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not for most gamers

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 87 / 93
Date: September 25, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Most people will not like this game. Those who seek an easy learning curve and desire something like instant gratification should really look elsewhere. You should disregard any advertisements calling this a first person fighting game or an RPG/adventure or even a system simulation.

Also, this is a first generation Dreamcast game that has been out since December of 1999. So, the animation falters at times, the game flow is very, very quirky, and the supplied sparse documentation is of precious little help. Plus, I found the publisher's website to be down, and an extensive search of the Web regarding this title provided little in the way of understanding and help regarding gameplay. I did, however, find lots of reviews and comments that, generally speaking, slammed this game terribly. In other words, about 90% negative.

Having said all of that, I have to admit that I am more addicted to Seventh Cross than I have ever been to any other video game. After more than thirty-five hours in it, I still have to tear myself away from it. In addition, my wife, who absolutely hates my indulgence in console video games, actually enjoys sitting on the couch with me while I play it. It is a very different, unique kind of game, and the strangeness of it has her interested.

This game will appeal to someone who has an intellectual bent, who has a greater understanding of science, neural networks, and artificial intelligence than the average person, and who has a great deal of patience and curiosity. And finally, this person will need to have a deep appreciation of both the surreal and the sublime.

Seventh Cross is a blend of the adventure, RPG, fighting, and system simulation genres of video gaming. But these descriptions do not do the game justice, because the synergistic result make it much more than the sum of it's parts. It is entertainment that transcends the standard descriptions, and this is a situation where language simply fails. But read on, and hopefully I can impart some insight.

Seventh Cross's interface can be divided into three types of screens. The first is the Field, which most gamers would be familiar with. This is where the various conflicts for survival actually take place. The Seventh Cross world is truly gigantic, though sparsely detailed, and contains many types of environments. In this part of the game, your organism is much like the main character in an adventure game, with the obvious exception of there being no evident, easily defined goal. More about this later.

The second type of screen is tabular data, plain and simple. To understand and enjoy Seventh Cross means to be familiar with and responsive to numerical data. And there is quite a bit of it. Nutrients, environments, changing status and capabilities and more are all tracked on these various data screens. One or two of these do have some graphical feedback, such as how your organism looks after you've made a change, but they are primarily informational only.

The third type of screen, and the real heart of Seventh Cross, are the DNA Sheets. It is here that the real genius and truly unique aspect of the game can be found.

In Seventh Cross, you are an organism on another world. On this world, evolutionary change proceeds at a furious pace. You begin your life on this world as an amoeba-like, defenseless animal, and your task is to survive while guiding your own evolutionary development. Once you are past the three lowest, invertebrate stages (known as protis), your organism cannot be killed. This fourth stage is known as an Origin.

The method of guiding that development after you've attained Origin and higher status is much like a genetic engineering simulation which is graphically represented via the familiar double helix that looks very similar to a DNA segment. But with a closer look the familar Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, and Guanine are absent. The molecules are instead color-coded representations of Offense, Defense, Psi, Intelligence, Healing, and Dexterity.

The colors selected for these elements are very important, due to the unusual implementation of the neural network based AI. In fact, at the very beginning of a game, the player is presented with what appears to be a highly surreal method of defining the colors for these apsects, which is assigning a color to a series of monochromatic pictures that look like engravings.

The reason for doing this becomes clear once you realize just how the evolutionary development of your character is guided. The DNA sheets are two screens, one with a 10x10 matrix that you add colors to, which is parsed by the AI and then incorporated into the second screen's 20x20 matrix. Four 10x10 matrices equate to the four modifiable blocks of your organism, the Head, Body, Arms, and Legs. Points are earned for every life form you kill in the Field, and you expend these points during the building of your matrix (one matrix/one body block at a time). As you guide your creature's evolution, you base your altered patterns on the AI's overall 20x20 matrix. In this way, your designs are keyed from the AI's, and the AI's designs are keyed from your's. So, you would design a head block with Psi and Intelligence colors, a body block with Healing and Defense, and so on. Using the feedback from the AI is essential, since the program 'knows' what a particular environment has in store.

What you end up with is an organism that changes visually as you modify it, and the visuals can be very dramatic, bizarre and strange indeed. Both real world and fantasy creatures are used, so a lynx's head on an 'electric mollusk's' body with 'laser horse' legs and tube worms for arms is not only possible, but probable. In fact, it is next to impossible to make a 'normal' looking organism, and with the rapid evolution in Seventh Cross, it is unlikely that you'd want to.

With Seventh Cross, there is no ending to the gameplay, just as there seems to be no end to the wild visual combinations seen as your organism evolves. In this regard it is something like a virtual pet. The game has a leisurely pace to it. In fact, one of it's most appealing aspects (once you've figured out what is going on) is the strange combination of non-pressured, laid-back gameplay and intellectual gymnastics. Also, the music is fantastic and very catching, and adds to the overall experience.

If you are looking for fast-paced action and realistic fighting moves, graphically rich environments and treasures/power-ups, you will not find them here. But once you get past the learning curve, what you will find is a stimulating feast for the mind.

If there is any game for the Dreamcast that can genuinely be thought of as a sleeper, Seventh Cross is it.

But still, most people will not like this game.

different

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: July 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

like the previous reviewer states this game has had horrible reviews and follow ups. This game is good because it is like no other i have beaten it three times and each time has had a different ending it took alot of time and pondering but was worth it I really enjoyed this game but I strongly state "I".

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