Makes perfect sense as a mod, but not quite as successful when considered as a retail game.
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Pros:
+ Intense: UT is a pretty intense game to this day, so for Tactical Ops to top even its parent is quite impressive. The pace has similar intensity, but the big difference is just how loud and powerful the real-world weapons are, sending you reeling with every shot.
+ Feel: The speed and movement of the game has the same perfect, satisfying feel of UT, which in turn makes it more satisfying than almost any other FPS available.
+ Diverse Arsenal: There are a great amount of weapons to try out for both sides, all of which are nicely balanced, giving you lots of stuff to play around with.
Cons:
- Idiotic AI: Tactical Ops has among the very worst AI of any FPS I've ever played, matched only by its sequel and the Battlefield games. They won't follow orders or use any kind of tactics (while still being frustratingly accurate at absurd ranges), and have an annoying tendency to just stand still after a while, meaning your team can't win if you're already dead. Given how remarkably smart the UT bots were, this is deeply unimpressive!
- Bitty Experience: There is no campaign of any sort, meaning all you can do are multiplayer matches or the single-player equivalent. Because there isn't the same abundance of different maps and gametypes that there was in UT, this severely dents the game's longveity; which is also a bit silly when all they had to do was add a campaign to a game that modders had already created, which would have given it something pretty significant over Counterstrike - alas, they took the lazy route instead.
- Dodgy Value: I'm still wondering what exactly the significant advantage of buying this game was, rather than just downloading it for free...
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Just to clarify, the actual gameplay of Tactical Ops is incredibly fun and satisfying, brilliantly melding the realistic tone and setting of Rainbow Six with the intense action-fest approach of UT. However, for a lonely bod like me who prefers to play things single-player, the game really needed far better AI and more substantial content to be truly recommendable as a retail buy. Still worth playing, but it could have been so much more!