Interest gets lost in 'Chaos Island'

Boot up "Chaos Island" for the first time and you're immediately greeted by a helicopter and angry dinosaurs. As you watch the helicopter swoosh over the island, you think to yourself: Steven Spielberg and the people at Dreamworks are just giving us a taste of something potentially great. It'll just get better. But it doesn't, and it won't take long to realize that the introduction is the most interesting and exciting part of the game.

The game is played from a bird's eye view of the island, where you can chose to be any variety of characters from "The Lost World." But the different types of land look almost identical to each other and you can't go over or through certain types of rocks or bushes, which makes for some frustrating times.

Another weak point of the game is the use of celebrity voices. While they do provide clear, concise instructions on what to do at the beginning of each mission, the tendency of the characters to speak up with one of a few phrases whenever their icon is clicked becomes very annoying very fast. Things like "What's the word?" or "That's custom" just don't sound that great after you've heard them 50 times in the last half hour.

"Chaos Island" really isn't much fun either. Excluding the video segments between levels, the graphics are very elementary. The characters are little blobs of color and are barely distinguishable from each other. They move at a snail's pace through the large islands, so if you find a nest of dinosaur eggs it will take several minutes of waiting before the characters will get them back to their base. Eventually when you get into battles with hunters or opposing dinosaurs, it is nearly impossible to tell how you are doing. This is unfortunate because the dueling is an important aspect of the game.

Other than the video sequences, there are very few positive aspects of the game. "Chaos Island" has worlds of potential but unfortunately, in the excitement department, it ends up a close second to watching paint dry.

- Matthew Barrett

01-28-98