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Publisher: DREAMCATCHER
I’ve put this review off for a while, since I’ve been busy with a few other things and just didn’t feel like saying almost exactly what I ended up saying with Hitman 2.
So let’s do a quick wrap of this baby…
I liked the graphics. The textures and lighting model had a sort of… quaint feeling to it that just really, I thought, made things feel solid and provided an excellent sense of immersion into the war torn setting. The textures for many of the player and NPC models (soldiers) weren’t very good, and if I had a major complaint for the graphics, that’s it, right there. Other reviewers have criticized the animation and models themselves, but I disagree. Rather, I thought one of the coolest things I’ve seen was that the main character LITERALLY carries all his equipment. Have a shotgun but want to use your sniper rifle? Well, he’ll put the shotgun at his hip, and then unsling the sniper rifle from his back: a neat touch that just seemed to make the graphics more functional in terms of how they were used, rather than just looking pretty. In that same vein, when your character climbs ladders, if he has a heavy weapon in one hand, he’ll only use the other to climb the ladder, rather than just having said weapon ‘disappear’ or move along like it’s glued to his hand. There’s a great concussive effect when grenades or other explosions go off near the character, as well as some good dirt/dust particle effects when said explosions occur. Some interesting looking gibs, as well. Overall, though – I thought the graphics were just fine. Some very nice brush detail in certain areas that showed the folks building the levels were really trying to make things look interesting and attractive to the eye. Certainly not the best in the biz, but I enjoyed the visual aspects of the game. Not as good as Mafia or UT2K3, but about par with a lot of Q3 engine games. However, the graphics ultimately, I thought, served as a positive asset to the title’s merit. (This game was powered by the Phoenix3D? engine)
The sound was also done well – I really loved the sound of the explosions. Sometimes a rocket would rush by your head with this whooshing sound, and then the sharp, concussive blast would startle me (happened many times, actually). The voice acting was done well, the guns had some solid “chunky” effects, and there was also some nice attention paid to atmosphere sounds: Cats or dogs in the distance in the decimated city streets. Dirt and little pieces of debris crumbling after explosions or in the distance as you sneak through sniper infested territory. Some good ping/ricochet sounds, especially when you’re being pinned down by sniper fire. Again, certainly not the best in the biz, but there were some nice touches here and then that showed a nice effort to immerse the player into the surrounding, and overall the audio portion of the game serves as a plus to the experience of the game rather than a negative.
Alright, two parts in one, bugs and gameplay/level design. First off, there was a bug that would completely lock up my machine while going to the save menu during the game. Ridiculous. A bug like that is just no excuse – and I know I wasn’t the only one to get it since it was talked about by a number of folks on the forum. Next, there were also bugs in some of the missions. Not bugs ‘technology’, but in design. Case in point: on one of the levels, you need to press two buttons to open a door. Well, if you miss the first button and continue on to the door you’re supposed to open, a message comes across your radio that you need to go back and hit the other button. And that’d be great, except that key doors sudden become locked, or stuck, essentially making the level impossible to finish and requiring you to reload an old save game. Again, I find this to be horribly incompetent, inept, and was something that frustrated and infuriated me to no end. As a game player, the last thing I want to be ‘rewarded’ with for the experience is a confusing maze with essentially no exit. There were, I believe, two other instances where if you didn’t do something that the level designer didn’t expect or want you to do, you’d get stuck and or put into a situation where it was impossible to ‘win’. No message saying you’ve failed, nothing. Just complete frustration until you finally go browse the forums and see posts from folks talking about mission logic bugs and what you need to do (or not do) in order to continue. That HUGE glaring problem (IMO) aside, some of the levels were very fun. The rushing through the trenches, searching for snipers and knowing that you need to run quickly to cover as bullets ping around you – those missions were great. Where they mucked things up, was when they (just like Soldier of Fortune 2), tried to make some sort of sneaky, stealthy thing that just ultimately fails, ruins the pace of the game, and is more of a chore than something fun. I’ve seen this far too often in games of late, and just cannot fathom how someone could play through these grudging areas of play and give it a ‘thumbs up’. The sniping was fun, I liked the weapons (although there was one included weapon that seemed a bit too overpowered), and I thought that the story provided some of the same lure that the ‘WW2’ games of late have provided, yet with a different story and some original twists. This is the case of a game that could have been something really great, but that faltered, perhaps to an unforgivable degree, to some poorly designed missions and levels.
Worth checking out? Sure. But I’d only recommend this to folks who are veterans of FPSs, and who don’t really have anything else on their plate at the moment. Even on ‘Easy’ I found the game to be fairly difficult, and on the hard levels of play, frustratingly, ridiculously hard. For what it’s worth, if you’ve played through the Medal of Honor: Allied Assault title, then you probably won’t find too much here that you’d miss otherwise. Some pros, some cons – nothing to call the president over. Ultimately, another title that will most likely fade to the bargain bin due to some nasty stumbles and trip-ups in the flow of the levels. If I must give this game a numeric score, we’ll say 6/10. The errors in the missions took a HUGE bite out of this game’s potential.
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