It is so true; you never see the one that gets you. I died so many times playing this game, I know that by heart.
There are two flavors to this game, single and multiplayer. In the single player game you go on missions by yourself or as part of a computer controlled team. In the multiplayer game, you and up to 32 other people get to find out just how lethal war really is, except that in this case you get to come back and get the guy that got you.
That’s not to say that the single player missions are not lethal. I died quite a few times here as well. But I really like the realism. One shot equals one kill. One wrong move and you’re toast, and with you dead, so is the mission.
I was able to survive a few hits here and there and complete my mission, but that’s more of a rarity.
There are a wide variety of missions. Everything from assassinations to missions requiring you to protect the principle from an assassination and a lot in between. There are even missions that require you to recover a laptop from terrorists and missions where you have to kill everyone in sight. Also, the missions may not always go as expected, keeping you on your toes at all times. This is dependant on how smart you make the enemy. If you go with the easy setting on the AI, you will get a few surprises. If you raise that up a bit, you get more surprises. Overall I would rate the AI to be as good, if not better than Unreal’s.
The terrain for missions are jungle, desert, or snow with a few buildings here and there among the terrain. You can also play during night or day. And with the GPS contour map you can plan your route in between hills as you approach your target, giving you some cover. Also you can crawl, crouch or walk.
The one thing that really bothers me about this game is that it’s really hard to see the guys that are shooting at you. Two of the rifles don’t have scopes which makes hitting long-range targets extremely tough. With the scope on the M4 you can see fairly far. And the sniper scopes let you see quite a good distance. The binoculars take care of this for the most part, except that you can’t use them a shoot at the same time. The one nice thing is that if you aim at one of your own guys you will see a red x over him. You can even have that red x turned on in the multiplayer option, so you won’t shoot teammates.
I had as much fun playing the multiplayer game, if not more, then I did playing the single player game. The options for playing are cooperative, death matches, king of the hill, and capture the flag. All of the games are a lot of fun, and from what I could tell, very popular. The NovaLogic servers host multiple games with up to 32 players each with all the usual options.
The weapons load is pretty good. You get your choice of a primary weapon, a secondary weapon, a choice of two pistols, a knife, six fragmentation grenades and a laser designator. The primary weapons include two sniper rifles, the Remington M40A1 with an eight power scope and a five round clip or the Barrett light .50 cal with an eight power scope and a 10 round magazine. You can also use a light machine gun, the M249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) with a 200 round clip or a suppressed submachine gun, the H&K 9mm MP5 with a 30 round clip. Or take a kind of all around rifle, the M4 with a 30 round clip, the M203 grenade launcher with 18 rounds and a 4-power scope. The M4 was my personal favorite in the multi player missions. The secondary weapons include two satchel charges, two M18 claymores, two Laws (light antitank weapons) or a double ammo load. And for your final choice you get to pick between the good old .45 or the virtually silent .22.
I am of mixed opinion about this game. It has some really good points, but there are a lot of games just like this one, including Unreal and Half-life, just to name a couple. It is a very realistic game and the missions could easily be the same as those that are going on right now around the world, both of which are a major pluses in my book.
I like the ability to switch back and forth between a first and a third person view. That’s not something I see too often, although its usefulness in the game is questionable. I never figured out how to get a good shot that way. It’s hard to judge your shooting, but that might just be me. Overall I give this game 3 1/2 GiN gems, because its highly realistic, yet sometimes hard to play.