Often times in the past we were always grateful as console gamers to receive a title from the arcades or the PC that was a perfect conversion. Games such as Street Fighter II for the SNES or even Rainbow Six for the Dreamcast were applauded for their bringing their qualities over to a new audience of gamers to enjoy. Well, times have changed since then, and now a simple port just does not cut it in today's cutthroat world. What we have with Infogrames' Silver is a good and solid port from the PC, but ultimately fails to improve on the original by any measure of the imagination.

The storyline in Silver is as cliche as it gets. The hero David must rescue his beloved wife Jennifer from the clutches of the evil sorcerer Silver. But why is Silver capturing all the fine ladies of the world of Jarrah? Does he need them to summon some demonic force into this world? Does he need their services to clean his castle? Or worse yet, does he want to start a harem that rival's the size of yours truly?

First off, the visuals of Silver will remind you a lot of Final Fantasy 7. I don't know if this was Infogrames and Spiral House were planning on this, but the characters themselves look a little outdated in my opinion. This might be a result of the PC version attempting to satisfy users on all levels, but I would suspect for the Dreamcast version they could up the polygon count to take advantage of the fact that they don't have to worry about compatibility issues on the system. As it stands right now, the characters look rather blocky and possess no real amount of detail in them. On the other hand, the pre-rendered backgrounds look absolutely marvelous, especially with the integrated FMV in choice locations. This technique is especially pleasing to the eye whenever you pass by landmarks that would normally be static on a PlayStation game, such as a water fountain, or the ocean in the background.

Gameplay is an extremely mixed bag in Silver. This game just reeks of PC everywhere. You have five basic attacks, which can be executed by holding the R Trigger and pressing in any direction. Each attack is useful in certain situations - for example, if you press R and then down on the analog stick, you will execute a spinning attack, useful for attacking enemies who are behind you. For the most part, these attacks are really - really pointless, when mashing the A button to get a standard swing will take care of most jobs. If the control scheme was a little different (maybe A+direction?), it might have been of some use, but the use of the R trigger is just too clumbersome for me. Special moves are done by pressing and holding down the A button, but the fact that you cannot use all of them at once is a travesty in its own right, as many of these special moves have great applications later into the game.

The AI of the enemies is actually pretty decent. There will always be those mindless grunts that just charge you without a care in the world, but there are some that will stay in their place if you attempt to lure them near your party. As for your party AI, it can be good and bad at times. The good is that it's actually a very good fighter in hand to hand combat. The bad is that it often has a hard time following your movements, so there will be times when enemies will sneak up behind your partner and start wailing on him/her for major damage. You'll then have to double back and rescue your partner before they die a horrible death.

Another mainstay from the PC version is the horrible menu system. While the menus themselves are detailed and well thought out, the fact that the action around you still progresses while you're wading through layers of menus to drink a potion or equip an Ice Wand are just inexcusable in a real time game. The game should have all action paused while in a menu, so you're not killing yourself when you press the B button by accident. I realize that this might have been a deliberate design choice, I hate the fact that I can get slaughtered by my enemies for the simple reason of me wanting to change from a sword/shield combination to a magic wand or a pair of knives.

On the other hand, the soundtrack and the voice acting in Silver are top-notch. The music is scored depending on the situation at hand, so at the start of a battle, the music will get louder, with some great brass orchestra scores in the early going. The voice acting itself is nothing short of perfection in my opinion. The actors spill out their dialogue with a lot of heart and soul, and put in an honest effort into making the player believe that their characters are truly alive.

For all the things Silver does right, there's always something it does poorly. From the great soundtrack, to the flawed menu system - From the astounding visuals, to the repetitive gameplay, Silver is often a hit and miss title, but luckily for us, it does more of the former than of the latter.

· · · Reno