Hidden & Dangerous
Hidden & Dangerous unfolds through six linear campaigns, ranging from surgical strikes to escort missions throughout war-torn Europe. Before each campaign, you select four commandos and deck them out with as much firepower as they can carry. You'll probably want to do this manually, as the included "auto-equip" button is pretty skimpy on ammo and explosives. From there, you're presented with a slick 3D mission briefing, with flashing arrows and other visual aids guiding you to your goal. Smack the start button, and let the Nazi-slaughtering commence!
At first glance, Hidden & Dangerous will bring back memories of Zombie's Spec Ops, with its similar third-person view tracking your squad members. However, a keypress will drop you into a Quake-style first-person mode, which is indispensable for navigating the game's indoor environments. Using the keypad, you can bark orders to your fellow commandos, or simply switch characters and let the computer take control of the other soldiers.
As its name implies, Hidden & Dangerous places a large emphasis on remaining unseen. Attempting to overcome opponents with raw firepower will dig you an early grave, and the only sure way to succeed is via picking off silhouettes of enemy troopers through the fog; you'll spend much of the game crouched or lying down, gazing through the sights of a sniper scope. Hidden & Dangerous has realistic damage levels, even on the easiest modes - one well-placed sniper shot is going to kill, no matter what difficulty level you've selected.
The missions are well-structured and expertly paced, and range from woodland guerrilla combat to the storming of Nazi-occupied mansions. The levels reflect a deliciously tense atmosphere, and the game's Czech developers have done a bang-up job of bringing 1940s Europe to life - several of the environments are real stunners, and the sound effects are moody and subtle. The mission where you scrounge through a sinking German destroyer is nothing short of fantastic, with the sounds of creaking supports and dripping water constantly putting you on edge.
The bad news is you'll have to get used to a control scheme that's more annoying than a looping MP3 of Tiny Tim's Tiptoe Through the Tulips. Mouse control is a sloppy mess, and swapping between viewpoints is disorienting when using sniper weapons. You'll also discover that you're locked into a certain firing radius when in first-person mode, making it impossible to aim more than 45 degrees in either direction. The sniper mode is nothing short of chaotic, with your player character neglecting to reload and even dropping the weapon occasionally. Sometimes the sights disappear altogether. It just doesn't make any sense.
Hidden & Dangerous includes plenty of controllable vehicles. You can pile your commandos into trucks and armored cars for a pistol-packing joyride, which sounds like a lot of fun until you actually try to deal with the controls - aiming the roof-mounted cannon while driving is cumbersome, and most vehicles cant go above 3mph when driving up a hill, forcing the driver to "zig-zag" back and forth to get anywhere. In certain missions, you can drive on top of the water. (Bug or amphibious vehicle? You be the judge.) But poor control aside, it's indescribably cool to drive an armored car across enemy lines with two sniper buddies leaning out the back picking off pursuers.
Once you start each mission, you have a little while to gather your bearings and start directing your men. Or trying to direct them, anyway - the members of my particular suicide squad apparently missed basic training, neglecting to learn such rules of thumb as "Don't step into flames," "Don't walk onto land mines left by your squadmates," and "Don't jump into lakes and drown." While the dumbness of the AI doesn't approach the idiocy of, say, eXtreme Paintbrawl, there are far too many instances where a squad member bites the dust thanks to an unbelievably stupid maneuver. And whatever you do, dont equip a guy with a bazooka and let the AI take over - he'll probably blow the entire squad apart while shooting at an enemy.
This crappy AI completely invalidates the top-down strategic view, which (in theory, anyway) allows you to set waypoints and plot out the actions of your characters. The manual and the strategy guide suggest using this mode heavily - but whenever I tried planning out my movements, my soldiers walked in circles and accidentally shot each other. The whole exercise reminded me of trying to teach my cat to do tricks.
Also glaringly noticeable is the poor collision detection. Climbing out of trenches or getting off boats is a nightmare, and when moving through tight spaces, it's not uncommon for one squad member to "clip" through a wall and fall to his death. With so many deadly bugs, you'd expect some sort of quick-load button to restart a mission. Nope - you have to quit back to the main menu, re-select the campaign, re-select the mission you were playing, then click the load button (you're limited to one saved game per mission). Sigh.
With six more months of tuning and tweaking, Hidden & Dangerous could have been a triple-A product - but as it currently stands, holiday-ready, this game will only appeal to the most patient and forgiving hardcore fans of the squad-based combat genre. My best advice is to hit the Internet and check the post-release buzz on this game - if TalonSoft releases significant patches that fix the game up, Hidden & Dangerous may be a worthy addition to your Start menu. As of now, the only things hidden and dangerous in this game are the bugs.