Intro
I really do not know what is my deal with bears, the whole story started probably when I was 5 years old, when I heard a record about a hedgehog which is searching for a bear at the zoo. Since then I was looking for the bears cage on every tour at the zoo, but I never found them, each time for a different reason: once the zoo men cleaned the cage, once the group was too tired to walk to their cage, once I missed the cage only by a several meters etc.
With the game Vivisector: The beast within I received a warning: "Be aware of the exploding bears".  Of course that the warning just rushed me to download and install the game, exploding or not I don't care, I'm going to find those bears! 

 

 The Story
The game begins with a short movie about soldiers rushing to a transport airplane, at the last moment a woman stop the last soldier (you), mumbling something about a "very important thing she need to say" of course that you don't let her talk, telling her that this is not the best time for this kind of chats. As soon as you arrive to your destination, you realize that something is wrong and you get a taped warning massage from those you came to rescue, asking you to leave the place ASAP for your own safety. Five seconds later and you team is under a brutal attack of mechanical improved hyenas, killing the entire mission task including the lovely woman.

At the beginning you find that you are on an experimental island on which, for some reasons, the beasts on this island are genetically and mechanically improved, have the ability to pop up from no where and are totally deadly. Later you find that the whole story is much more complicated than what you thought and that, as usually, humans are involved in the story. You will also be surprised to find that the differences between the beasts and humans are fading along the game. 

 

Graphics
The game gives you the most advanced graphic options such as antiallising, filters, high resolution etc. But in actual fact the final result is not so "advanced" and there is a huge arbitrage between the graphic options and the final result.

Believe me or not. But I found several advantages derived from the poor graphic engine: A. I can run this game at the "best graphic" option and yet I'm having 300 FPS, it makes me so happy because any usual new game makes my computer seem to run slower.  B. Well you need to be as old as me to understand this point but I was really enjoying playing with game and graphic that reminds me the good old games like RTC-Wolfenstein, HL1, DUKE & DOOM.

   

 
 

 

 

Sound
Well at this section the only thing that developers need to do is not to blow it up and not to mess with the gamer. Only few developers excel themselves and gave us wonderful music and sounds At this game there is a feeling that it's almost there: Vivisector gives us good music and sound, maybe not the best I've ever heard but  definitely better then many other games. Another thing: the game knew to recognize the sound devices by himself and to apply the best drivers for it.       

 

 

 System Requirements
Operating System: MS Windows 2000/XP
 Processor: 1.8 GHz Processor
 Memory: 512 MB
Video card: GeForce FX or Radeon 7600 video card with 256 MB
 Sound card: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card
Hard disc: 3 GB Hard Disk Space
CD ROM: DVD-ROM Drive

As you can see the system requirements arn't so high, although that Vivisector is a brand new game, my computer run this game easily at the maximal graphics and I never encountered any lag.

Gameplay and Controlling the Game
The first thing that come up my mind when I saw that game was "what this poor graphic suppose to do with a new game", the main reason for this thought was that today we became too spoiled: the big developers accustomed us to super duper extra fine graphic engines. We became so spoiled and graphic addicted that we care not of the gameplay nor the fun of good killing spree ( not to talk about the price). Another thing that annoy me were the weapons: this is probably the only FPS game on earh since 1990 that do not require you to reload your weapons, and for example: you can shoot 200 bullets continuously with your pistol (huge clip?)

Five minutes after the graphic shock, I entered to the first serious battle with multiple enemies and I didn't notice that I'm swept away from one battle to another by the gameplay. Finally I found that I was really enjoying this game and I could not stop play until I was over.

I minimized the game and opened FPS checker, when I found out that this game gives me 300FPS  (at the best graphics) I was really happy, O.K. FROM NOW ON I love this game and damn the "Cry-sis" graphic that made me cry about the 4 FPS.

Lets talk about the game, the first thing that I loved at this game was the total freedom to act as you want with the enemies and their bodies: at lame games as "Call of Jouraze" you could not kill "innocent" characters or to abuse bodies, because it's "not ethical bla bla bla" and all the ingratiating justifications of such self-righteous ass kissing developers. Here, in Vivisector, It's recommended to abuse enemies and their bodies, in addition fatalities and abuses will be rewarded by special bonus points which you use to improve your 4 primary skills. BRAVO! 

While I played I discovered an interesting thing: when you shoot your enemy or abuse abandoned bodies you strip its lairs, lair by lair: first the clothes, then the exposed flesh is removed exposing the bare bones and electronic devices which someone implement on the animals to improve their abilities, COOL.

If you are old enough to remember DOOM, then you probably remember the teleporters, those that teleport creatures from hell to you (hell is an allegory).  Well this was fun! And I found that it's still fun to fight tele-creatures, it boosts your heart with adrenaline bursts, especially in the close arenas when tones of damned creatures are coming to you from no were.

Lets talk again about the weapons, while that in games like COD4 you can carry only 2 weapons at the SP version, here you can keep any weapon you find, you will also find lots of ammo to shoot the tones of creatures and it will gives you lots of fun.

Another thing that made the game more interesting is the logical stages where you had to solve a logical problem to pass that stage. I counted only 4-5 hard logical problems that made me think a bit before I passed them.

 

 

 

WHAT ABOUT THE MULTIPLAYER?
Vivisector do not have a multiplayer version but I'm not sorry for that: the net is full with excellent MP games as COD4, BF2142, BF2, ET, ETQW, UT3 etc. the SP version of Vivisector is long enough to occupy you in front of your computer and its nice to play in a game with a story from time to time.

It was really easy to play this game and to control the keys, simple and easy just like I like. I found several map bugs, but those are bugs that you can find in any game and they were really rare.

I also liked the mini map and the GPS light that helped you find your way through the level and to find hidden creatures. About the difficulty levels: there were four difficulty levels, I recommend taking the hard/hardest to enjoy your battles as much as you can.

 

Conclusions
The game Vivisector is a FPS game that belongs to a good, though forgotten, category of games that I was really happy have more from. It's right that it's graphic engine is not the best engine I ever saw, but it was really fun to play this game.
As I said before, my computer also "enjoyed" to run this game because of the low system requirements.

The nice idea in this game is that the enemies are animals, so the developers didn't have to work so hard to bring us a huge variety of enemies; someone did the work for them…

Does the game worth the money?
The game cost about 20 Euro and this price is very cheap for game (here a new game cost about 30-40 Euro), I think that the game worth the money, it gives you a lot of fun time and you will find yourself playing some levels again and again just for fun.
Please notice the age restriction; I think this game is for 15 years old gamers, at least.

Grades
Graphic 6
Sound 9
Story 8
Difficulty levels 10
Giving you the freedom to kill anything 10
Giving you the right to abuse bodies 10

Final score 8.8