An interesting shooter that unfortunately loses its draw after a few hours of play.
The game opens with a prologue mission wherein you are a special agent infiltrating a Russian prison. This prologue mission is very good. The first thing you'll notice is that the graphics are definitely up to par, maybe not amazing, but the rain is worth a minute of examination. Anyway, you start with just your gun and work your way through the prison popping guards in the head, while taking lots of hints that there's some seriously heavy stuff going on in the prison. There's allusion to some sort of infectious disease and things like that.
So, anyway, to get to the point. The shooting is very good, I'm not a huge fan of third-person shooters but I actually like the gameplay in this one. After completing the prologue you unlock the glaive which is basically a nifty little bladed boomerang that grows from your hand. I know, sounds fun. This has the potential to be one of those lame 'innovative' game elements that people are so quick to toss into shooting games nowadays. But oh no, this is something great. After the first time you toss this baby at some approaching guards head and watch it fly off spurting blood, you'll realize that no matter how horrible this game is, that will always be fun. And eventually you'll unlock new powers, like the aftertouch ability. Which allows you to control the glaive in mid-flight - and get a close-up on the decapitation. This really is one of the most satisfying tools of death in any game. It's right up there with the chainsaw in Gears.
But a three-pronged spinning death blade thing can only last you so long. At least it can only last me so long. How long? Four out of ten chapters before I got kind of bored. Although, I tend to get bored with games very quickly, so don't take that as indication, I can imagine for the average person this might never get old. You get to imbue your glaive with fire and electricity. And you can imagine where that goes. Incineration and electrocution kids, that never gets old either. But the promising story goes gray after a while, and I can't say as to what happens in the latter portion of the game, but being stuck in the same prison area definitely doesn't do much to fight the monotony of the environments. And to just take a little pot shot at the game, I'm not a fan of the main character, his hair is poorly animated and his eyebrows are annoying. But let's not over analyze. Overall I would definitely give the single-player mode of this game a solid 8. But the multiplayer really kills that score.
I played through the first few chapters and said ok, that's cool, let's check out the multiplayer. I didn't have high expectations for the multiplayer, so I wasn't let down. I won't explain the two multiplayer modes, because this is already getting lengthy, and I'm sure you can find it elsewhere. The developers apparently decided to cut out your standard deathmatch and CTF modes, which immediately dooms the multiplayer to mediocrity in my opinion. The game just doesn't lend itself to multiplayer. People who enjoy it will call me lame for this or something, but I think the limited HUD and clumsy controls really don't work with the established paradigm of the online shooter. I played through each mode a few times, and actually did ok, so it's not like I'm complaining because I lost. I do think it's interesting how you'll get to play an infected player (you get the glaive) at some points, and a normal player at others. But it seems stupid that the only two guns you can get are a standard machine gun and a shotgun, and the only way to kill the infected player seems to be by getting close and performing a finisher. The multiplayer is almost not even worth mentioning, not to mention it's sparsely populated.
Overall, this game was a lot better than I would have expected. The single player had a compelling opening that had the potential to carry throughout the game, and the new gameplay element was satisfying at the very least. But poor multiplayer and overall loss of interest in the single player made this game just an ok one for me.