A game that offers a lot of discharge however, just like a discharge, ends rather quickly.
Not since Quake II, the opening cinematic provides some drooling material that you want to take on the red army NOW as it shows the Republic Army swoops down on the near future Hong Kong and with all the zooming effects of the 'camera' is like watching a movie on the big screen. All that rapid panning, fading and zooming effects from one location to another tells the story of a war-torn near-future Hong Kong as mechanical machines stomping inwards among the Red Army (obviously China) staking their claim and like a plague and aimingl progress outwards to the rest of the world.
Playing as Nathan Frost, a second lieutenant in the Liberty Coalition Army, you form part of a small band of soldiers trying to place a foothold in a minor part of HK only to realise that you have met your demise...you die to save a comrade.
Well, not really (otherwise this will be the world's shortest game; can that be?). The Coalition has bigger plans for you as you will become a subject of part man, part machine experiment; the Uber Soldier of the future; the 6 million dollar man (subject to inflation). That is, you have a second chance.
Considering it's a typical FPS (i.e. shoot anything that moves and if it doesn't move shoot it anyway) the controls are a little intimating at first. Taking into consideration that this game was ported from the PS2, there are some noticeable effects that may work on the consoles but not the PC; namely that keyboard/mouse control Vs Gamepad and that odd 'check-point' save system.
The reality of PC gamers is that we like the keyboard and mouse combo. When I tried to control my character, I wind up not using much of what this bio-engineered freak can ditch out. It was all too much especially in a heavy firefight. Granted that there's that odd 'pause' system where you can select you grenades, bioaugmentations and weapon of choice all in a matter of pressing a couple of keyboard commands however there's no real other to avoid this 'pause' unless you have 16 fingers and 14 mouse buttons all wired into harmony. That said you can imagine that there are many choices to knock off the enemies ranging from hacking to blasting to using turrets to driving armored cars.
This however has a small irony to it. The game designers only made one difficulty level hence the replay value is...well nil. Yet due to the many choices you have to disperse your enemy you can play the game again using say no augmentations or no hacking. This places different styles of gameplay which brings it up to a limited replay value. Too bad though that the game is too short hence this 'feature' can wear off very quickly.
The designers' main selling point was the fact there will be many soldiers on the field either fighting with or against you without the sacrifice of frame rates. Well I put this to the test and they actually pulled that off quite well. There were only a very few instances that the frame rates dropped significantly however the ironic part was that it wasn't during a fire fight. Go figure.
Graphically the game is quite hopeless. Considering it was made in 2005 it definitely shows that the PS2 (where the game originally was made for) is heading for that 'passed expiry date'. If you want to do a small comparison of the power of the PC Vs PS2 try looking at this game and look at say Half Life 2 or FEAR. Grant to those who would say the game Cold Fear represents superior graphics however going to memory I think Cold Fear was designed for the XBox first.
Anyway, as stated, graphically it's hopeless. There are some pretty illuminations throughout the game (even all the weapons have some sort of flashing lights attached to it that makes no sense unless you want to go blind) however all the environments looks washed out; like a smudged impressionist painting. On the other hand the cinematic are probably one of the best I have seen in a long time. The cut-scenes really displays 'movie-type' motions like camera shakes, slow-motion and fast panning. A definite bonus is that 'snow-blind' effect when you get shot from an EMP blast. The entire HUD fuzzes and eventually focuses back all with that high electronic piecing sound. Call me a sadist but I like it.
The sound quality is average. There is some heavy thumping of blasting rockets to that chirping, bleeping sound of the computers however nothing that really grabbed my attention or wanting to turn up the volume. Moreover, the voice acting again quite average however the musical scores are quite presentable. I wish the scores are longer and not played in that 'looping' effect.
Considering the above, this game has tremendous potential but not utilized effectively. Granted that the game's setting is in a near future cyber-punk Hong Kong is quite spectacular as the majority of games are set in the USA almost brought tears to my eyes, I thought it's more of a wasted opportunity than a bonus. I was hoping more of that oriental feel (and I'm not talking about swaying lanterns or statues of dragons being oriental) than grunt 'American' warfare of destroying choppers and blasting enemies. Here you have bio-augmentations, hacking, unique weapons, soldiers that fight with you, driving cars and many more however the game itself doesn't utilise all these to its maximum potential. It's more of a show-and-tell then actually using them. Many-a-times I grabbed a turret only to realise there is no enemies to shoot at or driving a car where there's limited road space. So all the ingredients are there to make a killer of a game however just like a discharge, it fell so, so short.