Well, when it comes to graphical prowess, Zone of the Enders blows away just about everything else I've seen for the PlayStation2. The mecha -- err, Orbital Frames -- all have an amazing sense of fluidity and style. Especially Jehuty, which you pilot. The battlefields almost all have a sense of 'techno-urban' about them, and the various town locales are fairly interchangeable, but the City locations are pretty damned impressive. There's something about doing battle across skyscrapers that just appeals to me. Everywhere there are little graphical touches, from the slight motion blur of the lights on Jehuty's shoulders to the major motion blur when the colony is getting blown to smithereens to the simple and very effective HUD that you see while you play.

All that is fine and good, but it only gets better when you realize the game just doesn't chug. I never once saw the framerate stutter, and that was even with a ton of enemies on the screen at once. Admittedly, 'a ton' in Zone of the Enders is only four or five, but even that would put most games with this level of graphical detail to shame. Not so for ZOE. Everything stays pretty and entrancing, and while the draw-in distance could be better, it's certainly not shabby at all.

And there's just something gorgeous about the deadly dances you do with the Frames.

Sound is another matter. The music is uniformly excellent, from the requisite techno tracks to the spacey plot tracks, and I found myself humming some of the music tracks outside of the game -- always a good sign. The sound effects are also excellent, from the bullets clanging off of shields to the destruction of buildings (with requisite light show) and the zing of lightswords. Delicious. But then there's the voice acting. While Konami did a perfect job with Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima's other big-named Sony production, Zone of the Enders has perhaps one of the most annoyingly voiced characters in video game history. Even worse, it's the main character, Leo. I found myself hating him from the beginning, with his wrong inflections and whiny schoolkid voice, and it only got worse as the game progressed. Other people are more tolerable, if only because there's only one other voice you hear often -- ADA, the Frame's AI, who is actually quite cool sounding. Ugh.

With gorgeous graphics but a voicetrack that sounds thrown together, one must wonder how the game plays. And the first answer is: fantastically. The second answer is: fantastically, but too damned short and repetitive. The third answer is: where's the sequel?

In Zone of the Enders, you pilot Leo, a hero who constantly complains about killing and wanton destruction yet who manages to wipe out an entire assault force -- most of which is non-human, of course. Issues with the main character aside, the game basically consists of a series of missions, each of which have you going to different locations on ZOE's equivalent of an 'overworld map', destroying regiments of robots, getting passcodes, and gaining the ability you need to progress in the game. It's all set in a space station orbiting Jupiter, which is beautifully realized both in the battle fields and on the overworld map.

Combat, which you will be doing a great deal of, is absolutely fantastic. I can't describe in words how well the game handled, and when you get into the rhythm of combat, it plays and watches like most anime battlescenes only wish they looked and felt. Watching Jehuty dive in between three enemy Frames, pull out a lightsword, and slice them all to smithereens is just a breathtaking experience. The game uses a lock-on system that gets rid of any positional issues, and makes the free-roaming 3D structures of the world an absolute breeze to cruise around in.

In any given map, there are a number of enemy groups wandering about. Approach one close enough, and you switch into combat mode. After destroying a group, you usually get something, whether it's ammo for secondary weapons or a full heal or a passcode. These passcodes are used to unlock 'local servers', which contain either 'drivers' that let you use secondary weapons or modules needed for the plot of the game.

The actual plot borders dangerously on fetch-quest, and the sometimes vague quests will have you roaming aimlessly about until you hit the right sector that has what you need to progress. This sort of design decision is annoying, but as there are only ten or so environments in the game, it's never too much of a hassle.

And therein lies one of the major problems with Zone of the Enders -- variety. Other than the bosses, there are only three types of enemy Frames, and to be honest I only thought there were two until I looked up a FAQ on the Internet. There are the close-range fighters and the long-range shooters, and it turns out that there are two types of close-range fighters. Uh. You'll be fighting these same enemies throughout the entire game, and while they go up in 'level' and therefore battle prowess, I managed to take out some high-level Frames using the exact same moves I used on them when they and I were level 1. Indeed, one battle with a Frame that was definitely set up to be difficult lasted all of two seconds, as I turboed in and slashed them to bits. Whee.

The second problem is game length. I beat Zone of the Enders in right under five hours, and I spent quite a bit of time wandering around aimlessly looking at the scenery. While I imagine that fighting the same three enemies for another ten hours would have gotten dull, it would have been nice to have more variety in the game. Indeed, the last few levels were some of the most intriguing, and I wish that the game had kept it up from there.

The boss fights are generally big, nasty, and very very cool. This is a Good Thing. But I got through every normal enemy in the game without blocking, throwing, or using a special weapon. Agreed, I wasn't playing on Super Hard, but . . .

Indeed, the most challenging part of the game comes from a completely optional section. Occasionally the town will send up an S.O.S., and you must jump to that part of the city and help the civilians there. You're graded on how much damage has been done to that location and how many civilians survive. Some of those are damned near impossible to get A's on, and only the truly masochistic will try to score perfects on all of them. Most of us will ignore them, especially the one that comes up when Jehuty can die with a single hit.

To play in two-player mode, you must beat the game, and to unlock all of the features, you need to beat the end of the game again. The two-player mode is actually quite excellent, as you choose your Frames and experience levels and an environment to battle in and duke it out with the computer or a friend. The computer is usually a pushover, unless you stick them in a high-level Frame, so make sure to have some friends over.

And the way the game ends will remind people of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver . . . and not in a good way. This is Really Bad Form, folks.

You can choose your difficulty level from four settings at the beginning of the game. My first play-through was on Normal, and as I said above, I never fired a special weapon or used a throw except for in boss fights. The game was a pushover, pure and simple. Some of the 'challenge' comes from figuring out what to do next, but that's easily remediable. A few suggestions to make the game a little easier -- whenever you see a blinking question mark at a location, go there and you'll find a useful item. I never used it on Normal mode, but it definitely comes in handy on the higher difficulty levels. You can always make the game more challenging for yourself by trying to score A's in all of the S.O.S. missions, but that borders on the masochistically suicidal.

I've never played a mecha simulator that controlled as tightly as Zone of the Enders, and I have a feeling that it won't be until the inevitable ZOE 2 that we see anything as precise. You'll be using every button and occasionally the directional pad, but you'll feel like you're playing a simple platformer. Moving and attacking with Jehuty is an absolute dream, and all other free-floating 3D shooter developers should take note. [That's probably not a large audience, but . . .]

The core mechanics of the game are solid, although every enemy in the game succumbs to some pretty cheap tricks. It all looks too gorgeous to complain, however. The menus are tight and high-tech, looking just as they should for a game like this, and the HUD is informative and useful without being cluttery. There are load times, but they're pretty minimal, and never too terribly aggravating. The overworld map is simple, but definitely effective.

What Zone of the Enders does, it does with aplomb, but there's just not enough here to really satisfy those of us who have been waiting for this game since its announcement. Like The Bouncer before it, Zone of the Enders offers fantastic gameplay for the short time that it lasts. The evil voice acting definitely takes away from the game, and the somewhat hackeneyed plot doesn't help, but it's still an entertaining game. It's definitely worth a rental for anyone, and if you simply must have the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo that's packed in, it's worth a purchase, but Zone of the Enders feels like more of a tooth-cutting than a full-fledged title.

But trust me: I'll be first in line for the sequel.