| Developed for Microsoft by veteran British company Argonaut (whose hits include the Croc series), Malice is a 3D action adventure packing one hell of a graphical punch. With richly detailed locations and superb character designs and animation, it's arguably the closest thing yet to a video game cartoon for the console, the unique visual style blending the comical with the surreal. |
| The bad guy of the piece is a Demon God whose arrival threatens to rip apart Malice's weird world. Enter a cute, bug-eyed cartoon heroine, sporting a touch of Japanese anime and a whole lot of attitude. Battling through 30 levels (which sport at metallic sheen that shows just what the Xbox's graphic chip is really capable of) she gradually evolves into a goddess, manipulating wood, metal, water, earth and even fire to defeat the evil, and even becoming a cat-goddess for one sequence that pits her against a Dog-God! It's all amazingly inventive, with even our heroine's range of weapons avoiding the usual clich‚s. Where else would you get a Clockwork Hammer or Quantum Tuning Fork? | | Blending dark humour, quest-based adventure, arcade action and unbridled weirdness, Malice is as stylish a re-invention of the 3D platform game as XBox gamers could hope for |
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