 |
|
| .............CONTENT
... |
Screenshots - | |||
| Minimum
Req.: P3 450, 128MB RAM, 16MB 3D accel. w/ OpenGL support, 8x CD, 1 Gigs Reviewed On: P3 600/744, 384MB, GeForce 3ti 200, Win XP Pro | |||
Intro The jaded gamer in me has a hard time taking a game like The Sum of All Fears seriously. It doesn't take more than two minutes of inspection to realize the game is shovelware, tossed out the door to sell with the rest of the Sum of All Fears franchise. The jaded side of me wants to write the game off immediately and spend the majority of this review grumbling about the sad state of the industry. Cooler heads prevailed, however, and I actually gave SoAF a try, and much to my surprise, found the game to be fairly enjoyable. Gameplay: 6/10 Those of you familiar with Red Storm's Ghost Recon will be right at home with this latest iteration of the engine. Here players start out as HRT (hostage rescue team) men for the FBI, the first few missions are straight forward hostage rescue scenarios, and the team's success attracts the attention of the CIA. Eventually the team becomes full fledged CIA operatives tasked with finding out who is responsible for the bombing of Baltimore as seen in the recent major motion picture conveniently having the same title as this game! Since this game is meant to appeal to a broad, mainstream audience, there have been a lot of changes made to the standard "Red Storm Tactical Shooter" that most gamers are used to by now. These changes were designed to make the game more action based and less "one shot and game over". To put it bluntly, they've dumbed it down quite a bit. Players now control only one team at a time, all other squad members run an automated set of waypoints which cannot be changed. There is even less pre-mission preparation here than previous games, now players pick only a kit for their team, and each kit assigning weapons for all three team members, it is not possible to individually assign each soldier with a kit. Also gone is any kind of skill progression for soldiers. In fact, skills themselves are entirely gone. Each soldier moves, aims, and behaves exactly like everybody else. No more worrying about picking the right men for the job, they are all equally qualified. No pre-mission planning, no controlling multiple team members, no assigning skill points (or skills at all), and no individual weapon selection. Pick a weapon kit, such as "stealth" or "assault" and start the mission. Once the things start, follow the waypoints and kill everything that doesn't turn the crosshair blue. This is as close as you can get to a Ghost Recon/Rainbow Six "run and gun" game. Is that a bad thing? That depends on who you ask. People expecting the next big thing as far as tactical shooters go are going to have to wait a bit longer, probably until SWAT 4 or Raven Shield hit the stores. Those that got frustrated with the dumb AI and sometimes overwhelming amount of micromanagement required in previous games should enjoy SoAF quite a bit. While
I did have fun playing the game, I found the lack of skills and group management
to make the things a bit too shallow for any kind of long-term enjoyment. It's
hard to enjoy JUST the mission parts of this game when there are so many far superior
run and gun "realistic" FPS's out there, such as Medal of Honor Allied
Assault and Soldier of Fortune 2. Still, people new to the Tactical
Shooter genre will find this to be a great place to start, and it could be a "gateway"
game for other, more complicated games such as SWAT 3 or Ghost Recon. Graphics: 6/10 The textures, models, and skins are all fairly nice, with special attention being paid to the player models and skins. It's possible to see all kinds of interesting details on the player skins such as ammo clips that are taped together for quick switching. All
of the player animations are believable, but many of the death animations (all
of which are entirely lacking blood) are ridiculously long and melodramatic. Some
were so long they reminded of Paul Ruben's death sequence in Buffy the Vampire
Slayer. After the believable and varied death animations in games such as Soldier
of Fortune 2 and Medal of Honor, it's hard to find these acceptable,
especially when MoH was also lacking blood but did an excellent job of
conveying the force of a bullet hitting a body. Sound:
6/10 The
music is also done by the same guy that does all the Red Storm music which is
a good thing; I've always liked the Rainbow Six/Ghost Recon score. The drawback to this is the recoil modeling is still the same as in Ghost Recon. That recoil model worked fine for large, open spaces, but tends to make things unrealistically inaccurate indoors. Still, it wasn't too bad, just a bit irksome. Overall the control is very solid, no
real complaints here about how things or set up or the options for changing things,
I was up and running in under five minutes. Overall:
6/10 [ top ] |
|
