Some nice toches to a game which never quite pushed the boundries far enough.
Control scheme uses the tried and tested "dual" analog control which most first person shooters on the PS2 seem to use (some thing I always felt the first Timesplitters was responsible for in some way).The number of options for the set-up of the control method was impressive and while I preferred the default settings with the inverted look up/down, there was a plethora of different combinations that could be used to suit all players. This is a great thing as many first person shooters have stumbled due to lack of good controller configuration.
The first thing that I noticed was that while the in game graphics were solid, they were missing a certain something that other games have to make you believe you are actually in the environment you are in. My first gripe with the game was the interaction with the environments. There were some great things you could do such as tipping over a table or wheel barrow to create shelter from gunfire while re-loading and kicking down support struts to make a balcony collapse, in turn allowing access to the roof. You can pick up a variety of different objects such as boxes and gas cans to use to draw the enemy fire when thrown. Unfortunately these ideas were not implemented as well as they could have been.
As petty as it may seem, I was disappointed with the physics of these inanimate objects. For instance you could hit some of the wooden crates with your rifle butt only to find that it would just thud against the side without really doing any damage. However picking the same crate up and dropping it would cause it to shatter into tiny pieces. Other environments interaction issues I had were that you couldn't shoot out any of the lights or lanterns in the game (the lights do nothing no matter how much you spray the bulbs with bullets and the lanterns just sway back and forth as if they were gently pushed by a mild breeze when you shoot them. Now this might seem petty but with so many first person shoot em ups on the market, a lot of which are pushing the boundaries of realism, this just frustrated me.
Being able to search bodies once you have blown them to pieces was a nice touch, if you shoot a guard with a clean head shot then his body armour will be undamaged and when you pick it up it will add to your armour gauge. If you fill an enemy full of lead then his body armour will be badly damaged when you pick it up and if you use explosives to completely blow someone up, you won't be retrieving anything other than body parts, all of which gives you the incentive to go for cleaner head shots. Unless of course your armour gauge is already full in which case going for the limb firework display is quite satisfying.
The enemy reacts well to your position and the shots you take at them, hit the leg and they will lean down and grasp it for a moment, flank a mounted machine gunner far enough to one side and he'll leave his post to come after you instead.
There are some glitches however, on one level in particular some guards would jump around in a comical manner seemingly stuck on "invisible" scenery before finally coming after you, but all in all the movement of the enemy was pretty accurate, (though not quite up to the reaction of the enemies in Resident Evil 4). Frame rates do drop slightly when there is a lot of actin on the screen but it is not usually enough to cause any problems.
You can collect items as you progress through the game which you can combine to make weapons or items such as timed explosives and lockpicks. Some of the lock picks will allow you into optional side mission areas on some levels or into ammunition cases so deciding on when to use them is important if you are a gamer who has to complete every sub mission as well as the main game.
The mission is broken up into smaller objectives, long enough to keep you entertained and with a "checkpoint" save feature you get to have a quick blast if you only want to play for a few minutes.
The level design does feel a little "on rails" with no real scope for exploration and matters aren't helped with the inclusion of an on screen cursor telling you which direction you need to be going in. This does however speed things up for games who would rather blast all and sundry into oblivion than use their head and work out where to go next.
The story is mature and interesting although the characters do not have enough appeal to make you really care about them. The characters voice over work is not too bad (even if the central character sounds more like a British Geography teacher rather than a hard as nails SAS soldier) and the pre rendered cut scenes are a welcome change from the normal game engine driven ones found in most games.
The music is good and suited for each environment, although this is usually only triggered at certain points during the game (usually when you walk in into a certain area of the level) and sometimes it can be annoyingly cut out when your character speaks.
Overall, this is a well polished shooter with an engaging plot, good control method and great choice of weapons, though doesn't quite reach the bar set by recent shooters like Halo or Far Cry and is a long way of the brilliance of Goldeneye which, despite its age, still remains the benchmark in for first person shooters (in my opinion).