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Shadow Ops: Red Mercury Hands-On Impressions

Zombie's action-packed military FPS will put you on the trail of a deadly nuclear weapon.

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On a recent trip to Seattle to visit Zombie Studios, we took a look at the beta Xbox version of the developer's upcoming military FPS, Shadow Ops: Red Mercury. Though the developer has typically focused on themes of realism and strategy in its past games, Shadow Ops will deliver a more action-focused, run-and-gun experience that's inspired by and resembles the intense combat in films like Black Hawk Down and Saving Private Ryan. Based on our early looks at the single-player campaign and at some multiplayer modes, the game has a pretty good chance of rising above the glut of first-person shooters to make a sizable mark on the Xbox's summer lineup.

Shadow Ops has you chasing Red Mercury--a deadly, fictional-but-believable nuclear weapon--around the world.
Shadow Ops has you chasing Red Mercury--a deadly, fictional-but-believable nuclear weapon--around the world.

Set roughly in the present day and featuring a globe-spanning campaign of military action, you'd expect a game like Shadow Ops to have a storyline full of world-threatening drama and intrigue (which it does). Believe it or not, though, the game's story actually draws on real-world military (or at least Internet) lore with its inclusion of Red Mercury, a long-rumored and elusive nuclear weapon whose existence has never been proven, despite the numerous books and Web sites devoted to it. In the game, you'll take control of Captain Frank Hayden, a Delta operative who will cover the globe in his pursuit of Red Mercury, as he attempts to keep the deadly device from being used by the wrong people. The 25-mission single-player campaign will take you to a variety of locations, including Chechnya, the Congo, and the Middle East. You'll have to piece together what's going on by watching motion-captured cutscenes between missions that depict the dramatic events of your chase.

Hardcore action is really the focus of Shadow Ops' gameplay, as we discovered when we tried out several of the game's campaign missions. In each one, we were assaulted by enemies almost nonstop as we tried to move toward our current objective (which was indicated by a handy directional cue on our HUD). Running into a fight guns ablaze won't always be your best option, since the game does allow you to switch to a zoomed-in aiming mode that lets you lean out from behind cover to return fire at the enemy. Moreover, there's a lot of scripted stuff going on in the missions that involves your teammates. You'll sometimes receive instructions from allies, which makes you think on the fly while trying to get to your target without getting your head blown off. We only tried a handful of maps from the single-player campaign, but if the intensity of what we played was indicative of the whole game, Shadow Ops ought to provide a pretty entertaining and hectic action experience.

Shadow Ops' single-player experience looks like it'll be rather lengthy, because the missions are pretty substantial, and there are 25 in all. In addition, the game will feature a wealth of supplemental gameplay. Ten cooperative-specific maps will be available that aren't in the main campaign, so fans of the co-op gameplay found in games like Halo will have some substantial meat to sink their teeth into after they've finished the core game. Furthermore, 10 multiplayer maps will also round out the package, and you'll be able to play modes like deathmatch, capture the flag, and VIP escort on all of them. The multiplayer modes will work with both system link and Xbox Live, which should give the game that much more longevity. We played a good bit of team deathmatch and capture the flag, which let us select from various character classes to determine our weapons loadout. Both modes worked well, and both were quite fun on the maps we tried.

Shadow Ops makes use of the latest Unreal technology on the Xbox, which seems to be working out well. Zombie has made several modifications to the Unreal engine, including a full artificial intelligence rewrite that gives your opponents the ability to both move between multiple cover points and work as a team to stymie your progress. The game's programmers have also optimized the engine's computational load between the Xbox's CPU and its GPU, so more enemies can be thrown at you at one time. On the visual side, the game features the varied, detailed backgrounds and good-looking characters you'd expect from an Unreal engine game. The development team even visited quite a few real-world locations, including Moscow, Morocco, and Hawaii, to take reference photos for the game's textures and visual design.

Zombie is aiming to make the Shadow Ops experience as intensely cinematic as possible.
Zombie is aiming to make the Shadow Ops experience as intensely cinematic as possible.

Zombie wants the Shadow Ops experience to be a hard-hitting, cinematic one, and to that end, the company has contracted with Soundelux, the Hollywood sound effects house whose massive list of credits includes Black Hawk Down, Heat, and Kill Bill Vol. 1. Soundelux is working to make the game's audio--especially its gunfire, explosions, and the like--as hyper-realistic and intense as possible. As an Xbox game, Shadow Ops will support Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, so it should deliver a truly movielike experience. Zombie also hired Inon Zur to compose a full orchestral score for the game. Zur's credits include SOCOM II and Champions of Norrath, and based on what we've heard, his involvement has indeed enhanced the cinematic and dramatic feel of the game.

Shadow Ops: Red Mercury is coming together quite well at this late stage of development. The game is in beta at the moment, and we didn't run into any showstopping bugs during our extensive time with it. As a result, the team shouldn't have any problem polishing it up in time for its late June release. Anyone looking for an action-packed FPS experience on the Xbox should give Shadow Ops a look when it hits shelves. In the meantime, check out some new footage and a developer interview on our media page.

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