Restraint of Zero (R.O.Z. for short) is another excellent, highly polished shooter from Japan's rapidly growing freeware scene. Similar to huge 3D shooters like Idinaloq and Die Slave, R.O.Z. features detailed 3D graphics, cool weapon and explosion effects, large levels, and story-based gameplay. Although most missions are played from a vertical perspective, there are many horizontally oriented levels to spice things up. There are plenty of nice little touches throughout the game. For example, when you move left and right, your ship will 'roll' left and right in 3D. Weapon effects are colorful, and enemies are look good – especially the 'boss' ships which are appropriately huge and menacing. As good as the game is, R.O.Z. is not for everyone. More precisely: 'newbies' need not apply. It took me numerous tries just to get past the first few screens because I had a hard time dodging bullets (and the fact that the spaceship I control is bigger than in most games doesn't help, either). Granted, the ultra-fast speed of the game (on my 1.4GHz Pentium anyway) probably had to do with this, but then I couldn't find the option to slow it down, so it still was very difficult. But even the difficulty level doesn't detract from the fun, since you will have so much fun ogling at wonderful ship designs and cool 3D effects in R.O.Z. to notice how many times you've had to restart ;) Two thumbs up, especially for those who like freeware games with high production values and great graphics. Reviewed by: Underdogs |