A solid fps in its own right
By no means am I going to call PDZ easy to get to grips with. It can be a very confusing and frustrating experience at first. The story mode is a perfect example of this. Some of the maps can leave you clueless as to what to do next. Wander around for too long though, and blue markers will appear, indicating where you should go. Maybe Rare should have made the level design more obvious then? It's not as if the levels are that big, they're just confusing. This will often lead to a mistake from your part, synonymous to a massive amount of foes rushing towards you, and ultimately your demise. In that aspect, it doesn't help that savepoints are few and far between (I didn't fully complete story mode yet, but so far there is only one savepoint half way through each level).
Then the whole idea caught on to me: you are meant to make errors and learn from them. Eventually you will find a way through, finish a scenario and receive a highly detailed score. Then you will be able to compare your performance with the other PDZ players, which should incite you to get an even better score by raising the stakes. That's what PDZ story mode is all about! Especially the magnificent looking rooftop level can be used as an example here. During the first half of this level you're on top of the roofs, and have to provide cover for your buddy/father Jack. If Jack dies, your mission fails, and at first this can be quite a frustrating experience as Jack isn't really handy at taking cover. Even with you scoring one headshot after the other, he can still bite the dust. In other words: it's not just important that you take out the targets, but the order in which you do is crucial to Jack's survival too.
Visually, the game certainly shows next-gen potential, but it can't hide that it was designed for the Xbox (and before that, the Gamecube) first. The graphics have been spruced up considerably with the release on the Xbox 360 in mind, but some of the textures just appear too shiny and rubbery. I have never seen ice look so artificial before. Some of the foes look substandard too. Luckily Joanna is looking great, as are the weapons that she is wielding. And believe me when I tell you that there is a plethora of weapons to discover, some of them even having a tertiary function.
On the gameplay front I wish there was an auto reload mode, as you have to trigger the reload yourself once your clip is empty. Rare included a roll and cover move in the game, which leads to a temporary third person view of Joanna, and for the most part this works well. I especially like the fluid transition between this third and first person view. I still miss the ability to jump though. You can crawl over certain obstacles, but it's not the same.
Enemy a.i. is a bit of a mixed bag. We certainly don't have F.E.A.R. circumstances here, with PDZ foes mainly going for cover, going through an annoying circular movement pattern, or just blindly rushing towards you when they've got you outnumbered. Your foes aren't always aware of what's going on around them: at one point I sniped one guard in a watchtower, and the other guard in that tower just stood around as if nothing had happened.
Plenty of fun is to be had online, with a rather nice co-op mode (it's so much more fun to play the rooftop level this way), and the obligatory deathmatch maps. Apart from various deathmatch types (killcount, team deathmatch, capture the flag...), there also is the option to play darkops. Playing darkops will give you the opportunity to experience some more original game modes. Infection is one of these: a mode where a group of uninfected has to make a stand against infected players. This mode can be particularly interesting at times, with the remaining uninfected players trying to make a stand at a specific location.
The various deathmatch and darkops types, combined with the big amount of weapons and the ability to have 32 players at once duking it out in a map, makes for some highly enjoyable gameplay experiences. Also, because of the armor everyone is wearing and the health system (a bit like Halo in that it recovers after not being hit for awhile), online play requires a certain amount of skill. In other words: the best players will really shine during online play.
In conclusion I would have to say that PDZ falls a tad short of being the killer launch game everyone was expecting it to be, but it is a highly enjoyable fps, provided you know what you're getting into.