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Shadow Ops: Red Mercury Impressions

Atari has unveiled a new first-person shooter that puts you in the middle of Special Forces operation trying to prevent the theft and detonation of a rogue nuke.

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We got a close-up look at the just-announced Shadow Ops: Red Mercury at Atari's suites just off the E3 show floor. The game's developer, Seattle-based Zombie Studios, says that Shadow Ops will actually replicate the nonstop pace of an action movie, with next to no downtime between levels. The game is based on the latest version of the Unreal engine, and its cinematics will string the player from one dramatic sequence to the next.

Shadow Ops puts you in the shoes of a Delta operative on a mission to find and secure a stolen Soviet nuclear weapon called Red Mercury. We got to watch the first 10 minutes of the game, and this first level opens explosively in the streets of a Syrian city. You're a part of a significant force deployed to flush out the terrorists, and the environment is filled with hostiles. Rushing through the streets, you'll have to pick off enemies firing from second-story windows and from behind hard cover. The firestorm hardly abates as you move from the streets into interior corridors. The advantage is yours as you turn on night vision to get the drop on enemies hidden in shadow, and the sheer speed of the battle will take you from dark to stunning daylight and back a number of times on your pursuit.

Then things go from bad to worse. No matter how fast you manage things, you can't quite reach Red Mercury before the terrorists take off in a helicopter. But the helicopter is damaged and decisively heads toward the aircraft carrier that's lying off the coast to give support to the mission. A cinematic will soon make it clear why. In a suicide move, Red Mercury is detonated right before F/A-18s can down the chopper. The blast clears the carrier's flight deck and seems to capsize the ship, while back on land Black Hawks are blown from the air as your character runs for cover.

But with that, the game shifts. Without missing a beat, the next mission jumps back 48 hours in the past. Now it's your chance to prevent that catastrophic series of events, and Zombie promises a couple of major plot twists along the way. The storyline itself was honed by a Hollywood writing team. The game's 20 levels will have you jump into a range of action-packed situations, from parachuting out of a B2 bomber to close-quarters combat.

At its core, Shadow Ops is a first-person action game, and you'll have plenty of weapons at your disposal. You can have a total of four weapons at a given time, and choosing the right weapon for a situation plays a part in being successful. The first demo level provided the character with an M4 rifle with an M203 grenade launcher, a sniper rifle, a pistol, and some frag grenades. With this serious arsenal, it wasn't hard to take down the opposition all alone, but the final game will make teammates play a bigger role. The E3 demo has a number of friendly troops scattered around the level fighting the opposition, but they don't follow your actions. However, Halo-like squad dynamics are planned for the final game, where AI teammates not only move with you and figure out how to be of some help, but also give you updates on how things are going.

Shadow Ops is a little more than a year away, and it's being developed simultaneously for the Xbox and PC. The visuals we saw in the Xbox version were full of realistic details, like authentic uniforms for enemies and effects like RPG rounds with dramatic smoke trails that whiz right by. There are currently 10 multiplayer maps in the works, and the game will have a full range of multiplayer options, including Xbox Live and split-screen support on the Xbox. Shadow Ops is scheduled for a summer 2004 release.

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