story by William Gibson, is decent. It's way short on exposition, but the manual that comes with the game does fill you in on a bit of the back story, so that can be forgiven. What it does have is plenty of action and attitude, and this is carried off with aplomb by the game's actors. Christopher Russel Gartin does an excellent job as Johnny, and former Los Angeles Lakers star Kurt Rambis was born to be the seven-foot sidekick of a monofilament-whip-wielding Yakuza ninja. In general, the acting was about as good as you'd see on a good action-adventure TV show, which means I didn't watch through a scene and say to myself, "gee, that sucked." Given how critical I am, and considering that this is a *game*, not a big-budget film, that's pretty amazing.
Finally, Johnny defies all previous expectations we had of interactive movies: there's gameplay, and it doesn't involve stopping the movie to jump in your ship and blast Kilrathi. As Johnny, you've copied a data package into your brain that's about twice the capacity your implant gives you. As such, you have about twelve hours to get that data out before your brain melts. Not only that, loiter too long in one spot and ninja-boy and his buddy Lurch will show up to try and separate your neural implant from the rest of your body.
To avoid this, you've got to get the download code that "unlocks" the data. You move from scene to scene, with almost the freedom you have moving from location to location in a traditional graphic adventure. Many scenes can be explored, and have multiple exits. Where Johnny shines over previous "interactive movies" is that parts of the game have been filmed multiple times and are randomized each time you play. This keeps the game interesting, and even gives it some replay value.
The game's controls are simple: when you can do something, the video changes into letterbox mode. At that time, you can turn, walk forward, or use something. When you fight another character, you are also given opportunities to act (indicated with the letterbox mode). There, you can choose to punch, block or kick. After a minimal amount of gameplay, you can start to pick up cues in your opponent's movements that let you judge which move is best at a given time. Video clips of either you or your opponent getting back to your feet shown between "rounds" give you an indicator of how well you are doing.
Hats off to Sony for finally moving the "interactive movie" genre in the right direction. I had a really good time playing Johnny Mnemonic, and I'm looking forward to playing more of it. It has some hefty hardware requirements if you want to play it full-screen, as it deserves, but if you can handle those, I highly recommend you give Johnny Mnemonic a spin.
