A Total Mess.

When I received my boxed review copy of SOLDNER, I became very happy. Why? The box made it look irresistible and a high-profile game. Even the “patch” disc that was inside the box would dim my excitement. It was only after I installed, applied the patch and started up the game that reality hit me right in the face.

SOLDNER is a mess.

Take the economy system of Counter-Strike, use of vehicles over a vast terrain from Operation Flashpoint, squad tactics from Tribes, and the destruction of environment from Red Faction and throw them in the oven. Wait, I am not finished yet! Throw in laughable AI, poor textures, sh!tty physics, buggy net code, tons of weapons you don’t know about and mix them together. SOLDNER is the game that you’ll get.

The story goes something like this – in the year 2010, wars will be fought in secret by small but highly skilled groups of mercenaries called “Soldners” – German for mercenary. You’re a “Soldner” in the game who will take on jobs to earn money to buy weapons and vehicles – at least that’s what the single-player campaign was supposed to be. The appearance of your “Soldner” can be changed in various ways. You can mix and match different faces, shirts, pants, booths, gloves, hairstyles and other things for your own unique look. If you snoop around a little bit then you can actually become a Nazi, complete with Nazi styled helmets (I wonder what the relation between “secret wars” and Nazis are). Once you have styled yourself, it’s time for the weapons and vehicles. This is where the frustration begins.

On the game’s box it was written that the game has over 60 different guns and more than 70 different vehicles. It didn’t lie. All that is there – vehicles include jeeps, tanks, helicopters and planes – but it is of no use, as neither the game nor the manual provides information about the weapons. I mean, what the hell is the difference between a BMP-2 and a BMP-3?

So, where should I start with SOLDNER - everything just reeks of incompleteness. The single-player campaign consists of missions which range from destroying a Chinese gas tank to killing someone walking on the road. As you begin the game, you are dropped in a deserted base with no one in sight. There is no introduction or tutorial teaching you how to move, shoot or drive…the game lets you figure out how to do it – how novel! It isn’t until you discover a little panel that takes you into the Mission Select screen. The very first mission is the “Blow up a Gas Tank in China”, which I mentioned above. When you select it, you are dropped into another abandoned base in China…with the enemy base right down the street!

The fun, or rather the frustration, starts when you begin playing through the mission. Maps are amazingly stupid – consisting of bland terrains and trees that get in the way. Talking of trees reminds me of the vehicles…and their atrocious control scheme. They are sluggish and awkward – choppers will be so hard to control that you’ll literally be dangling from a tree or crashing. Ground vehicles aren’t so good off either – there is absolutely no sense of weight and they seem magnetically attracted to trees (or is it my bad driving?). Tanks are worse as they have the habit of rolling over or flipping upside down if you turn it too sharply on level ground. Walking, or running, is also difficult as controlling the “Soldner” is like pushing an elephant. There is also this “thing” (I’d call bug but it hadn’t been fixed after I installed the patch) about sprinting. To sprint, you must turn on the “run” key, but when you strafe, it is automatically turned off. This might have been added for “realism” but it is not practical in a game.

AI is absolutely horrific as bots will act like they have no brains. Hostages will not respond to being rescued often and the enemy drivers seem like drunken idiots who will mostly crash into trees. Enemy soldiers aren’t too better off either as they will mostly be destroying your target for you (how fortunate) – overall, AI has loads of room for improvement.

I was expecting this game to feature killer graphics at least – or that’s what I thought from the killer screenshots on the box. The graphics are there alright but it’s what you would expect from a game that was released 3-4 years ago. The objects in the environment are just plain, ugly and blocky while the weather (rain) effects are the worst I have ever seen in my damned life. On the other hand, character models are fairly details and the levels feature some impressive view distances. Foliage is also very well done but they pose clipping problems with buildings. Shadows are pretty well done too and are quite accurate. Environments are fully destructible – you can take down trees, buildings and what not with your vehicles and gun fire. The most fun I had in the game was actually taking down a tree which triggered a domino effect. There is something about watching falling trees hit the ground after one another. On the audible front, sounds are quite well done even though it could improve on the voice acting and add more ambient sounds.

If you have been waiting to play the laggiest game ever, then this is it. It took a good 3 minutes to start up the game on my Intel 2.8 HT GHz system and 5 more minutes to exit it…even after which the hard drive would grind away. Menus are good but they aren’t with their fair share of annoyances – every time I would switch from one menu to another, some bored guy would say “Zold-nah”. What the hell is up with that?

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to play ANY multiplayer game as SOLDNER would repeatedly crash and finding players was proving to be more annoying than playing the single player game itself.

“Zold-nah” isn’t all bad. The game features great damage modeling, impressive view distance, a huge range of weapons (even though most of them will never be used), tons of vehicles and great use of foliage. All of those are overshadowed by its bugs – sh!tty AI, poor controls, shoddy graphics and extremely unstable code. SOLDNER feels more like an early Beta (even the leaked DOOM 3 alpha was better) and far from being complete. It also had the misfortune of being released at the same time as Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising, which is the obviously superior choice. Overall, SOLDNER just isn’t worth it – it just feels that the game was extremely rushed and deserves some more polish as the underlying concept features some great ideas which were lost in translation.