I maybe ‘minty fresh’ yet capturing Chevall and Zaryan is a walk in the park.
Graphics: 8
Sounds: 7
Value: 5
Tilt: 6
It’s your first action, mate. After you’ve been badged you have to take a nickname. You have no name in the Regiment. Just then nick…
I know…
We’ll be calling him ‘Mint’
Mint? Why ‘Mint’?
Cause you’re sodding fresh, mate.
At first glance I thought the above opening statement from the game SAS: Secure Tomorrow is only just tough talk. You know; you’re the new kid on the block just getting your feet wet listening to war veterans talk tough and all that. Well actually your leader and co-operate wasn’t kidding about calling you ‘Mint’. This is not tough talk; it’s a reality as you’ll discover that when ending the game you’re no better off than at the start of the game. You heard me right – no better off. So I guess you’re wondering ‘What the heck I’m talking about?’ I’m talking about the sense of hopeless, worthless and above all, no match comparing to your co-partners. You can literally say ‘I’ve done jack’ for the entire game as your ‘partners’ will hog all the action and leave you the scraps.
That said, you form as part of a three man tactical squad team aiming to hunt down two predominant leaders for Cold Path, Chevall and Zaryan. In the beginning of the story, Chevall was caught whilst Zaryan presumed dead until a prison breakout occurred – the same prison where Chevall was held captive. The history between these two men stems back in the early nineties where both were suppling arms and profiteering from the war zone ‘hotspots’ (e.g. Yugoslavia, Africa and so forth). After a couple of blundered events from N.A.T.O., Chevall was finally caught whilst Zaryan escaped barely with his life…until now.
So the whole concept of SAS is supposed to be a tactical shooter; similar in the reigns of Rainbow Six where you and your squad acts as a team to eliminate the common threat. That said, you’ll get the experience of stacking up for a flash bomb attack, covering each other, use night vision goggles for those dark places and assist each other as the old saying goes ‘You’ll never walk alone’. Well, that’s a lie in SAS as you soon figure out your team mates are more than just the ‘run-of-the-mill’ soldiers; they are the ‘uber’ soldiers – soldiers that never say die (literally); soldiers that makes the terminator looks like Winnie the Poo; soldiers that resembles Cujo that the second moment they see an enemy, they literally froth in their mouths and destroy their targets in a blink of an eye leaving you in the rear of being ‘fresh’. At times though there are some targets that they ask for your assistance however it’s more of a mockery than assistance as they literally won’t do anything but stand until you eliminate the ‘allocated’ target/s.
So you can see, the AI certainly is not the brightest bunch in the pack as your ‘team mates’ will get into your way more ways than one; that said expect getting jammed into corners with no escape paths (those fruit cakes just won’t leave as they are ‘covering’ you), falling through holes only to land on their heads at the bottom with no escape route or that well placed shot is blocked by those rabid ‘team mates’ as they make a charge to the next corner and yelling out ‘all clear’. There is at times where your assistance is greatly appreciated where you are required to ‘stack up’ to flash bomb the room and considering you are the point man for this activity, you’ll get first pick of the bunch all in slow-mo action (a.k.a. FEAR) only to realise there’s only a singular foe to dispatch (and on the odd occasion two). At least this time you get to say ‘all clear’ with one dead body on the ground…
All is not lost as graphically the game does look appealing; not grand but acceptable considering the developers City Interactive used the very same engine as FEAR – Jupiter EX. Hence you can see cracks in the walls, excellent smoke effects, superb lighting and detailed environs (e.g. standing on top of the building looking towards the ‘London Eye’ is pretty snazzy) yet those ‘office’ stages are just like FEAR; bland and boring to look at. Yet City Interactive introduced new environs that the Jupiter EX engine has never done before; that is snow effects. Sadly it didn’t turn out as they hoped as frame rates will plummet down as fast as your squad chumps dispatching enemies. Lip-syncing is sadly nothing short but a joke as at times when they talk, only their chins move like they pulling off a ventriloquist act but thankfully those cut-scenes don’t appear too often.
The sounds are a direct rip-off from FEAR (funny that) so whatever you heard from FEAR goes the same in SAS. That’s not to say all is bad as the quality still stands two years later with whizzing bullets, squeaky wooden floorboards, intense explosions and so forth. The musical scores are mediocre but barely do the job to maintain the tempo of the game (which is not that fast – remember you are ‘mint’). On the other end of the scale the voice acting can be summarised with one word: fruitless. I’m not sure where they dug up these guys however I can definitely stake my life on it that they are not going to win any awards other than those ‘worst’ categories. That said, all the chaps suppose to sound like Englishmen with plenty of macho swearing and as stated above performing the act of ventriloquism places the final nail in the coffin. If they are Englishmen doing the acting well I’ll be damned.
Another amazing feat for SAS is its longevity. Let me retaliate this: I like to explore everything in any game, that means opening every door, destroy the entire compound, search for easter eggs and even opt to walk (as appose to ‘always run’) as I like to be ‘in the game’ than playing it. For me SAS ended just shy of eight hours – again I repeat this: ‘always walk’ option equals eight hours. That’s a very short game indeed and unfortunately the saving grace of multiplayer is nothing else than those typical death matches using the same maps you’ve played during the single player. Like many other games, there’s that typical ‘easy’, ‘medium’ and ‘hard’ difficulty modes yet considering your team mates are rabid fiends from hell, even the hardest difficulty you’ll have a tough time dying as you can take a considerable amount of damage and since it uses that ‘realistic’ blurry vision damage indicator and for me using the ‘always walk’ option, I can honestly say ‘it’s a walk in the park’ to finish the game on the hardest difficulty.
It’s hard to believe that SAS: Secure Tomorrow is made by the very same engine that FEAR used. FEAR was known for its intense combat and uncanny AI yet and somewhat strange SAS is the complete opposite; dumb witted AI with you doing almost nothing at all (well if you call exploring empty rooms action then so be it). Yet giving some credit back to City Interactive, these guys advertised SAS as a budgeted game therefore they are not pretending or prepared to challenge any highly profiled games. So you can say that SAS is a game that ‘you get what you paid for’.