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Intro What happens when your husband and daughter are killed by a terrorist explosion? The way I figure, you can either rest on your laurels and mourn for the remainder of your life. Or, you can join a secret, covert ops group, learn a wide array of devastating weapon operations and hand-to-hand attacks, and hunt down the bastards responsible. Luckily, protagonist Nikki Connors decides to do the latter (making for a much more interesting game) in Rogue Ops, a stealth-based, action-adventure game from Bits Studios. Gameplay: 4/10 We've all seen it before. When Super Mario 64 was released, the impostors soon followed, flooding the shelves with 3D platforming clones that failed to break any new ground or improve on the adventures of our favorite polygonal Italian plumber in any way. The same could be said for Tomb Raider. How many bad 3D action-adventure titles were released (and are still being released…) that utilized terrible cameras, contrived stories, and horrendous gameplay? And now, with last year's uber-successful release of Splinter Cell, the stealth action-adventure game knock-offs come rolling in. Well maybe that's not fair. Bits Studios' Rogue Ops does offer some new innovations in the genre. For one, the game boasts voice-support, allowing players to choose weapons and items from their inventory with the push of a button and the proper spoken keyword. Furthermore, Rogue Ops features a great, hand-to-hand system, wherein if the player successfully sneaks up on an unwary guard and presses the proper button, a list of stick movements is displayed. If the player properly executes these movements in a short amount of time, protagonist Nikki Connors will unleash a devastating attack illustrated with bone-breaking X-rays and downright painful strikes in a fashion that can only be described as "cool." On top of that are some new ways of thinking about old game mechanics: using fighting game style stick movements, like the half-circle and full-circle movements, to unlock puzzles and locks (taking the Splinter Cell concept a bit farther). At the center of the game is Nikki Connors, who must satiate her thirst for vengeance in the wake of her daughter's and husband's death at the hands of the terrorist group Omega 19. To do this, she joins the secret, undisclosed government agency Phoenix who send her on a total of 8 missions that boil down to sneak, sneak, kill, kill as she tries to find answers to her lingering questions and the men responsible for the deaths of her family. Overall, the story is interesting, if not melodramatic and sappy; but hey, we're gamers-melodramatic is nothing new to us. But it's the gameplay that makes Rogue Ops so damn unremarkable. Rogue Ops takes many stealth elements from Splinter Cell and the Metal Gear Solid franchise. From Splinter Cell, the game borrows the third person perspective, the inventory system, and the hide light/dark indicator bar. From Metal Gear Solid, it borrows the radar and alert system. And these features all work fine: the camera never puts Nikki in a compromising position, the inventory is fluid, and hiding works exactly as it should. The radar shows enemies and cameras as dots with cones of vision a la Metal Gear Solid and sneaking around these cones is done very well; never once was I found by a distant soldier who should have been out of range according to the radar. But then come the bad parts. Rogue Ops uses a unique icon system to interact with the environment. Whether it's climbing pipes, pulling switches, or operating keypads, every action is executed via an onscreen icon that pops up with Nikki is close enough to the object to interact with it. But herein is one big flaw: Nikki cannot interact with an object unless the icon is visible and the icon is only visible when the object is perfectly aligned in the center of Nikki's vision. For objects like switches and keypads, this is alright. But for objects like grappling hook points and ledges, which are often in out-of-way, distant locations, it proves difficult at best. Rogue Ops quickly digresses into a game of "find the interactive object." On several occasions, my progress was inhibited by being unable to find the exact point in which I could interact, leaving me frustrated and confused as to what to do next. Not because it wasn't evident or complicated, but rather because I just wasn't focused on the exact point that would allow me to use the object. There's little doubt that the challenge lies in finding interactive objects and solving puzzles, but definitely not the combat. Apparently Bits Studios took a cue from Bond villain lackey behavior, because these enemies couldn't be any more inept. The tutorial goes to great lengths to insure that players understand Rogue Ops' system of stealth and hiding bodies. Yet, when a bad guy is shot when he is standing mere inches from an accomplice, the accomplice continues on as if nothing happened. Additionally, if Nikki is hiding, and a bad guy does spot her, they go through a multi-step alarming process before they bother to open fire. First, they look at Nikki and stare while uttering a "Huh?" Then, they put their hand up to their ear to trigger the alarm, and then they stop shooting, giving Nikki all of about 10 seconds to take down the bad guy before any harm is even done to her. This all adds up to a game where just mowing through the bad guys becomes much easier than sneaking around them. All in all, there are 8 missions, each with 2-4 levels. Once these levels are complete, that's all there is-no downloadable content, no extra unlockable modes, making the case for buying Rogue Ops that much more difficult to plead. One of the game's biggest draws, judging from the box art where the feature is prominently emblazoned, is the voice-command inventory, where a player simply hits the white button, says a keyword like "pistol" or "life" and the associated inventory item should jump into Nikki's hand (in this case, her pistol or health pack), ready to use. Not once could I, or anyone else that I found to test this feature, get this to work. Not once!
Graphics: 6/10 However,
Rogue Ops does nail differentiating between light, unhideable areas and
dark areas, where Nikki can slink away in the darkness and wait to dispatch an
inept guard. Light bulbs are also completely shootable, and the graphics respond
accordingly when a light is shot out, darkening up the previously illuminated
area. Sound:
5/10 Control:
7/10 Overall:
4/10 [ top ] | |||
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