A really weird game that came out for the
playstation. It wasn't that great-- it was WAY too short and the small amount of
plot that managed to invade the game was handled very clumsily-- but it was so unbelievably
creative that it was still worth it.
The freaky thing about Wild 9 was that it was a 2d sidescroller that had complete, full 3d graphics. As in, all graphics were 3d rendered, but it wasn't a first-person shooter-- you had no 3d mobility. It was just another 2d platform game. But it had this amazing level of life to it because of the 3d nature of the graphics-- everything had real, honest-to-goodness perspective, you'd have the camera tilt occasionally in crazy ways (you wouldn't always be looking at your character straight-on sideways) and most interesting of all, they actually had the path you took twist in 3d from time to time-- like, sometimes your path would twist back around, or turn around corners in 3d, or intersect your earlier path from the side in some weird way, and you'd for an instant see the long path you took to get there stretching away in 3d from a different perspective. This all sounds really stupid and needless, but it was really, really well done and came out really well. You wound up with graphics better than almost any sidescroller you've ever seen, and gameplay that was indisputably better than, say, Super Mario 64.
You did have some pretty damn freaky gameplay though, mostly related to the weapon you had, the rig. The rig-- well, imagine the whip from castlevania 4, except instead of leather or a chain it's some kind of tractor beam. The Rig would shoot out these crazy fields of energy, and if they touched an enemy the enemy would get trapped in it, and you'd be holding the enemy out at the end of a chain of energy. You could then kind of slap the enemy around-- wave your chain, and wave the enemy around as well. From there you would do something such as banging the enemy against walls and the floor until it died, tossing it off the edge of a cliff or somewhere it couldn't hurt you, or tossing it into, say, a fan. All the while you did this, the enemy would make pitiful screaming noises of pain. The game encouraged you to kill the enemy in the most sadistic way possible-- you actually got extra points at the end of the level depending on how creatively/painfully you had killed the level's enemies.
You also had a very limited supply of missles and grenades for extreme circumstances.
I wish the game had been about twice as long, but in what space they gave you the Wild 9 people basically fulfilled as much potential with their concept as anyone possibly could. It was really very well put together. I'd suggest renting it if you can.