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Shadow Ops: Red Mercury Impressions

We take a look at this upcoming console first-person shooter from Zombie Studios.

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At a recent Atari press event, we took an up-close look at the Xbox version of Zombie Studios' upcoming console first-person shooter, Shadow Ops: Red Mercury. Though the studio originally started out making hard-core tactical shooters such as Spec Ops, the new game is intended to be a very accessible first-person shooter that draws more inspiration from Hollywood than from real-world military operations.

In the game, you play as an elite counterterrorist operative who must recapture the experimental substance known as red mercury--an energy source so powerful that it's capable of powering bombs that can explode with the impact of a nuclear warhead. The substance has been stolen by a terrorist group that has ties to a crooked Russian military outfit, and it's up to you to pursue this group around the globe to locales such as Syria, Kazakhstan, Paris, Chechnya, and the Congo so you can recover the deadly substance. Nearly all your excursions will be lone-wolf missions--there will be no squad-based combat in the game, though you'll receive backup from time to time from computer-controlled allies, and may be called upon later to provide cover for VIPs.

You can carry up to four different weapons at a time, and since Zombie Studios has considerable experience with military-themed shooters, you can expect to see plenty of real-world weapons (or reasonable facsimiles) in the game, such as AK-47s and M16s. However, the developer wants to make the game as accessible as possible, so using these weapons should be a breeze for most players--automatic weapons barely have any barrel climb at all when firing continuously, and on the game's easiest difficulty level, it will even have basic aiming assistance that will let you hit any target within your circular targeting reticle, similar to the shotgun in Halo for the Xbox. In addition, all weapons will have a "mini-zoom" feature (like in recent shooters such as Soldier of Fortune II) that will let you lean forward and get a slightly better view of the action, though the game will also have two different sniper rifles equipped with long-range zoom lenses.

In addition, all handheld weapons can be used to perform an instantly lethal close-range melee attack that will kill an enemy outright from the front or the back. In addition, grenades can be used in two ways: You can use them as a regular weapon and toss them quickly, or you can use them as a miscellaneous inventory item, which gives you far more control over your throw--and when using grenades in this mode, you can even roll them across the ground while crouching. You'll also be able to use mounted weapons in the environments, such as stationary machine-gun turrets and the mounted minigun on a Black Hawk helicopter.

Zombie says that Shadow Ops will also feature full Xbox Live support in the form of an objective-based multiplayer mode, though few details are available at the moment, as the team is currently focusing on solidifying the single-player experience. Shadow Ops is currently four months away from being content-complete, and it is scheduled for release on the Xbox and PC next year.

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