Kiss Psycho Circus for Dreamcast Review

The Story

The Four Who are One (Kiss, and they’re the good guys) defeat the Nightmare King, who, as a last ditch effort, calls upon a Destroyer to trap the spirits of the Elder in a void. Before disappearing forever, the Nightmare King sires a son in the most isolated place in the universe to reclaim the evil crown his father once had.

But there is one mortal (isn’t there always?) who can call back the Elders. She is the matriarch of the Psycho Circus and calls upon 4 humans to collect the last remaining shards of the elders so she can bring back peace, if that’s what you want to call it, to Earth.

On your journey you will control 4 characters in different parts of the game, each of which have different abilities and strengths.

The Gameplay

Psycho Circus is a first person shooter and so it progresses as one. Work your way through the level in order to solve puzzles, defeat a boss, or clear the area. You’ll use melee weapons, which aren’t powerful, but they are fun to use; common weapons (in the context of the game) like the Zero Cannon and the Windblade and other coolly named weapons; or, if you happen upon one of these babies, an Ultimate Weapon like Galaxion (not the arcade game) or the Spirit Lance, which sounds devastating.

Picking up armor protects you, of course, but if you collect all the pieces of armor that fit different parts of your body, you can look like a member of Kiss, but without the crazy tongue. There’s also something fun in Psycho Circus called the Rage Orb. If you pick up this item, it will give you 60 seconds of unlimited ammo for any weapon. I like that. I like that a lot.

The Graphics

Psycho Circus features some pretty dull graphics at times, but the game moves at a fast pace so you don’t really notice it. While the boards are detailed, there wasn’t enough detail to make me say ‘Wow!’. Character design is okay, the Dreamcast wasn’t pushing a lot of polygons in this game and there were hardly any cut-scenes to speak of.

Thompson’s Two Cents

This game has enough interesting concepts to make it a good game. Despite the lackluster graphics, I found the story to be engrossing and the weapons fun to use. Action was sparse in the beginning of the game, but it helps to get use to the layout of the control scheme and hone your attacking skills.

If only I could kill Gene Simmons... in the game of course.