Malice was a highly anticipated game back in 2001. It was meant to be one of the first titles for the Xbox, to show off the capabilities of the new console with cool art, fun gameplay, and voice acting and music provided by No Doubt. What a difference 3 years can make. No Doubt is MIA, the art is occasionally freakish and definitely not up to Xbox standards, and while "fun" is always a subjective call, the gameplay offers nothing new and contains a ton of repetition. Malice ends up being a small package that just doesn't offer enough.

You play Malice, a smart-mouthed teenage Goddess. She quips and quips, even when it's not necessary and especially when it doesn't make sense. She's also died more than a few times, enough that Death is tired of looking at her. She is on a mission to stop Dog God from doing something vaguely bad, like taking over the world or the universe or something, and has the help of the mechanical Metal Guardian. The Metal Guardian needs keys to find Dog God, so Malice has to travel from plane to plane to collect them for him, quipping all the way. She does that a lot.

The game itself is your basic platformer. You jump, you smash things with your absurdly sized mallet, and you use magic powers if you can manage to hit the buttons in the narrow timeframe that the game deems necessary. As you progress you get new magic powers, new absurdly sized mallets, and more health bubbles so that you don't die as easily. Not that dieing comes up very often in Malice, the game is very easy even for a novice. You're more likely to die from jumping into one of the game's many bottomless pits than from getting hit by any of the enemies, who are more than happy to run directly into your wild flailing over and over until they die. There are moments where the game deviates from the standard platforming formula. Boss monsters are always puzzle monsters were a certain move performed a number of times, often far too many times, will win the day. Many levels have puzzle sections, like a Pac Man-inspired run on crumbling tiles over a bottomless pit. These don't really help break up the monotony; they emphasize it by being less than inspired themselves.

Did I mention the quipping? There is a fair amount of dialog in Malice. You run into lots of characters other than the Metal Guardian who exist to feed plot to you one line at a time, with Malice saying something "funny" and completely unrelated every time they stop to catch their breath. The characters never really react to Malice's unending avalanche of one-liners and instead continue to blabber on until they tell you where to go, shrink you, or give you some magic. Sometimes you get lucky and get all three. All these jokes and pop culture references end up making it difficult, even impossible, to care what happens in the game. This is compounded by the ill-defined story and having a hilariously named main villain. "Dog God" doesn't exactly strike terror into one's heart unless one is the victim of countless philosophical debates about the nature of god with 14 year olds.

Even the art design fails to be a bright spot in Malice's mediocrity. Malice herself is less than appealing with her red pig tails, non-descript baggy clothing, and monstrous, soul-devouring eyes. Manga characters would weep at the sight of these peepers. Aside from Malice herself, the game is very cartoony and feels somewhat primitive next to current Xbox titles. Areas feel sparce and empty, enemies are repetitive and identical, and almost everything seems to be in shades of grey, green, and blue. It just doesn't feel inspired.

Malice falls flat in more or less every regard. The dialog tries way too hard to be funny and ends up nearly incoherent at times because of it. The gameplay lacks any sort of challenge and is monotonous. Visually, the game just can't compare to its direct competition. It feels like Malice was shipped just to get the game out of the office so they could start work on something better. Here's to hoping for success in the future.