The Ring: Terror's Realm (Dreamcast) Review
While Carrier managed to hold its own against Capcom’s crown jewel in the survival/horror franchise, Asmik Ace was not so fortunate. Despite a somewhat interesting story and a copycat style, The Ring: Terror’s Realm fails to impress.
Starting off with the untimely demise of a scientist named Roger, his girlfriend Meg (you), takes his job at a local research facility. Surprisingly, she gets into his old job pretty quickly, but soon learns that she is quarantined inside while a virus is contained. You see, on the night Roger died, so did three other scientists and this has your boss spooked. As Meg you must find out what happened to your beloved and figure out just what is going on behind the walls at the facility. You soon learn that there was a video that was passed around from school kid to school kid that, once watched, would kill them in seven days. The creator of this tape is said to be in the facility’s basement and is also the cause of how this strange virus has mutated and taken the form of a computer program called The Ring.
When inside The Ring, you are transported to a distorted reality filled with monsters and other soldiers. It seems as though this program has taken on the look and feel of a video game, and it must be defeated for all of your questions to be answered. While traveling to an alternate universe with a post-apocalyptic feel to battle monsters with assault rifles may sound entertaining, you will quickly discover it’s not.
To call The Ring: Terror’s Realm similar to Resident Evil would be a grave understatement. From the controls, the weapons, enemies, and even the options screen, it is a carbon copy; it seems as if Capcom made a ‘How To’ book for survival horrors and Asmik bought the Cliff Notes instead of doing their homework. There are several problems from the start, for one, you will notice the extremely jittery controls and the bland graphics. Then as you progress, you will witness a story that could have evolved into something fantastic turn into a driveling mess due to the horrible dialogue. In all honesty, I haven’t seen dialogue this bad in a very long time. In one moment a character will be sad and the next they will be telling another character to get the hell away, it makes no sense and is a very choppy translation.
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