Absolute Zero is the first product from the "new" Domark. After such lackluster titles as Tank Commander and Lords of Midnight, the company has set its sights on producing games according to a higher set of standards. Absolute Zero shows that they are at least in the right ballpark, even if haven't hit a home run yet.
The storyline behind the game is that a mining colony on Europa has awakened a race of aliens. Said aliens are grumpier than the average game reviewer upon awakening, and without hesitation proceed to wage war on the human colony.
You step into the shoes of several characters in the game. In a given military operation, you might first play a mission as a turret gunner in a ground-based vehicle, then later play the same mission from the point of view of a fighter jock lending air support to that same ground vehicle. The end result is a bit schizophrenic, but quite interesting and an idea not often (if ever) seen before.
There are seven different vehicles to fly or drive. Ground vehicles are pretty straightforward, but it should be mentioned that all flying craft are more spaceship than plane. The craft can "stall" in that, if you reduce thrust beyond a certain point, they drop out of the sky like bricks. Unfortunately, there is no sort of feedback like you'd get in an airplane (either a warning buzzer or that sluggish behavior that appears just before the nose drops). Also, these craft don't drop nose first. They just fall straight down. It can take a few precious seconds before you realize what is happening. On the other hand, punching the thrust button immediately stops your plummet.
Even though these vehicles fly like spaceships, the controls are very like those in a plane sim. Instead of a rudder you have maneuvering thrusters, but the result is the same. Unlike most space-style sims there is no specific control to roll your ship. Considering most of your flying is truly in three dimensions, the lack of this control is really felt as you often end up with your craft in odd attitudes. None of the flight models seem to take into account conservation of energy, and all the craft fly ballistically. You can fly with your "wings" perpendicular to the ground all day long. This is Wing Commander or X-Wing with a big chunk of ice thrown in as an obstacle.
One problem with Absolute Zero showed up early in the game when a mission was encountered which that required the player to personally destroy six aliens within a set time period (which averaged about 6 minutes). Whoa Domark! Check your play balance, folks. This is one heck of a tough mission, made tougher by the fact that you don't get credit if a wingman "steals" your kill or if your target crashes into the ground while trying to evade you.
This problem wouldn't be worthy commenting on if Domark hadn't used a "must win" mission tree. Like in X-Wing, you can't proceed to the next mission until you've beaten the current one. Hard-core gamers (you know, you folks who were born with a Nintendo controller in your hand) won't be overly bothered by this, but your average mortal gamer is going to be frustrated and will probably never see the greater part of Absolute Zero. The situation is compounded by the fact that the game seems targeted at an audience more casual then the hard-core sim gurus.
On the plus side, the game looks quite good, the sound is very atmospheric, and the ongoing story (told through the personal diaries and e-mail of the seven characters in the game) is better than average. Some of the missions have some puzzle aspects to them (again reminiscent of X-Wing) and Domark has seen fit to include "auto-hints." These pop up whenever you lose a mission, and offer some advice towards success. Absolute Zero isn't a serious sim, but it's quite entertaining, at least until you hit a mission that you fly over and over again and can't beat. Then it just becomes frustrating. Domark needs to let us admit defeat and bypass a mission in order for this game to gain widespread popularity. As it stands, only the most skilled joystick jockeys will get to enjoy the whole game.
