What you have here is a fantastic squad-based shooter that's a lot of fun and very challenging.
The Bad: The gun selection is a little overwhelming; Your team may get stuck on doors or wander around aimlessly before completing a command
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What you have here is a fantastic squad-based shooter. It's a lot of fun and challenging enough to warrant several playthroughs (even on Recruit level). You're Ding Chavez, leader of an elite counter-terrorist team named Rainbow. Throughout the game you're basically hunting down terrorists targeting Venezuelan countries that are selling oil to the United States.
You start any mission being able to check out your team and then choose your weapons, of which there's a lot of them. It is actually somewhat overwhelming seeing all those weapons, and if you've found a gun you like, you're more likely to spend the rest of the game with just that gun. You're able to choose one rifle, one pistol or gas grenade launcher, and two different grenade types. As I said, once you find an effective rifle for close and long range, you're more likely to stick with that gun most of the game. Ubisoft's levels are a little too varied to stick with just one weapon anyway. For instance, a sniper rifle is almost never very useful because as soon as you get indoors, it's too close-range to use it, and then you don't have any rifle left.
Despite all my gun complaints though, this game is terrific once you start playing. You command you're squad of three (four including you) by looking at ground or doors and pressing the A button. And sometimes you can issue more complicated commands, like going up to a door, holding A, and watching a little menu come up where you can give your men all sorts of orders. Actually, not all of them are useful, but you'll use some of them alot, like the Open, and Clear command. The other commands are ones that add a grenade (flash or frag) being thrown through the open door, or have you place an explosive on the door itself to kill any "tango" on the other side. The most interesting command is the Zulu commands. Basically, you can tell your men to do something, but then you can tell them to do it on the Zulu code. What that means is that they wait for your signal to do their command. This is great when you want to approach a room from two different entrances. The only complaint I have about this is that you can't take any of your squadmates with you while you go through the other door.
Did I mention this game is hard? This game isn't for the casual, and if you're casual and you play this game for a while, you're not gonna be just a casual gamer anymore. You need to steel yourself against the deadly computer AI. Okay, it's not really that intense. Your enemies actually go down with only one decent shot. What's the problem then? You and your squadmates have only 4 health bars, and those escape very quickly if you're not careful about how you approach every room or enemy. The save system is also interesting. You basically get three saves a mission. No more. Just three. You're always carefully considering how close you are to the end of the mission and if you can afford to use a save. I actually really like it. It adds to the challenge
Graphically, this game is alright, though a few parts can be a little ugly. Particularly the cutscenes. While it's cool when it's an action cutscene and you watch your squad take out a bunch of baddies while dropping out of a helicopter, cutscenes where you're being briefed just don't give the feeling that these guys are lifelike. Lip-syncing isn't entirely believable, and the models don't look extremely good up-close. The environments however look beautiful. At one point in the game you're on a little village island during a sunset. It looks absolutely gorgeous. You visit all sorts of places in this game. You'll go from an oil refinery to a mansion on a tropical island. It's really cool. The game's sound is good. All the weapons sound believable.
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Gameplay: One of the funnest shooters I've played in some time
Graphics: Dissapointing cutscenes, but beautiful environments
Sound: Believable gun sounds...
Value: This game could take a while with it's challenge, and right now it's dirt cheap
Tilt: Tango down!