In theory, that is - in actual fact, you can run up to an enemy and just pump the various punch and kick buttons and see them off fairly easily. Leeloo prefers hand-to-hand combat to gunplay and is able to dispose of the baddies scattered around The Fifth Element's levels by somersaulting around them and kicking their heads in with an assortment of punches and kicks. If you get bored with having to spray an entire room with gunfire before you can hit anything, then you can have a crack at playing as Leeloo - although to complete the game you need to finish all the Korben and Leeloo levels, so you can't finish the game by just playing as either Leeloo or Korben. And there are in fact only four or so weapons for you to play with, far less than were featured in the similar but superior Heretic II and Time to Kill, which is a bit of a let down. So shooting becomes a largely hit and miss exercise, something that seriously detracts from the game. Tomb Raider had the benefit of Lara's ability to point her pistols in the direction of her opponents, but Korbin has no such ability, and the game features no crosshair option allowing you to see where your bullets are likely to land. Unfortunately, you're likely to spend more time blasting the walls than your opponents in this game, because there's no auto aiming system of any kind in the game. At least it does if you're playing one of the twelve or so levels that feature Korbin, who is handy with a blaster and can use one of the four weapons in the game to blow the none-too-intelligent baddies that come your way throughout the course of the game, who are all similarly armed with blasters and machine guns. The Fifth Element is actually more like A Time to Kill than Tomb Raider, since it involves a lot of blasting and a smaller amount of platform hopping. In actual fact, the camera angle has a tendency to change at inopportune moments, sometimes making it hard for you to execute a jump or see an enemy, although thankfully there is a key that fixes the camera perspective behind your character, alleviating some of these problems. The game is viewed from a third person perspective, with the camera changing angles to follow the action - at least, that's the idea. The Fifth Element bears a certain resemblance to Tomb Raider and the more recent Duke Nukem: A Time To Kill. So how do you go about this? Er, by jumping around and blowing things up - which is pretty much what happened in the film, so at least it's true to the movie in that respect. You play Korbin and Leeloo - Korbin on some levels, Leeloo on others - and you have to make your way through a series of locations from the film, collecting the four elements you need to stop the ultimate evil approaching Earth as you go, until you reach the final showdown and are able to activate the elements and repel the evil. And unsurprisingly, the game follows pretty much the same plot. Leeloo, being the supreme being and that, was the only person who could save the Earth from a malevolant force that threatens mankind every 5000 years. The movie centred around the escapades of Korbin Dallas, an ex-marine taxi driver, and Leeloo, the supreme being, a girl who ran about wearing bandages strategically placed over certain areas of her body. The Fifth Element received a bit of a bashing by some critics, although personally I thought it was pretty good, as long as you didn't expect anything particularly deep. Not that it's particularly good, mind you, it's just that it's been over a year since the original movie was released, and I'd imagine quite a lot of people will have forgotten about the movie's existence. I'm happy to say that The Fifth Element, a new game from Kalisto, based upon the film of the same name, is not a hastily churned out effort, released just to cash in on the popularity of the movie. Not that any games companies shied away from release poor quality movie games, though - the people at Ocean were notorious for turning any film license they could their get their hands on and turning it into some poor quality platform game. That said, not all films make good games - the point and click adventure 'Thelma and Louise Hit The Road' and the all-action shoot-em-up 'Forrest Gump: Knee Deep in the Stupid' both never saw the light of day. Then they'd release a game loosely based upon the film, in the hope of cashing in on the movie's popularity. What games companies used to do, and still do to a lesser extent, was to do is find a big box office hit, preferably one with a few recognisable and generally memorable characters. Film licenses have long been a way for companies to make a few quick quid by releasing products with a particular film's name bolted on, and this practice extends to the games industry.
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