Great idea, bad execution.
So, like the impulse buyer that i am, i bought it. I got it home, played through the bloodiest war in american history, and was starting to regrett my quick purchase.
Let me start by saying, its not a terrible game, in fact, it has some nice qualities, just very few of them. The single player campaign, all 12 short missions of it, are okay. they are however too short. The average mission lasts about 15 minutes. Now, this would not have been bad if there had been any multi player. There is, however, none. Zilch. None. Nothing. For 40 bucks, i expected better from activision ( the same people who gifted us with call of duty) .
Now, the missions, despite taking place during a war that had many bloody battles that took place on many large open fields, mostly all occur in the woods, or in a small ravine. The battle of Gettysburg, for instance, has you picking off a few confederates with a sniper rifle, then running through a very, very, very linear forest trail to the end of the mission. Something i noticed was that most missions take place before , after, or on the side of the major battles. They seem to end before, the major civil war action takes place. I will again use gettysburg as as an example. After running through the linear forest, to your commander ( who, since you are on little round top, i will assume is gen. joshua chaimberlin) who then orders a bayonet charge on the enemy. Cool. you begin to run down the hill, screaming, chanting, and firing off your one shot musket( ill get to that later). Suddenly, your screen fades to black. No, your game has not crashed, the mission has ended. I would have loved to finish that charge, and capturew the rebel base ahead, but the game decided that that was not nessescary. The game does this a lot, so you never actually get to fight the big battles.
Now to the weapons. since this is the civil war, dont expect to be running around with an m-16. instead, you are armed with single shot muskets, bayonets, and the occasional repeating rifle. this is good, as it adds realism to the game. The weapons look good, sound realistic, and you can even aim down the sights. now, in reality, a musket can be reloaded by a proficient marks man in 20-30 seconds. However, in a game, this would make for quite a boring play. So, to combat this, the game has your character performing the deatailed and realistic loading movements at warp speed. It is quite amusing to see your character ( who has no name) ;
1, tearing off the top to a powder cartridge
2, putting a bullet in the barrel
3, using the ram rod to push the whole lot in to the gun
and 4, cock the hammer of the gun
And complete the process perfectly every time in the space of 4-5 seconds.
Even with this super human speed, it is almost impossable to fight in close quarters. you must time your firing and reloading to match that of your enemy. Also, ( especially in close quarters, be carefull not to miss with your one shot. Otherwise, you will end up having to run up to your enemies, praying they are reloading so that you do not get peppered with lead, and clumsily jab at him with a bayonet or sword. If you are lucky, the game will equip you with a pistol so that after you expend your shot, you can pepper the enemy with up to six shots of lead, although at close range. But be warned, if you cant hit the broadside of a barn, and you miss with all six shots, you will mostlikely have to beat the enemy ower the head with your pistol, as it takes about 6 seconds for the pistol to reload.
The graphics are within the same range as call of dutry 2, and in fact use a modified version of that engine. The environments look okay, and so do the character models. My only gripe here is that there are aparently only three people fighting the war, with a lot of identical brothers. Everey one on the battlefield is either an old grey man, a young irish lad, or a middle aged guy with bad teeth.
the game also sounds fairly good with lots of repetitve battle cries, and explosions.
Over all, this game would have been considered good one or two years ago. But now, it just seems like an over priced, yet historically acurate budget game about the civil war, a war practically un touched in the video game world. Its just it plays like every other first paeson shooter out there, and that takes some of the "wow, its the civil war" out of it. If you really feel the need to experience the civil war, then go buy it, aslong as the price is 30 bucks or less. Anything over that, and you should either rent it, or forget it all together.
Sad, just like the war...