For those of you who have the 15th Anniversary release of the Reservoir Dogs DVD, you will find the interview on the second disc that ultimately piqued my interest in this game. The programmer they interviewed made the Reservoir Dogs sound quite promising, but I had already read scathing review after scathing review of the game. I was never one to rely on critics' reviews — or even word of mouth — so I decided to try it out for myself.
Granted, Reservoir Dogs is something of a budget title. If it wasn't for Eidos' marketing behind it, the Reservoir Dogs name and a few other key features this would be nothing more than your run-of-the-mill budget software. But, somehow, some way, I'm all right with that. Reservoir Dogs doesn't want to be the best game ever made and it never mistakes itself for it. All it opts to do is explore the world of the film even further, answer some previously unanswered questions, and provide a little fun in the process. And at that, Volatile Games has certainly achieved its goal.
The main problem that arose when trying to develop this game, as evidenced by the aforementioned interview, was 'how do we make an action game out of a film that was 90% dialogue.' The solution is simple, really. You stick with the dialogue, but cover completely new ground, story-wise, as well. The developers let you, the player, go through parts of the film that were only discussed. How did Mr. Pink get back to the warehouse? What happened when Mr. Blonde went nuts? What led up to Mr. Orange getting shot in the stomach? All of these questions — and more — are answered and it's you who answers them. You even play through infamous key sequences of the film or watch reenactments that draw you further into the Reservoir Dogs universe. Not so much a pure film-to-game adaptation as it were, but the idea of filling in the empty holes is still a novel one.
There are two main types of game play - shooting sequences and driving sequences. The driving sequences are only hampered by mediocre vehicle physics and poor steering. The locales are nicely detailed, however, and there's quite a bit of ground to cover. The driving missions just aren't varied enough and become rather repetitive. The ease in difficulty didn't bother me any because I'm not really a fan of your standard driving game. There is a feature in this section of the game that allows you to boost the speed of your car when you perform a number of outrageous stunts/maneuvers. I completed these segments without using it much, so I'd question whether or not this particular feature was really worth the effort the programmers spent in creating it. The poor steering seriously hampered my enjoyment with this segment of the game as well.
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