14 out of 14 people found this review helpful.
It's fun and all, but it doesn't deserve the hype.
Date of Review: Sep 28, 2007
The Bottom Line: The plotline of this game is full of holes, the gameplay is sort of monotonous, but fun. Buy if you want purely a 'shoot 'em up' experience.
I am rating the PC game, and this is the only one I have played.
We begin as I open the box, and start reading the manual....hmmm. Fairly interesting story, it's the year 2552 (Pretty far in the future by most peoples standards). First alien encounter, blah blah blah we're getting our asses kicked, etc. Slightly cliched, but straightforward, and in the end, it does the job. Then an interesting note about a 'cyborg super soldier' piques my interest. I think to myself "Wouldn't they have thought of this 300 years ago?", but ignore the thought. I'm anticipating some cool, original and futuristic weapons though.
I turn to the next page, and our character looks pretty cool. His armor and the technology behind his interfaces are the pinnacles of hundreds of years of technology. Wow, awesome. I skip to page eleven, and see the section labeled 'human weapons'. 'You're probably already familiar with them', it says. I assume this is because most people have already played it on xbox. But alas, it is because they are the same exact weapons we use today. Pistol, grenades, machine guns, shotgun, sniper rifle, rocket launder...blah blah blah. Boring. I try to ignore this for now, and start playing the game. Fun, at first, but a little slow to start. Some guy leads me to a door, and surprise! it blows up right near me. I finally get to the chief, and he sends me to the lifepods, and gives me a pistol. But the guy doesn't keep it loaded? Ahhh. So then I finally pick up some ammo, and shoot some aliens. Wait, what? Aliens? These things look like goblins, and they speak english in a high pitched voice. Is this cartoon network? Blah, so trying to ignore this, I find an assault rifle. I try it out on a cooler alien, and find that an M16 would probably do the job better, because this thing fires much more slowly.
Whatever.
Finally I get to the lifepod. Then we crash, and I survive while standing up as everyone strapped in dies. Of course, we had no landing system or anything. But it's okay, i get to pick up some goodies. Blah blah blah....I finally get to the point where I have to rescue some guys from the Covenant (aliens), and then I get a warthog. Wait, what? What year is this? Our little assault vehicle is pretty much the same as a 2006-era Assault Jeep, with a few modifications. Whatever, it's fun to drive, but it's pretty slow. I get through a lot of the game this way, and finally I come to the little cut scene, where the flood stars. They begin to tear through my shields and armor, if I don't blast them to pieces. Oh wait, this is supposedly the pinnacle of modern technology 550 years in the future, and some bugs can tear up my shields and heavy armor easily? Organic creatures really do not belong in futuristic shooters. How lame. Finally, I complete the game, and we blow up the planet with our fusion reactor. Yay!
Gameplay: 5/10
Uninspired, limited weaponry. We have developed faster than light travel, advanced spacecraft, and superpowered computer, yet our armaments are virtually identical to c. 2006. Saving Earth in the 26th century, 21th century style! Funny, I thought governments usually shove money into research before space stuff.... Also, we've got lame aliens, who fire whimsical weapons that are a pain to use sometimes. The flood definitely ruin the end, as well. The exception to this is the hunters, and the elites aren't that bad. The grunts are very annoying, and the jackals....errr. It's all very silly in a game that is supposed to be a serious shooter.
Also, there are many holes in the story line. Not much is explained and you don't do much besides shoot. With little variety of weapons, you don't gain too much new arsenal as you progress, either. Yes, it does get repetitive, but it is a good time waster to be fair. Some more interesting abilities would have been great. Because the gameplay is pretty uninspired, I got far less hours out of this than I would had it been interesting. There's just something wrong with the same thing over and over again, and running around in a suit that is 500 years more advanced than our current technology whilst holding an....assault rifle? It actually is pretty fun online, though. That's the most redeeming quality of the game play. At least the combat models are semi-realistic, though.
Sound: 8/10. Explosions are decent, grunt and flood sounds really annoy me, but besides that it's pretty good.
Graphics: 8/10. Good graphics, even by PC standards. You probably should have a decent graphics card to run this on high settings though, or the graphics will not be so great.
Value: 8/10. Fun to play, kept me busy for awhile, and overall enjoyable combat, while pretty simple. It still was fun though, in the end.
Tilt: 7/10. Had me addicted for some time, despite the uninspired and scarce weaponry, annoying covenant, etc.
All in all, this game isn't TOO bad. I'd like to give it three and a half stars, but I'll stick with three because I can't give that kind of rating. Compared to modern day games, it sucks, but it was made in 2001, and is a functional shooter.
I would recommend that you purchase another game, but if you decide to purchase this game or one of the new ones, it likely won't be a disaster, just nothing exceptional. This game is over hyped but certainly not horrible.
Originally written for ciao.co.uk
