I purchased Krazy Ivan today and I'd thought that those who are
thinking of buying this game might be interested in my first
impressions. Please note that this "mini-review" of K.Ivan is based
on about six hours of continuous play.

K.Ivan is essentially a Doom/Stellar 7 style 3d-shoot-em-up except
that you are doing battle in a Mech-style robot. However, apart 
from the very good rendered/live-action intro and the
game-over fly-bye when your Mech blows up; there is very little in
the gameplay to suggest Mech-styled combat. There are no external
views during gameplay, no ability to look left/right and no torso
twist. However you can look up/down to aim your weapons (something
you need to be good at if you want to win at this game).

Note that even though you can aim at specific "body parts" on your
enemies (i.e. their apparent achilles heels as suggested by
intelligence), you cannot blow up the bad guys limb-by-limb. Once
their strength bar reaches zero, they just blow up. Fortunately, this
"feature" also extends to the player's Mech in that all systems/weapons
remain operational until the very last hit (ammo permitting).

The object of the game is to clear out invading robot aliens that
have chosen to occupy five countries/continents around Earth; Russia,
Saudi Arabia, France, N.America and Japan. In order to clear out each
"area" you must kill the identified "bosses" (known as Sentients in
this game) and then blow up the shield generator. Apart from the
Sentients, there are assorted drone robots that can also be
destroyed. Although you can just avoid them and run around looking
for the Sentients, their destruction (along with the Sentients)
releases onto the ground re-arm pick-me-ups, energy cores and three types of
invulnerability powerups. These drones are unlimited in supply and
are continuously generated to make life interesting. A secondary
objective is to rescue as many humans as you can by running over
them. These humans are also released from
within the bodies of the robot aliens when blown up.

At the end of each cleared "area"; you can trade in collected energy
cores to upgrade your Mech. Four areas can be upgraded: your
"machine-gun" weapon (your Mech can carry up to five types of this
weapon), your "missiles" weapon, your "special" weapon and your armor
strength. Only machine-guns are limited in usage by the amount of heat
they generate (a la Mechwarrior and WarHawk) and all weapons except
for your very basic machine guns require ammunition. I have already
cleared the first three areas (playing at the default difficulty
level) and have seen cut-scenes at the end of each level.

Now for my opinions...

The graphics are very attractive and remind me of a cross between
WarHawk and the Space Harrier arcade game. There are a variety of
sounds with each Sentient/drone and player weapon having (as far as I
can tell) it's own distinctive sound. K.Ivan also has support for
Dolby Surround. There is a variety of background music to choose from
(11 tracks in all).

The gameplay can get quite frantic and difficult, especially when you
are facing a sentient and up to two drones at the same time. But once
the player has mastery of the shunt (or strafe) move, success is not
far away.

Even though all the ingredients for a great game are here; the whole
experience represents a rehash rather than an evolution of the genre.
I guess it's a case where it's been done before in other games and
there's not a whole lot new here. The fact that I'm currently on the
fourth level also suggests that there isn't a great deal of longevity
in this game either. I hope I'm wrong and that there's life after
Japan (the final level).

K.Ivan to me has a similar feel to WarHawk so I suggest that those
who enjoyed Warhawk might want to give this game a go. I suspect that
once I've finished this game, I will be trading it in for something
else (probably Assault Rigs - which hopefully will offer a bit more
variety in gameplay).  If anyone has any questions about K.Ivan,
please feel free to e-mail me. If anyone's also interested in
purchasing a 2nd hand copy of K.Ivan in about two weeks, please let
me know!!

Aundray