Just picked up Krazy Ivan yesterday and won it today. Here's my 2
cents worth on it.

   In the game, you play some crazy/unstable Russian guy who has the
job of saving the earth from aliens. Equipped with a battle mech you
must travel to five different parts of the world destroying enemy mechs
as you go. In each of the five areas there are several mechs (bosses)
that you must destroy before destroying the shield in that area. If you
take too long between the battles with the bosses the Black Knight mech
will appear. The sky goes black and you must fight him off (he cannot
be destroyed) to get back to the rest of the game. Your other objective
is to rescue as many people as possible. They appear in a group from
the rubble of a destroyed enemy and can be picked up by running over
them. You can go after the boss mechs in any order and once they are
destroyed the shield appears. The shield reminds me of a 3D version of
Star Castle... That is to say there are a number of quickly rotating
panels with a glowing ball in the center. Basically you blast away at
this until you destroy it. You can then proceed to the next stage.
    The overall graphics of the game are excellent. The view is first
person from the cockpit of your mech. You can see your guns sticking
out from the bottom of the screen and it is filled with various heads
up displays to represent shield conditions, weapon status, etc. There
is no other view available. I think an outside view where you could see
your own mech would have been nifty. The landscape of each of the
stages is VERY similar. Rolling hills which look very smooth and nice
are populated sparsely with trees. Between stages the hills and ground
change colors and the trees look different. There are no buildings or
other landmarks and this is a bit of a dissapointment. There is some
clipping to be seen in the landscape but this is mainly hidden due to
the fact that there is a fog that hides things that are longer than a
certain distance away. This doesn't really detract from the game and
the ability to barely see an enemy that is lost in the fog is pretty
nifty. Each stage has a variety of minor mechs whose purpose is mainly
to deliver you powerups once destroyed. These can be in the form of
shield/weapon replenishement and various invincible modes which are
timed. The gameplay really runs something like this: Find the first
boss mech on your radar and go after it. After destroying it, kill off
a few minor mechs to power up your armour and weapons again. Repeat
this process until all boss mechs are destroyed, then blast as many
minor mechs as you can stand until you've saved a bunch of people, then
destroy the shield. Now go to the next level.
    The graphical apperance of all the mechs is quite nice. They have
very good texture mapping and move well. All the boss mechs are
different in apperance and one of the excitements of the game is
finding out what the next boss one will look like. There is no slowdown
in the graphics that I saw. Everything runs along at what looks like a
nice 30fps. I didn't really notice any 3D polygon mistakes, but objects
don't intersect each other too much in the game to make a problem with
this. Sound is excellent. The music is very background and lends more
to the feel of the game than something which drives it. The explosion
and gun firing sounds are all great and when you are playing the game
you have a real feel of being in the midst of battle.
    Control is good. The pad moves your mech around while the top L1/R2
type buttons control up and down aiming plus right and left
sidestepping. The four colored buttons control weapon selection and
firing.
    At the end of each stage you are given the option to "buy" upgrades
for your mech using the energy cores of the enemies you picked up when
you killed them. Your mech has three main types of weapons. Guns,
Missiles, and a special weapon which can be equated to a smart bomb.
All of these can be upgraded along with your armor rating. By the end
of the game you can purchase all of the upgrades, making your firepower
pretty deadly.
    This is one of the few games I have seen to use FMV fairly well.
The intro is extremely nice (The best I have seen on a PSX game) and
the clips during the rest of the game are well used. As you approach
each boss mech a Russian woman who you saw in the intro comes up on
your display and gives you advice about fighting each particular mech.
Once you have beat it, she congradulates you. There are also various
clips which come between the stages to keep the story going. These are
somewhat humourous if not a bit campy, but they do add to the game
(Unlike Warhawk where they might have well just removed them). If you
really hate FMV the game gives you an option to shut it all off which
is nice.
    
    Now we come to my complaints. The big problem with the game of
course is that it's too easy. I played for maybe five hours total
before I won. I might have gotten more mileage from Krazy Ivan if I had
started on the "Hard" difficulty setting, but I accepted the default of
"Medium". I would consider myself a fairly skilled gamer, but not an
expert (I got to rapier class in Wipeout, but couldn't seem to beat the
black car in Ridge Racer). The very first time I played, it seemed
hard, but this was mainly due to the fact that I didn't know how to
work the controls very well and wasn't sure what I was supposed to do.
During my total playing time I died about five times. Even though the
Russian woman advises you with different strategies for the boss mechs
you don't really need to listen to these. Once you have perfected the
basic technique of using the sidestep buttons to circle around the
enemy whilst blasting it you can apply this to virtually everything in
the game. The enemy mechs jump around and dissapear/reappear in
different ways, but with your radar it is fairly easy to keep track of
them and employ the circling technique. Also, the enemy mechs don't
seem to get significantly harder as the game goes on. Since you can get
weapon upgrades at the end of each stage, these more than make up for
the difficulty of the later enemies. Destroying the shield at the end
of each stage is simply an exercise in persistance, rather than a real
challenge. If you take it slow, and try to grab for some powerups when
your shields/weapons get low it's very easy to destroy all the shields.
    The good aspects of Krazy Ivan are that the game looks and plays
great. This is a perfect one to show off to your Saturn buddies (at
least till Psygnosis releases it for the Saturn *sigh*), or anyone else
you would like to impress with the Playstation's abilities. Even though
I won the game quickly I had a blast playing it. Destroying the enemy
mechs is great fun and you really end up looking forward to watching
the FMV segments between the levels. I have yet to try the two player
link, but I would imagine that this would be really fun and perhaps be
a saving aspect to the game for many people.

     In conlusion, if you think every game for the Playstation out
right now is too hard and you're not Mr. expert gameplayer, buy Krazy
Ivan. You'll have a lot of fun with it. If you think your aptitude is
somewhat higher, rent it on the weekend, and you should be able to
finish it.

 Ty Liotta
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