The Kane Project 4 by Master Raze

Title Screen

Not taking into account the upload of JohnWWells' terrific Evil Sorcerors' Party, which has been added to April's list of uploaded games for Z2 and will be judged for April's award, March was a month of ZZT games of very low to reasonable standard. Noteable among these were Master Raze's The Kane Project 4, Scribbit's ... interesting game Johnathon, and, so I am told, my own game Respite. I cannot give my own game this award (just think how dumb that would look), so it was only between the first two; and Master Raze won on the basis of a game which had traces of coherence.

The Heroes

Pursuit!

The Kane Project is hailed by some as the best Master Raze game. I have not had the ... good fortune to have played the first three KP games, so admittedly I may have been out of the loop in terms of understanding the plot, so bear with me.

Kane's dead, thanks to our heroes Max and Joey, the brawn and brains of the game respectively. Unfortunately, their hero status is threatened by an insubordinate cop named Greg, who claims to have defeated Kane himself. Suspicious, perhaps moreso after two attempted assassinations, Max and Joey decide to investigate the matter. What they discover is that Greg is being impersonated (in an unashamed rip-off from Face/Off ... he's just lucky it's one of my favourite films) by the late Kane's brother, a certain John Kareth.

So, Max and Joey set out to expose Kareth's impersonation, and then hopefully "sacrifice the little bitch." Perhaps not the most intellectual of plots, but it works. Quite a mix of gameplay is involved; some simple puzzles, including another Boulder Xod one, action shootouts, and a nice "highway shooting" engine near the start of the game.

The programming is very sound, and I did not encounter any bugs. It's far from a 'shoot anything that moves' game ... one does have to apply a little bit of thought, for example, when there's a guard patrolling a corridor. What're you going to do, sneak up behind him and break his kneck? (sic).

Broadcast

Overall, the writing isn't anything brilliant. Dirty-minded puns and constant insults pervade the plot development, and actually kind of spoil it to a degree.

Master Raze's cutscene-graphic style ... indeed, his style, full stop ... is strongly reminiscent of drac0's. The graphics of this game are actually relatively good. Light and shadow are used appropriately. The only music in the game is a remix of the original Kane Project title screen music by Wong Chung Bang, which sounded appropriate.

The Kane Project 4 is definitely worth a download if you're a die-hard drac0 or Raze fan; even if you're not, you might still want to check it out, if you're into the unpretentious adventure genre! Congratulations to Mirror Image Games for their third MTP.

7 / 10