Best. Graphics. Ever. The North Koreans have evidently solved their problems with technology and starvation and have decided to open shop researching alien spacecraft on a tropical island. You have to go in there and stop them. The graphics make up for the (lack of) plot. Really.
1. Gameplay
The level of detail goes beyond a few screenshots. The trees and foliage are all designed to break away if they take enough damage. The breaking branches aren’t some pre-scripted effect either (i.e. I shoot one side of the tree and a branch on the other side falls off). The spot where you shoot a branch is the spot at which the branch will splinter off and fall. The same goes for the buildings. Almost all of the buildings are designed to be 99% destructible. If you fire a tank round into a shanty, the only thing left will be some pieces of sheet metal and the foundation. There’s also one chapter in the game that is fought entirely in zero gravity. This may not seem like a big deal, but getting effective controls in a zero-gravity environment and having the combat make sense is extremely difficult to do (so difficult that it’s rarely ever done). This sequence was actually one of the highlights of the game for me and I wish that more had been done with the sequence. On the flip side, the entire game might as well have been written by Michael Bay. Aside from the explosions and the visual detail of the environment, the script leaves a lot to be desired. You are essentially an army of one assigned to stop the North Koreans who are suspected of developing nuclear weapons on a small island in the Pacific. Turns out those pesky Koreans actually discovered an ancient alien race and inadvertently activated the power source. Unfortunately, the characters are weak and the plot is stereotypically predictable. There’s one part (see the section on suicide in the “Miscellaneous” category) where I wanted to punch some of my allies in the face for being so completely idiotic. If a laugh track had been added into this game, it would have been a hilarious parody of modern science fiction movies. Overall, the awesomeness of the engine appealed to someone who is able to appreciate the level of detail this game possesses, but the storyline is so dumb I felt almost insulted. I would definitely show off the awesome elements of this game to my friends, but I wouldn’t tell them to go and buy the game.
The multiplayer is abysmal. For my full opinion on that, see the “online community” section below.
Sometimes the player will be required to fight enemy vehicles on foot. For most of the smaller vehicles (like the humvees) this isn’t a problem. But when the vehicle is able to shoot at the player from above (helicopter) or fire explosive rounds (tank), things get a bit absurd. It all comes down to how well the player can find cover, if the player has any explosive weapons, and if the player can dodge the rounds long enough to peg the enemy vehicle with a missile. It’s not an easy task. 2. Parental Notices
Explosions send enemies flying but never show any blood or gore. You can grab enemies by the throat and throw them if you’re using the “strength mode”. This isn’t really advisable though because getting close to the enemies usually means getting shot in the process. Frozen friends and enemies can be found in certain portions of the level. They’re completely frozen solid (except for their eyelids, which for some reason blink every few seconds). Early on in the game there is some minor gore when the player finds a dead squadmate. The squadmate was stuck in a tree when one of the aliens came along and skewered him. It’s designed to be a horrifying “jumper”, designed to scare the player, but it’s not really effective.
3. Other Factors
Here’s the essential problem: I can’t tell if people are cheating or if they’re just really, really good. Now, this is quite a problem because I’ve played enough games that I can almost always tell if someone’s cheating. They always end up turning too quickly or shooting accurately from an absurdly long range. But the nanosuit’s powers blur the lines completely. Suddenly all of the enemies could potentially be strong enough to shrug off bullets like rain or fast enough to cross a large distance in a short time or powerful enough to kill me with a single punch. So I end up getting massacred and am unsure if it was due to my lack of experience or my lack of cheats. In the end, I wasn’t enjoying the multiplayer at all. At one point I had a .09 kill/death ratio (which is abysmal) and was happy that I had it. It’s not something I’d play again.
Trust me, when a player is tasked with taking down an enemy helicopter or tank while on foot, the player will use any tools available to accomplish the task. At the beginning of the game, the player is deployed onto the island by jumping out of a plane. The parachute that he was supposed to deploy to slow and control his descent fails to deploy (as does the reserve chute). The player’s nanosuit absorbs the impact of the fall into the shallow water.
Faced with an impending alien invasion force, a four-star general for the US Navy makes the call to do the one thing that all stereotypical action movie generals are supposed to do: nuke those aliens into next century! And that’s exactly what he does. Unfortunately for him, these aliens seem to be based off of the aliens from The Fifth Element because the nuclear bomb only fuels the energy that they use to power a giant freezing sphere. Suicide As the player is running away from a large alien machine that’s hell-bent on freezing everything in its path, a marine officer decides that he’s going to take the thing head-on. I couldn’t honestly believe what I was seeing. There was a semi-dramatic cutscene where the player says something like “Let’s go, officer!” and the officer replies “I’m doing this, son. I’m a marine, it’s what we do.” Gee, I didn’t know that marines were trained to take on an alien war machine with a machine gun when it’s been obvious for some time now that missiles and anti-air artillery have no effect on it. Considering all of the information and the total lack of any sort of foresight in the face of imminent death, I consider this to be a gross form of suicide. Hostages
The North Koreans take a few scientists hostage. The player has to rescue these hostages and find out what the scientists have been working on.
1 Comment
1/4/2013 04:47:40 pm
I didn’t know that marines were trained to take on an alien war machine with a machine gun when it’s been obvious for some time now that missiles and anti-air artillery have no effect on it.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Like what we do? Want to see more? Donate to the site using the button below!
Not sure what a term means? Read the definitions!
Not sure what a review section is about? Find out more information!
|