Can a Guy Find Happiness With Undersea Barbie? Yep

By AARON CURTISS

June 21, 1999 12 AM PT

Getting in touch with my feminine side means drinking milk from a glass, reading Mary Worth and getting choked up at the end of “Terminator II.” It has never meant playing with Barbie--unless, of course, she was G.I. Joe’s special new lady friend, in which case she rode shotgun in the mobile command center and scurried away in her rubbery high heels as soon as Joe started using his Kung Fu grip on the bad guys.

So it was with a heavy, but manly, sigh that I slid “Barbie Ocean Discovery” into my Game Boy Color. “Oh, you’ll have a great time,” sniggered the wife who knows she married a 10-year-old. Without intending to be, she was right.

“Ocean Discovery” is a great time, a welcome break from the testosterone-dripping racers, shooters and sports games that so often amuse me. Nobody dies in “Ocean Discovery.” No one gets tackled. In fact, very little happens. That’s what makes the game so mesmerizing.

Players guide Barbie through a series of underwater worlds, from colorful reefs to sunken cities. Fish and other sea creatures swim alongside, but none pose any threat to the unarmed Barbie, who searches for seashells that contain a variety of small games.

For instance, players are asked to reassemble jumbled pictures or catch falling pearls in an oyster shell or navigate mazes. Each time players complete a game, Barbie wins a prize--from new charms and pieces of a treasure map to jewels. These are inventoried so players can keep track of all Barbie’s stuff.

Because, in the end, it’s about the stuff.

Each of the games would stink if sold by themselves, but as a package they make a nice bundle of nonviolent diversions. “Ocean Discovery” continues Barbie’s streak of quality video games, and if anything will get little girls to join their zombified brothers in front of the game screen, it’s titles like these.

Like Barbie’s other digital adventures, “Ocean Discovery” scores because it understands that boys and girls often approach play differently. There’s a reason my wife rolls her eyes at games such as “Resident Evil” but can’t get enough of “Kirby’s Avalanche” or “Baku Baku”--colorful games that place a premium on solving problems with the mind instead of a chain-gun.

One thing must be said about “Ocean Discovery,” however: Barbie has a set of lungs on her. And I don’t mean that euphemistically. I mean she has no apparent breathing apparatus in the game, yet never comes up for air. She just keeps on swimming.

All the way to my heart.

Aliens vs. Predator

One of the few reasons to own an Atari Jaguar was “Alien vs. Predator,” a cool, first-person shooter that allowed players to take on the role of either a colonial marine or the respective nonhuman stars of the movies “Alien” and “Predator.”

It was the classic geek question put to the test: Who would win a fight between this or that hero or bad guy? Playing it now, the old game seems pretty primitive but retains many of the eerie effects that made it so fun.

Not content to let the classic rest in peace, Fox Interactive resurrected the idea, tweaked the title slightly and has now put the game out on the PC. “Aliens vs. Predator” is everything a first-person shooter should be at the end of the 20th century.

It hogs huge amounts of hard-drive space. It requires a graphics accelerator card. It features graphic scenes of violent, merciless death. It boasts an R-rated soundtrack with plenty of profanity. And somewhere in there is more than an average amount of fun.

This is a game that must be played in the dark. Not so much because it features creepy atmospherics--although those are nice. Literally, the only way to see what’s happening on the screen is to play “Aliens vs. Predator” at night with the lights out.

True to the visual sensibilities of the movies, much of the action takes place in half-light or in corridors where the illumination flickers spastically. Fine for a movie, but it’s murder on the eyes in a video game. I sat with my face scrunched up against the screen and wound up with a splitting headache.

Action is relentless, and each character boasts special abilities and weapons. Aliens don’t rely on anything other than their strength and agility, while Predator comes with a handy off-world arsenal. I’ve always been species-centric and favored playing as the colonial marine.

Killing aliens is tough, and even when they do die, they aren’t finished. The acid blood hurts.

“Aliens vs. Predator” requires a Pentium 200 with 32 megabytes of RAM and a graphics accelerator. But don’t expect much at that configuration. I ran it on a Pentium II 333 with 64mb of RAM and still had a few problems.

Castrol Honda Superbike Racing

Elegant simplicity. “Castrol Honda Superbike Racing” strives to be nothing more than a straightforward motorcycle racer. And it succeeds. There are not a lot of bells and whistles--just a lot of tracks and a simple game interface that has players speeding along at 100 mph in no time.

Despite some graphic glitches in some of the courses, “Superbike Racing” holds up as a nice little racer. Most of us will never have the privilege of having 160 horsepower between our legs, but “Superbike Racing’s” first-person view gives a pretty good idea of what it’s like.

Scary.

Times staff writer Aaron Curtiss reviews video games every Monday in The Cutting Edge. To comment on a column or to suggest games for review, send e-mail to aaron.curtiss@latimes.com.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Essentials

Barbie Ocean Discovery

Platform: Game Boy Color

Publisher: Mattel Media

ESRB* rating: Everyone

Price: $29.95

Bottom line: A surprise

Aliens vs. Predator

Platform: PC

Publisher: Fox Interactive

ESRB* rating: Mature