This game is not fun
Graphically speaking, this game is sub par. The character models would hardly hold up on xbox (1st generation). the facial expressions and visuals during the MANY helicopter ride cut scenes are boring and surprisingly out dated. the in-game graphics are decent, but the explosions and building destruction are laughable.
While calling in a missile strike on a farm house filled with insurgents, i used my binoculars to get a good view of the incoming destruction. "20 seconds........10 seconds to impact".......jet flys overhead......."boom". What i saw made me laugh out loud. the building just transformed from its pre-rendered complete stage to its pre-rendered destruction stage, with a little smoke and some sparks mixed in for good measure. What I was expecting and what i saw was a complete let-down.
In one of the FTE missions, (CSAR to be exact) you are charged with destroying the remains of downed Helicopter. It looks like they just copied and pasted a "destroyed" helicopter and set it on the grass...its pitiful. the chopper doesn't merge with the surrounding ground, its just sort of sitting on top of the grass. and when you destroy it, nothing changes. You see that pitiful smoke and some sparks fly, then a message over the radio congratulating you for destroying it. Nevermind the destroyed helicopter looks exactly the same as it did when you found it.
Ok, well I could live with these bugs if the game was fun. Unfortunately the game isn't fun. Mind you, I only played each FTE and completed 5 missions on the campaign. so perhaps it gets better. I got as far as i could with a weekend rental and I seriously doubt I'll pick it up again.
It was just so repetitive. The first 4 missions were boring. Finally I get to fight the PLA in mission 5. it started off great. I was playing as the scout and you're charged with holding a position in the face of a major onslaught of PLA soldiers. Sniping is great, and i'll get into that more a little later. So as you begin to get overrun by the sheer volume of soldiers, you're ordered to retreat and set up a new defense. Ok no problem. I did that. Now same thing...defend as best you can, get overrun, and retreat. Ok, no problem. Now we're on a third cycle of doing the same thing...defend, retreat, then set up a new defense. This went on 5 times.....Really??? after the 4th time we couldn't have come up with a new idea or path for the mission? Ok so after the 5th time of doing this same cycle, you're ready to jump in your humvee and bug out. Wait...on no! turns out the humvee needs to be fixed. so we have to defend again while Charlie team repairs the humvee. Good grief. So after that, FINALLY we can get in the humvee and split. We make it to the safe zone and after the sheer monotony of this level I'm thinking "please let this be over." Nope....sarg tells us the PLA is coming and we have to defend....AGAIN. the lack of imagination is almost laughable at this point. Ok so we defend and run off the first wave. Well guess what, just when you think this can't possibly go on any longer, we're ordered to retreat back to the 2nd zone of our own base, and defend... A G A I N. Finally a chopper comes in to save the day and the mission is over.
Seeing as how the whole time during that level i was doing what i consider to be the most polished aspect of the game, Sniping, and it still wasn't any fun, i gave up hope for this game to get any better.
In addition to the repetitive nature of the campaign missions my major complaint with the game is the complete black and white difference btw many aspects of the game...for instance......They want this game to be realistic and make good efforts to fill up the audio chatter with dialog that might lead you to believe you are communicating with actual marines in combat situations. Then all of the sudden, after you complete your mission, you are treated to a cutscene voice over from some cliched over the top sounding general making all sorts of absurd references and descriptions of the missions he'd like you to complete. His voice and what he says is just completely ridiculous. And the load times and cutscenes are unbearable. if you die, and want to restart from the last checkpoint, count on a good 80 to 90 second wait. for some reason, while you wait, the game tells you its "buffering"??? what does that mean? I'm not trying to watch a HD video on a slow internet connection, i'm just trying to re-load my game. Small gripe, i know, but its just one of the many things about this game that make you go "hmmmm..??"
and back to the cutscenes....the cliched black guy tough marine that barks orders at you is as annoying as anyone you will ever find in a video game. During the actual game play its pretty bad but its the cutscenes before missions and during the MANY MANY MANY humvee rides from point A to point B that will drive you crazy. Put it this way, by the time i made it to mission 3, i would just put down my Turtles and watch TV while i waited for the mission to load and for the cutscene to end. These cutscenes can take anywhere from 2 minutes to what seems like an eternity. He just cusses and yells and tells you how worthless you are.....its awful and really hampers the game.
In short, this game is very odd. on one hand it can be tactical and realistic. On the other hand it can be the complete opposite. Point in case....Numerous times You'll ride in a helicopter to the mission while being briefed FOREVER on what to do and where to go...blah blah Mother F% this.....SH$$ that....blah blah (obviously the developers want you to feel immersed in the tension of what you are about to embark on) then, as the helicopter starts its decent...all of the sudden you're just teleported out of the chopper onto the ground. The developers didn't even bother creating a scripted transition scene to get your character onto the ground. huh??? So they want it to feel realistic, yet they forgot the minor detail of how you actually get out of the helicopter??? see what I mean. The whole feel is ruined. If it was just isolated to just a few things, you could live with it but this game is FULL of weird things like this. They try so hard in one aspect, and completely overlook obvious things elsewhere.
Every now and then you'll get a brief glimpse of how cool the game could be. Shooting has a good feel to it and the kill animations are done quite well. If a guy is running at you and you put him down with a well timed bullet, he will fall backwards, feet flying out in front of him, like his chest got hit by a brick wall. That is what i would expect someone to do. Sniping was the most enjoyable aspect of the game for me. If you hit a guy in the arm, his arm is gone. Its one shot kill 98% of the time with a sniper rifle. as you progress and get a more powerful sniper rifle, you can see feel the difference of power in the shot, and the effect it has on enemies.
In closing, I could not, in good conscience, recommend this game for $60 purchase. Its perhaps worth a rental. That being said, I told a friend of mine to rent it so we could play co-op together and he hated it. He played the game for 15 minutes and went back to Black Ops. I continued playing RR the rest of the weekend because i wanted to get my money's worth out of it and I could put up with many of its short comings because I've achieved all that can be achieved in Black ops. There is definitely a reason this game was released in June with nothing else to compete with it.