BoS is often challenging, nicely detailed, but mostly charmless...
Once the technical elements of BoS were less of an issue, I found that the gameplay itself was somewhat engaging. The storyline is a continuation of the perpetual war theme introduced in Iron Storm (an unofficial sequel, apparently, since I don’t recall any specific mention of BoS’s predecessor, although the furtive machinations of the Syndicate rang a few bells). The scenario introduced in 4X Studios’ one-and-only FPS title jumps forward in time over about 33 years to find a largely unchanged battlefront that developed an absurd approach to the worldwide conflict by arranging specific encounters into Running Man-style gladiator matches. The optional big-name challenges are unimpressive in both their presentation (the zippy game show introduction that heralded each spectacle grated on my nerves) and their execution (unless my opponent was sporting those awful hallucinogenic bullets, I had most of them crushed under my boot in a trice), but I appreciated the extra cash flow. After all, saving to the hard drive isn’t even possible without funds; one of the game’s more ingeniously sick conceits is that soldiers must provide for their own participation in the deadly global stalemate by spending their hard-earned cash on ammo, armor, implements of destruction, and even checkpoints. Keeping my bank balance in the black was never very difficult once I learned to resist the urge to reload my guns before the clip is empty – unspent shots are not recovered, which quickly becomes an exercise in gathering warbucks into a pile and burning them – and wasting one jumbo Exoskeleton after another during the later levels provides a major boost in earnings.
Driving an Exo suit of my own was one of the more entertaining opportunities to rack up enough cash to buy new toys. As for handheld weapons, the rifles, grenades, and heavy hitters are fairly varied, but although I tried each weapon at least once, I kept to a pistol/assault rifle/war shotgun combination throughout most of the game. Headshots are positively essential, since plinking away at some of the better-equipped attackers requires a large investment in ammo, so the pistol (which is actually accurate enough to double as a mid-range tool for sniping) and rifle were quite useful. The two-handed war shotgun was a literal blast to use, as it would strip and fling even the most magnetically sealed bad guys with naught but a round or two. A wide range of explosive barrels – one of my favorite FPS furnishings since Doom, no matter how incongruously placed they may be – offer the same fine flavors (flame, gas, and a delicious grape-hued hallucinogen) as the relatively cheap and oft-used grenades.
The game’s settings are massive and incredibly detailed, with everything from wide, flat snowscapes to jagged and rutted desert battlegrounds. Every square inch of surface area in the cities and bases is convincingly covered with the scars and detritus of the unrelenting war. Even though Bet on Soldier’s gameplay involves nothing more than mowing down one group of enemy combatants after another, the scenery was nice enough to keep me moving forward.
Few events in the world of PC entertainment are as depressing as a severely botched game release, particularly when the title contains a few redeeming qualities. Bet on Soldier started out with so many malfunctions that I’m sure that more than a few copies were tossed into the trash. BoS’s toll-driven checkpoint system removed any incentive to try many risky maneuvers for fear of having to backtrack over the same old ground, so my modus operandi was almost completely limited to creeping forward, hailing the next small group of enemies, and retreating to cover (where my two squadmates were usually holed up to help out with an ambush). However, players who patched BoS into a functional state and stuck with its dolorous and, ultimately, completely pointless storyline were rewarded with some genuinely challenging encounters under the beautiful blood-hued skies of Cuba. To me, Bet on Soldier was fun, graphically impressive, but not particularly endearing.