Author: Master_Ikrik
Type: PS2 Game
Released: 2003
Designer: Namco
Publisher: Namco
Genre: Third-person shooter
The first game EVER with supression fire, and it's useful too. The suppression fire system itself is sophisticated, smart, and not easily confused (when the camera angle changes and it messes up your character) There are two main reasons to take cover; one: supression fire and two: your health recovers when you stand still, or stay in cover for a bit. For reasons unknown to me, I found the health-bar very...unsophisticated, with a dull grey-blue to represent your life. your health is very small, probably to make you take more cover, but I still found it very aggravating.
The story line to this game is...well there really isn't one, so that's negative brownie points. The voice-overs are aggravating: they try to create more depth to the nonexistant story and it doesn't work. Before every mission you are greated with a cinematic that has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with the mission you are supposed to complete; how that works, I don't know. At first the video is short, but every mission you do adds a bit onto the movie, turning confusion to annoyance because you can't skip it. As for the cinematic having anything to do with the non-existant storyline? GASP... I'll let you figure it out.
The game graphics are visually unimpressive and I constantly feel as I play that everything feels the exact same. Your enemies are devoid of characteristics, something that exists in most games, but is especially aggravating in this one. The cinematics are good, not movie quality, but are impressive for the game. The levels themselves are also bad; poorly constructed. They're built like a constricting maze, one path you MUST follow (true many games have this same concept, but in this game it really bugged me) it's also devoid of any easter eggs or secrets.
The AI is simple, stupid, and aggravating. They are smart enough to take cover when your shooting at them, smart enough to kill you but 1/4 of the time they jump right into your grenades. A fun bug/glitch in the game is try throwing a grenade towards a pile of enemies, if one jumps towards you, as he is on the ground trying to get up, shoot him in the head, nothing will happen, you have to wait for a certain short period of time for them to get up.
A third person shooter wouldn't be so without...WEAPONS, namely GUNS! an unimpressive effort for this needed component. The fact is that most are so similar that if your using one, you could be using three others for the exact same thing, there is no difference in the guns. For certain parts you do have a grenade launcher, very useful, and you can also get a sniper rifles (for the sniper buffs, don't use it, you will never, EVER, be far enough to use it effectively against an enemy). your ammunition is displayed in the same way your health is, a small blue bar that slowly dwindles as your ammunition is wasted. All the time I saw my bar go down the same thought ran through my head (am I not using bullets? why is it dwindling like mana?) If all else fails, and you run out of ammunition, or if your just sadistic, you also have a melee attack, the result is hilarious, use it and see what i mean.
Each level gets respectively harder, and each one demands more of your cover-finding capabilities. Joy
Part of that is the fact that everything looks the same and looks like it's made of the same thing. Another part is the little amount of respect they had for this part of the game. The last part is the aggravating un-skippable cinematics.
Effects: 7/10I think the sound effects were quite nice, most were appropriate, others, not so much. Some minor physics stuff i didn't like though.
Gameplay: 6/10The way he moves is immensily aggravating, his melee attack is aggravating, and the aiming I found wasn't as responsive as I would normally like it to be.
Replayability: 4/10Less enjoyable every time I try. There's only so many times you can cover and use supression fire without adding new elements to the game or other sort of mini-games (the best work of incorparating mini-games is Jak 2 and 3).
Overall: 5/10Not the best work that Namco has put out, they were probably on a deadline and had to do Tekken 5 or whatever, a pitiful game done by people who have created masterpieces. Maybe I'll get Jin to beat them up.