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Faces of War Tech Info

Publisher:
    Ubisoft
Developer:
    Best Way
Genre:
    Historic Real-Time Strategy
Release Date:
    Sep 12, 2006 (more)
ESRB:
    MATURE

Game Information

Offline Modes:
    Competitive, Cooperative, Team Oriented
Online Modes:
    Competitive, Cooperative, Team Oriented
Number of Players:
    1 Player
Number of Online Players:
    16 Online
Operating System:
    Windows 2000/XP

Minimum System Requirements

System:
    Pentium IV 2.0 GHz or equivalent
RAM:
    512 MB
Video Memory:
    64 MB
Hard Drive Space:
    2500 MB

Recommended System Requirements

System:
    Pentium IV 3.0 GHz or equivalent
RAM:
    1024 MB
Video Memory:
    128 MB

Technical Support

Visit Ubisoft web site at: http://www.ubisoft.com/
Official Site

Visit the official web site at: http://facesofwargame.us.ubi.com/+

Faces of War Review

Faces of War proves that even something as formulaic as a World War II real-time strategy game can still go awry.
The Good

    * Intense combat with loads of enemies 
    * Detailed visuals.

The Bad

    * Awkward, unresponsive control scheme 
    * Artificial intelligence interferes with movement orders 
    * Linear mission design 
    * Some annoying language translation problems.

It's surprising that developers are still finding ways to screw up World War II real-time strategy games. Games like the fantastic Company of Heroes should be the rule by this point, not the exception, seeing as developers have stacks of games to pick apart to see what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately, as Faces of War proves, this isn't the case. Many RTS versions of the noble crusade remain packed with flaws, including dull, derivative missions and control problems, and this game is no exception. Even though developer Best Way has already produced the well-regarded Soldiers: Heroes of WWII, here the company has made a primer on how not to make a WWII RTS. Faces of War hits all of the potholes that have wrecked similar games in the recent past, and it's driven into a few new ones.

Really, really close-quarters combat.

By now, you probably know the drill when it comes to World War II-themed strategy games. The solo part of the game features the usual three campaigns (there is no skirmish option), so once more you get to tear up Europe with the Germans, Allies, and Soviets. There are no surprises here, although the developer has thrown something of a curveball by picking up the war after the midway point of 1944. You come on board for the final stages of the conflict, so, for a change, there isn't a focus on the standard WWII-game headline battles like D-Day (which is represented in a bonus mission outside of the formal Allied campaign) and Stalingrad (which isn't featured here at all). Chances are that you've liberated Omaha Beach and blasted that infamous Russian city to rubble a few dozen times in other games already, though, so the (partial) absence of these engagements is refreshing.

That's about all that is refreshing about Faces of War, though. Everything else has been scooped out of the big bag of WWII RTS game clichés with both hands. Gameplay is something of a cross between Commandos and a typical larger-scale WWII RTS. You take charge of a small squad of troops and don't have to deal with resource management or even minor management tasks such as ordering up reinforcements, but you do have to deal with large numbers of enemies. Overall, the designers have sort of hit the sweet spot between solving level puzzles and blowing the hell out of everything that moves.

Still, missions all deal with tired, bog-standard objectives like blowing up radio stations, rescuing generals, detonating bridges, and stealing secret plans. There are lots of vehicles, gun emplacements, and tanks to hop into, plus loads of buildings to enter and use to set up shooting positions, but the end goals are still very, very familiar. You can choose to play assignments by either tactics or arcade rules, but both feel like a Sgt. Rock comic brought to life, with your squad going up against insane odds and stacking bodies like cordwood. Best Way seems to have compensated for the lack of unique settings by swamping every level with foes. Combat is fast and busy in such a never-let-up style that the incessant action soon begins to wear on you.

When in doubt, you can never go wrong by hiding behind the nearest friendly tank.

Levels have also been overdeveloped to the point where you have no real freedom. They aren't as rigid or as puzzle-heavy as those you would find in one of the Commandos games, although there is typically just one way to complete objectives and usually just a single way to get there. You need to do everything in perfect order to activate a trigger spawning backups (like a column of tank reinforcements) or setting up the condition needed to take out the battalion of enemies that attack you at the end of each mission. A lot of levels feature extremely dissatisfying endgames that you don't control, where the cavalry shows up out of the blue like a deus ex machina, for example, or you suddenly win the day just because you managed to stay alive against withering enemy fire for a long-enough period of time. Often, these victory conditions aren't spelled out, so you're left mindlessly killing enemies in the hope that the level will eventually end.

Also, if you don't follow the moves "suggested" in midmission officer voiceovers to the letter, you have no hope of winning battles. You don't even have a choice when it comes to taking on secondary objectives, as you always have to complete them ASAP or get shredded by hidden mortars, blown away by a King Tiger tank, or overwhelmed by enemies who often pour out of buildings like clowns out of a funny car. This is one extremely linear game in which everything feels scripted.

Faces of War Review

Faces of War proves that even something as formulaic as a World War II real-time strategy game can still go awry.
The Good

    * Intense combat with loads of enemies 
    * Detailed visuals.

The Bad

    * Awkward, unresponsive control scheme 
    * Artificial intelligence interferes with movement orders 
    * Linear mission design 
    * Some annoying language translation problems.

Troop movement feels limited as well. Your squad is never completely under your control, due to an artificial intelligence that constantly interrupts commands. Sometimes this is a good thing, as soldiers seem programmed to seek cover whenever possible and you can readily position troops behind cover thanks to ghost images that pop up when you position the movement cursor behind rubble, walls, burned-out vehicles, and the like. But most of the time this trait just gets in the way, as the AI will do things like force a soldier to drop to a crawl or stop and return enemy fire when you're trying to get him to sprint to safety. At other times, soldiers won't respond to movement commands. They also seem to always leave cover and stand up to shoot, even when it isn't necessary. Troops also have an odd tendency of running into each other, or into the rubble that clogs almost every level, and freezing in place until you click a new destination that lets them escape their traffic jam. Most missions take place at least partially in closed-in city or town streets, so these movement snafus can lead to a lot of frustration.

Just another day on the Russian front.

Faces of War does feature a more hands-on control mechanism called direct control (previously seen in Soldiers), where you can take charge of an individual soldier. It's too unwieldy to use, however, as you need to hold down the Ctrl key and use the arrow keys to move. You can switch it on and off with the End key, but this is arguably even more awkward as you can't move your squad properly with direct control on, and need to hit the button over and over again during the course of every mission. At any rate, using direct control effectively is pretty much impossible due to the zippy speed of most levels. So don't expect to get any use out of this option, except for those moments when you want to take a few potshots at a specific enemy sniper or a foe manning a gun emplacement.

Visuals and sound cause more confusion. Best Way's Ukrainian roots are apparent in the horrible English of the mission briefings, which are frequently so off-the-wall that you don't quite know what's going on until you actually start the action. At least lines like "We Stand One" and directives such as the one to "withdraw the secret stuffing" from a radar base provide comic relief. Maps are loaded with detail, which makes for some truly authentic-looking theaters of war (towns really look lived in, with telephone boxes on corners and amenities like parks and water fountains) and loads of destructible buildings that go boom in an impressively cinematic fashion--but they wreak havoc on camera angles. You have to constantly swivel the camera and zoom it in and out to dodge the buildings, trees, and debris that block your sight every time your squad turns a corner. As this is one fast-paced game, it often feels as though you're battling the camera as much as you're battling the Wehrmacht, GIs, and Reds. All this detail seems to cause a lot of slowdown, as well. On any visual setting, the game bogged down at least once per level, typically in the midst of the huge, smoky final battles.

Audio cues are another problem. While the game delivers solid explosions and machine-gun rat-a-tat-tats, it lacks good cues. So you're never told where enemies are located or are moving to, and you're given just a wimpy, hard-to-hear announcement heralding the arrival of a grenade at your feet. The latter can be a real pain, too, as grenades in the game are nearly impossible to see, being no more than a couple of pixels in size, and are smartly tossed by enemies into trenches and at manned gun emplacements.

Say goodbye to one Allied bridge.

Multiplayer is arguably the high point of the game. Co-op play for two to four players is supported for one-off missions, and there are eight traditional multiplayer modes of play including deathmatch and king of the hill, along with interesting variants like Chicken Hunt, where you compete to kill farmers and capture their finger-lickin' good livestock, and the Capture the Flag-like Battle Zones. Maps are on the small side and seem designed to spark conflict almost from the moment you spawn your units into existence. Getting into gunplay is also sped up as you have liberal access to vehicles and tanks in most modes of play, so you don't necessarily have to wait for your slower ground troops to make their way to the emerging front lines on foot. Lag is a bit of an issue at times, however, and matches are frequently interrupted as the server resyncs with the players. This can be pretty jarring, especially in the midst of a firefight, as units can suddenly appear or disappear. Still, there seem to be a fair number of people playing online, so it's pretty easy to hook up with a match.

For all this, Faces of War isn't terrible. Even with the been-there, done-that WWII setting and the other problems noted above, at times you can't help but enjoy the game despite itself because Best Way has thrown everything but the kitchen sink into missions. There is something undeniably cool about feeling like you're taking on the entire Wehrmacht, US Army, or Red Army with just a handful of troops. If not for the control and design problems, this intensity might have made for an enjoyable RTS. As it is, though, this is just one more forgettable WWII game to throw onto the pile.

Editor's note 09/26/06: When the review was originally posted, it implied that there was no way to toggle on the game's direct control feature without pressing and holding a key, which is incorrect. GameSpot regrets the error.

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INFO:

Alpha Prime Tech Info

Publisher:
    IDEA Games
Developer:
    Black Element
Genre:
    Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter
Release Date:
    May 1, 2007 (more)
ESRB:
    MATURE

Technical Support

Visit IDEA Games web site at: http://www.idea-games.com/
Official Site

Visit the official web site at: http://www.alpha-prime.com/

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INFO:

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Tech Info

Publisher:
    Activision
Developer:
    Splash Damage
Genre:
    Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter
Release Date:
    Oct 2, 2007 (more)
ESRB:
    TEEN

Game Information

Connectivity:
    Online, Broadband Only
Offline Modes:
    Competitive, Team Oriented
Online Modes:
    Competitive, Team Oriented
Number of Players:
    1-32
Number of Online Players:
    32 Online
DirectX Version:
    v9.0c
Operating System:
    Windows XP/Vista

Minimum System Requirements

System:
    Intel Pentium IV 2.8 GHz or equivalent
RAM:
    512 MB
Video Memory:
    128 MB
Hard Drive Space:
    5000 MB
Other:
    Pentium IV 3.0 GHz processor and 768MB RAM required for Windows Vista

Technical Support

Visit Activision web site at: http://www.activision.com/games/pub-index.html
Official Site

Visit the official web site at: http://www.enemyterritory.com/

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Review

Quake Wars' strong shooting model and focused objectives make it a lot of fun to play.
The Video Review
Watch this video

Kevin VanOrd takes Enemy Territory: Quake Wars to the front lines in this video review.
Watch It Watch HD 520p
The Good

    * Slick, mission-based gameplay makes for intense, focused pockets of action 
    * Constantly updated objectives make sure you are never at a loss of where to go and what to do 
    * Interesting classes are balanced well and are equally enjoyable to play 
    * Strong shooting model makes it fun to mow down the opposition .

The Bad

    * No voice chat functionality, even for fire teams 
    * Vehicle and aircraft key bindings aren't completely separate from infantry keys.

If you took 2003's freely downloadable Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and mashed it together with the Battlefield games, you might come up with something like Quake Wars. Of course, the whole business of the original Enemy Territory's Allies and Axis have been replaced by the humans and Strogg from the Quake universe, but the basic nature of the gameplay is unchanged. Two opposing teams still duke it out while attempting to complete a series of objectives, though this time you can jump into a bunch of different vehicles and aircraft to carry out your assaults. The concept itself isn't really new, but it's put together extremely well, and its mission-focused gameplay will appeal to veterans of these types of shooters, as well as those who have previously been intimidated by them.

Clear objectives make it easy to know what to do next.

The year is 2065. The Strogg race has attacked Earth in order to process its raw materials into a fuel called stroyent. If you've played any other Quake titles, you'll know some of the history here, but it's mostly irrelevant in the context of Enemy Territory's multiplayer action, so let's cut to the chase: You join either the human Global Defense Force or the alien Strogg team, and then shoot your enemies in the face.

Obviously, it's a tad more complex than this. First, you need to choose one of five classes before each match. The GDF classes will be familiar to any RTCW: Enemy Territory player; the Strogg classes have different names than the human ones, but they all boil down to the same roles. GDF soldiers and Strogg aggressors are your typical frontline troops; medics and technicians heal in the field; and so on. Don't assume that correlating classes are all exactly the same, though. GDF field ops can drop ammo packs, for example. The similar Strogg oppressor doesn't need to drop ammo, since the alien weaponry doesn't require any. Instead, oppressors can set up a tactical shield to protect infantry or vehicles.

Other differences are subtle, but no less important. For example, GDF medics can revive downed teammates almost instantly, while it takes a few crucial seconds for Strogg technicians to do the same. On the other hand, technicians can use their healing stroyent tool on enemies, too, which creates a forward spawn point--a handy skill, indeed. Then you have GDF covert ops versus Strogg infiltrators. Both can disguise themselves as the enemy, but covert ops can use an explosive surveillance camera to spy on the opposition, while infiltrators can send out a handy drone to do battle with enemies from a distance. These differences aren't huge, but they give each faction a different feel and are balanced well.

Once you've spawned into the map, the game will give you incredibly clear objectives--and in most cases, more than one. Teams share a primary objective, and as the battle rages and one team is successful in meeting its current goal, the objective will shift. There are secondary missions to complete as well, and they will change depending on your class. You may need to take out enemy radar, heal teammates, blow up gates, and so on. The end result of this focus is that you never wonder what you should be doing, and even newcomers to this kind of action will feel that they contributed. Additionally, as you continue to play, you will earn medals and gain persistent ranks--provided you are playing on ranked servers. You'll also earn bonuses within your current campaign as you gain experience, such as improved weaponry, faster sprinting, and more, depending on the amount of XP earned and the class you are playing.

All the emphasis on missions results in intense firefights that occasionally involve Quake Wars' small assortment of vehicles and aircraft. The specific mission objectives usually keep the action contained to a few pockets of concentrated activity, though, so if you like the Battlefield formula of controlled chaos, you might miss the insane flurry of action coming at you from all sides and above. If you prefer to get comfy in a tank turret or in the cockpit of a chopper, you'll still be able to fulfill that role. But with objectives shifting from outdoor areas to indoor sewers and bunkers, you can't singularly focus on getting into the air or plowing down every enemy in sight. Don't take this to mean that Quake Wars doesn't offer its share of heavy action, however. You'll still get your fill of visceral, bloody battles--though they are usually confined to the ground.

You can also create a fire team as in the original Enemy Territory, so squad organization functionality is there, though it's not as necessary as you would expect. One reason is that when you undertake a secondary mission, you can see who is sharing it, thereby creating a sort of ad hoc squad. The other is that Quake Wars does not support voice chat, so you simply don't have the opportunity to issue commands to your fire team easily. Of course, you can use a third-party voice client, though that would have you chatting to all of your teammates, rather than a single squad. Now that the Battlefield series has set the squad-based chat standard, it's unclear why the functionality would be left out. The missions are so clear that your path is usually fairly straightforward, but if you're joining a random game and still want to contribute to the fullest extent, it would be nice for the game to give you the chance to talk to the other members of your fire team.

Shooting stuff in Quake Wars feels terrific. Both GDF and Strogg weaponry have the right weight and firing speed. Even the default weapons for nonassault classes, like the Strogg Lacerator, are effective in battle and handle well. Small details, such as the amount of time the barrels on the Hyperblaster rotate before they begin firing, feel properly balanced. Vehicles and aircraft are easy to manage as well. Oddly enough, though, some ground-movement controls are tied to flight and vehicle controls, so if, for example, you want to change the key binding for your Tormentor's thrust maneuver, you'll be changing the sprint key as well. It would be nice to have vehicle controls separately customizable from within the game, and we're at a loss to explain why players would be forced to edit configuration files to make such a simple, standard change.

There are three ways to play: on a single map, a three-map campaign that takes place across a single continent, or in a two-round duel on a single map in which teams compete to see who can complete their assault faster. There are 12 maps in all, and they hold up to 32 players at a time--though every server we have seen supports no more than 24 players. Most of the usual near-future environments are covered, from cratered wastelands to frozen tundra. The maps themselves are balanced well, with plenty of buildings for cover, and lots of hills and valleys to mix things up.

Avoid antipersonnel turrets at all costs.

Yet prior Quake games captured the aura of futuristic warfare better than Quake Wars does. That is partially due to the open-environment design--and the very nature of the setting. However, there is no real eye candy to set your sights on here, so while the maps look very good, nothing really paints a detailed picture of a war-torn world. Indoor areas in particular are mostly bland and functional, but even terrain lacks detail, thanks to flat textures. Even explosions and fire effects lack pizzazz. Lighting is often spectacular, however, especially in the foliage-rich areas, and vehicles and turrets are richly detailed. The draw distance is also incredible, without any noticeable fog or polygon pop-in. Character models are good too, but the animations are a bit awkward. Luckily, the game runs reasonably well. The din of battle sounds good, and the weapons are obnoxiously loud, in a good way. The voice-over commands that you can play are grating, though, and the tone of some of the lines (like the GDF's snotty "You're Welcome!") seems out of place.

If you're an Enemy Territory veteran, this is the logical next step for you. And if you've been turned off by team shooters in the past, this one may change your mind. The accessible, objective-focused gameplay won't be for everyone, especially those into the chaotic, freeform warfare of other team shooters. But all told, Quake Wars is great fun and should provide FPS fans with a lot to sink their teeth into.

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INFO:

Far Cry Tech Info

Publisher:
    Ubisoft
Developer:
    Crytek
Genre:
    Modern First-Person Shooter
Release Date:
    Mar 23, 2004 (more)
ESRB:
    MATURE
ESRB Descriptors:
    Blood, Intense Violence

Game Information

Connectivity:
    Online
Number of Players:
    1-16
DirectX Version:
    v9.0
Operating System:
    Windows 98/2000/ME/XP

Minimum System Requirements

System:
    1GHz CPU or equivalent
RAM:
    256 MB
Video Memory:
    64 MB
Hard Drive Space:
    4000 MB

Recommended System Requirements

System:
    2GHz CPU or equivalent
RAM:
    512 MB
Video Memory:
    128 MB

Technical Support

Visit Ubisoft web site at: http://www.ubisoft.com/
Official Site

Visit the official web site at: http://farcry.ubi.com/

Far Cry Review

Far Cry isn't just a stunning technical accomplishment. It's quite possibly the best single-player first-person shooter experience for the PC since Half-Life.
The Video Review
Watch this video

Jason Ocampo tells all about this stunning first-person shooter.
Watch It

For almost a year now, the gaming world has eagerly anticipated the arrival of the next-generation wave of first-person shooters. These new games would finally begin to take advantage of the powerful graphical features that hardware companies have been incorporating into their video cards to deliver unprecedented visuals. But while we're still waiting to see the fruits of the labors of storied developers like id Software and Valve, Crytek, a relatively obscure German developer, has managed to beat everyone to the punch with Far Cry. In fact, Crytek almost delivers a knockout blow. Far Cry isn't just a stunning technical accomplishment. It's quite possibly the best single-player first-person shooter experience for the PC since Half-Life.

Welcome to the jungle.

In Far Cry, you play as Jack Carver, a guy who's been hired to sail a mysterious woman around the Pacific. However, Jack's ship suddenly comes under attack. After washing ashore on a tropical island, sans the mysterious woman, Carver must investigate his surroundings so that he can find her and eventually rescue her from an army of heavily armed mercenaries. From this point, you'll delve into a story that combines the epic adventure of Half-Life with the bizarreness of The Island of Dr. Moreau, along with a good, healthy mix of Jurassic Park-style tropical island creepiness. You'll explore facilities worthy of Half-Life's Black Mesa, battle it out with brutally tough opponents, and assault a volcano stronghold in a James Bond-inspired finale that also offers a nightmarish vision of hell.

Without a doubt, Far Cry has the most advanced graphics seen in any PC game to date. Everything in this game looks amazing, and the level of verisimilitude is unprecedented. Jungles actually feature dense foliage that consists of trees, plants, and tall grasses, and this foliage is filled with birds and insects. Beaches have blinding-white sand, and the surf slowly laps ashore. The character models are some of the best we've ever seen in such a game, and they're richly detailed and animated. The game also incorporates real-time lighting and shading effects to a degree rarely seen before, so when you walk in the jungle, you actually see the shadows of overhead leaves flickering on your rifle. In some of the larger indoor levels, the shadows of oncoming opponents are projected in larger-than-life form onto walls. Intense heat blur from lava streams distort the atmosphere. And a near miss from an enemy rocket will black out your vision--as if you got the wind knocked out of you. You can't help but be pulled in by the sheer immersiveness of the game.

During the many firefights in Far Cry, you'll go up against cunning opponents, such as mercenaries who know how to use cover. They'll run between cover while shooting at you along the way. The lushness of the jungle usually means that these engagements turn into cat-and-mouse affairs, where you slowly stalk your prey. The jungle is so dense, however, that you often can't see your enemies until you're practically right on top of them. Sound plays an important part in the game at these moments, because you can track opponents by their sounds, and they can track you by yours. You can throw a rock to create a distraction, and you can crawl around the jungle to make as little noise as possible. Stealth can play a critical role in the game at times, and one of the few complaints we have about it is that the enemy artificial intelligence seems to have a very low detection threshold. If you make the slightest noise, all the bad guys in the vicinity go to full alert, rather than investigating further.

Black Hawks will be the bane of your existence.

The sound effects in the game contribute heavily to the creepy atmosphere. For instance, you'll be working your way through a dark indoor level and you'll hear disturbing noises up ahead. Then someone you didn't realize was there will suddenly say something, and you'll jump out of your seat. In the jungle, birds will chirp overhead, and insects will buzz in your ear. When a helicopter approaches, you'll hear the thrum of the rotors getting closer and closer. You can eavesdrop on conversations by using the combination binocular-sound microphone featured in the game. These conversations tend to be enlightening because you can find out what the mercenaries are worried about or what's up ahead. The voice acting is corny in a way that fits in with the over-the-top action movie feel of the game.

You can also use a variety of vehicles, including jeeps, hang gliders, and boats. However, these aren't as tightly integrated into the game as they could have been. For instance, jeeps are pretty much restricted to moving along on roads, because there's very little open country on the islands. You can get into some wild chase scenes, but driving around exposes you to detection, so it's usually better to go on foot, if you can. And it's certainly unnerving to see mercenaries using vehicles against you. In particular, Black Hawk helicopters will swoop over the jungle to hunt for you, and there are plenty of wild moments where you'll have to try to fight them off. And in homage to Half-Life, an Osprey can fly over, and mercenaries will rappel to the ground. At night, you can see the headlights of approaching vehicles, which gives you time to either hide or set up a hasty ambush.

The game limits you to four weapons at a time, so like in Halo, there's a tactical element present that makes you weigh the positives and negatives of each weapon. All the weapons are taken from the real world, including the M4 carbine and the G36 assault rifle. It takes a bit of time to familiarize yourself with each weapon, especially since each has different characteristics, such as recoil. The G36 is hard to aim while firing, and the P90 submachine gun has a high rate of fire but does less damage. Hit location is also important. Headshots usually result in kills, while mercenaries have body armor that makes them resistant to hits to the torso. There is a rudimentary physics engine in the game that lets you knock over objects and hurls bodies in the air, but it's not as fleshed-out as it could be. For instance, a wooden crate will float in the water, but it won't shatter, even if you fire a minigun at it.

You can drive vehicles from a third-person perspective, which is easier.

Far Cry features a loading technique that's similar to the one used in Half-Life and Halo. There's generally one long load at the beginning of each chapter. Then the entire level, no matter how large, plays seamlessly after that. The game only pauses for a fraction of a second every now and then to autosave your progress. Otherwise, there's nothing that takes you out of your suspension of disbelief, so you always feel as though you're actually exploring a tropical archipelago. The game uses a checkpoint-style save system, so you can't manually save your progress. If you die, you'll start back at the last checkpoint, which only takes a few moments to load. The inability to quick save the game isn't as annoying as it seems, since the checkpoints are generally spaced within reason. However, there are a few moments where it feels like the checkpoints are few and far between, which can be frustrating when you die and have to restart. At any rate, publisher Ubisoft reports that a quick-save feature will be added in a downloadable patch for the game.

The single-player campaign packs more than 20 hours worth of gameplay, which is an impressive amount in this day and age--when most first-person shooters feature campaigns that are half this length. And the developers manage to do this without making it feel like they're recycling themselves through the campaign. As you slowly uncover the plot, there's always something that will awe you, stun you, or scare you. Just when you think you've seen it all or you've gotten to the point where most games would end, the designers keep on going and up the ante even more.

The multiplayer portion of Far Cry is competent but not nearly as spectacular as the single-player game. There are only three game modes--free-for-all, team deathmatch, and assault--as well as a limited number of maps for each mode. Moreover, all the maps are quite large in size, which means that if you only have a handful of players, then you'll spend a lot of time looking for someone to kill. You'll also spend a lot of time just moving around the map because sandy surfaces restrict your movement speed. Additionally, movement speed is reduced by the specific weapon you're carrying. There are a few vehicles in multiplay, but they're not too useful during combat. The jeep, for example, has an open-air driver's compartment, which means there's no protection at all from bullets. And there are not a lot of places to drive because the thick foliage and rough terrain limit vehicle usage mainly to roads. Some of the weapons also feel horribly unbalanced. For instance, the rocket launcher does a tremendous amount of splash damage, and the sniper rifle can dominate a match over long ranges. There are also a handful of other oddities in multiplay. Most notably, if you pick up a weapon of a certain class that you already possess, the new weapon disappears as though you picked it up, but you won't actually have it in your inventory.

The lighting and shadow effects in the game are incredibly impressive.

As expected, you're going to need to have some serious hardware to run Far Cry as it's meant to be played. While the game will run on lower-end machines, you'll have to tone down detail settings. And with older video cards, you won't get much of the graphical eye candy in the game. From our experience, we recommend a 2GHz machine with a DirectX 8.1 or 9.0-compliant video card. However, Far Cry could very well be the killer app people have been looking for to justify upgrading, because it looks that good. And, frankly, running the game with a lower detail level means you lose a lot of the jungle foliage, which reduces your level of immersion in the game. It should be noted that Crytek's execution is superb. Aside from the multiplayer quirks, we experienced no stability issues and no bugs. This is an impressive accomplishment considering the complexity and ambitious scale of the game. The potential for this technology is exciting. Not only do we expect third-party developers to license Crytek's engine to power their own games, but Crytek also includes editing tools with Far Cry, so modmakers will get to develop their own ideas.

Far Cry is a stunning game in so many ways. It certainly raises the bar for graphics to new heights. And yet, it's not just a technology demonstration. In Far Cry, the graphics are just one of the ingredients that submerge you into the experience. The developers exhibit a growing sense of maturity throughout the game. It's as if they themselves were learning how to use the graphics engine in conjunction with the AI, sound, and level design to create a superior gameplay experience--one that starts out impressively and, for the most part, just keeps getting better. The result is an awesome thing to behold, and it's an even better thing to experience.

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INFO:

Hunting Unlimited 2008 Tech Info

Publisher:
    ValuSoft
Developer:
    SCS Software
Genre:
    Hunting
Release Date:
    Sep 16, 2007

Technical Support

Visit ValuSoft web site at: http://www.valusoft.com/
Official Site

Visit the official web site at: http://huntingunlimited2008.com/tournaments/content_hu2008.php

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INFO:

Death to Spies Tech Info

Publisher:
    Atari
Developer:
    Haggard Games
Genre:
    Modern Action Adventure
Release Date:
    Oct 16, 2007 (more)
ESRB:
    MATURE
ESRB Descriptors:
    Blood, Violence

Game Information

Number of Players:
    1 Player
DirectX Version:
    v9.0c
Operating System:
    Windows XP/Vista

Minimum System Requirements

System:
    Intel Pentium IV 1.8 GHz or equivalent
RAM:
    512 MB
Hard Drive Space:
    2500 MB

Technical Support

Visit Atari web site at: http://www.atari.com/

Death to Spies Review

It may not be easy doing sneaky dirty work in the Second World War, but it is more entertaining than you'd expect.
The Good

    * Realistic game mechanics 
    * Incredibly challenging 
    * Detailed mission design varies between commando exploits and playing spy.

The Bad

    * Overly difficult in spots 
    * Artificial aspects of the stealth interface get in the way at times.

Although the name SMERSH sounds like something out of an old Get Smart! episode, nobody laughed at this counterespionage organization during the Second World War. Translated into English, this acronym means "Death to spies," which pretty much sums up the no-nonsense nature of this precursor to the Soviet Union's dreaded KGB. The game of the same name from Russian developer Haggard Games doesn't mess around either, presenting some of the grittiest stealth action to hit the sneaker genre since Agent 47 first shaved his head. Open-ended mission objectives, smart level design, and extreme difficulty also add to the realism, proving that developers haven't wrung all of the good game ideas out of WWII quite yet.

Gameplay itself isn't as original as the story or setting, however. Even though Death to Spies is the first game to put you in the shoes of a SMERSH counterespionage agent tasked with stamping out Nazis during Hitler's adventures in the USSR, the game is reminiscent of such games as Hitman and Splinter Cell, crossed with the more puzzle-oriented stealth served up in the Commandos series. So even though you creep around in the third person, knocking out bad guys, as well as playing dress-up, you can also check an overhead map that tracks sentry positions and vision cones depicting how far guards can see. If you've played sneaky games in the past, chances are good that this will seem like familiar ground.

Sometimes you play as a commando, sometimes you play as a spy. Missions vary between assassinating Nazis and snooping around a hotel to find a traitor.

Well, with one big difference: Death to Spies is more true to reality than most of its forebears. The design is packed with grim authenticity even while sticking close enough to the stealth game template to feel just a tad formulaic. Missions feature a lot of par-for-the-course assignments, such as infiltrating a bombed-out town to snatch secret plans, sneaking into a Nazi prison to assassinate a compromised comrade, and blowing up an enemy-held bridge, but these generic missions are spiced up with such noirish escapades as checking into a Moscow hotel to kill an ally selling secrets to the British. All of these locales feature fairly typical office buildings, stone fortresses, military encampments, railyards, and the like. However, each site is elevated above the average by good attention to detail, as well as a graphics engine that does a superb job with lighting and shadow effects (the core visual components of any sneaker).

Most levels are wide open, leaving you free to blaze your own trail to the end goal. In theory, anyhow; in reality, you generally have just a couple of paths to start off with when heading out to each mission objective because there are simply too many guards to make experimentation viable. Although you're skilled at the usual stealth exploits, such as moving silently, cutting throats with a knife, killing quietly with a choke cord or silenced pistol, and disguising yourself to better fit in with the locals, there is so much opposition that you can't freely employ your talents. Sentries typically patrol in pairs, but most corridors feature at least one guard at each end, typically bolstered by another grunt (or three) walking back and forth between them. Even when you're all dolled up in an officer's uniform and able to walk right past enlisted men, you can guarantee that rooms in key locations will always feature at least one or two superior officers who can tell you're an impostor on sight.

It all gets a bit ridiculous at times. Many challenges in Death to Spies are insanely difficult. At one point in the third mission, you're tasked with sneaking down a corridor filled with a dozen storm troopers and slipping unseen into a room to silently murder two alert officers, as well as a guard. It can be done, but you've got to time your movements absolutely perfectly to have even a shot at success. Things get even worse later in the game. Mission seven has an objective where you have to kill two senior officers in a room packed with their buddies and a bunch of machine-gun-toting guards. Simply shooting your way through these tough scrapes is virtually impossible too. If you respond to a screwup by going Rambo and trying to kill everyone in sight, you'll get gunned down in moments by the spectacular number of enemy troops on hand to respond to alerts. Unless you're in one of the rare isolated spots on the maps and can take out the bad guys in a few seconds with a silenced pistol, getting identified as an intruder just once means das vadanya, comrade, so get ready to reload a save.

Still, even though this unceasing difficulty cranks up the frustration factor, it never seems like the game is cheating you. While it's a bit cheesy that officers seem to have the ability to see through disguises almost instantaneously, just about everything else is rooted in reality. Guards will spot you if you try to hide in the shadows a few feet away. Strange noises are always investigated. Entire platoons seem to respond whenever shots are fired. An alarm is immediately raised as a result of a body being discovered. You can only carry two weapons, generally a rifle and a pistol of some sort. Every object in the game has weight, so you can't run around with dozens of ammo clips or chloroform bottles. And so on.

So I says to Hitler, I says...

Not everything feels totally natural, though. Interactions with enemies come off as a bit artificial. Few sound cues are given by guards except for the odd "Schiesse!" or "Was ist los?" and those lines are usually only heard when you've either been spotted or it's too late to avoid being spotted. Most of the time, everything is so silent that all you can generally hear are atmospheric noises, such as a gramophone playing in the distance and the wildly out of place Euro disco that kicks in during combat. Because of this, you rely more on the vision cones displayed on interface amenities, such as the overhead map and a danger bar that appears then fills up when you're on the verge of being detected in your actual surroundings. Seeing as most of the game is so brutal and uncompromising, these issues really stand out. A few more organic touches would be a big help even if it came in the form of cheesy stealth-game conventions like guards muttering "Maybe it was just rats."

Even with some missteps, Haggard Games accomplishes a lot with Death to Spies. Deeply difficult and absolutely remorseless, this game isn't for the faint of heart. But it is definitely worth the struggle, as long as you've got the patience to appreciate such a rigorous design.

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INFO:

Blazing Angels 2: Secret Tech Info

Publisher:
    Ubisoft
Developer:
    Ubisoft Romania
Genre:
    WWII Flight Sim
Release Date:
    Sep 21, 2007 (more)
ESRB:
    TEEN

Game Information

Online Modes:
    Competitive, Cooperative, Team Oriented
Number of Players:
    1 Player
Number of Online Players:
    16 Online

Technical Support

Visit Ubisoft web site at: http://www.ubisoft.com/

Blazing Angels 2: Secret Review

Blazing Angels 2 is a clear improvement over the previous game, though history buffs will probably hate its fictional missions.
The Good

    * The plethora of upgrades creates a meaningful sense of progression 
    * Lots of over-the-top technological toys.

The Bad

    * Multiplayer servers feel a little barren, making it tough to enjoy the game's wide collection of modes 
    * The game is a little too easy.

Blazing Angels 2 is a fairly straightforward mission-based flight game set against the backdrop of World War II, much like its predecessor was. But instead of sticking to the facts like the first game tried to do, the sequel heads off into that not-so-lofty "what if?" territory that World War II-themed games eventually seem to get to, where Nazis are either resurrecting dead humans and making horrific zombies, or building huge Tesla coils and prototypical laser cannons and other then-impossible technology. This game goes for the latter, giving you a bunch of prototype technology to fly and fight against, some of which was just out of reach back in the 1940s. At the same time, a handful of improvements make Blazing Angels 2 a better game than the previous release, though some spotty difficulty progression makes the single-player a little uneven.

You'll want to avoid those spotlights if you want to stay alive.

The story and characters from the first game have been tossed out, though the basics are the same. You play as Captain Robinson, and you quickly hook up with some wingmen to form an elite squadron that gets into the places that other, lesser pilots couldn't touch. Your team gets involved in some hairy scenarios as you track down a German special weapons division that's turning out a bunch of new technology vital to the fight. So along with protecting key civilian targets in major American cities and bombing bases, you'll also have missions where you have to take out airfields, then land to steal prototype planes and escape. You'll also guard escaping trains, shoot missiles out of the sky, and even take on huge bosslike crafts, like plane-spewing zeppelins, big cannons aimed at Red Square, large Tesla installations, and so on. The game does a good job of moving you around from place to place, which keeps you from getting bored of any one area and constantly has you doing different things in different planes.

As this game also appears on consoles, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that it works well on a dual-analog gamepad, but you should definitely know that it practically requires some sort of additional controller or flight stick, because the mouse-and-keyboard controls aren't any good. While the game does have support for Xbox 360 controllers and will start specifically mentioning the Xbox 360 controller's buttons in menus and the like, it doesn't seem to auto-configure for that controller, so you'll still have to go through the process of assigning all your buttons, which you can't actually do from the pause menu, so trying out different configurations is a hassle.

Of course, it all eventually comes back to you dogfighting enemy planes. Not too far into the game's 18-mission campaign, you start getting secondary weapons like rockets. You get a lot of rockets and it's a snap to replenish your supplies, so at this point, your machine guns become almost totally useless. You later get homing rockets that make blowing up enemy planes a trivial, meaningless task. This means that most of the game is so easy that you'll finish missions on the first try, though that feeling of extreme air superiority fits with the spirit of your elite squad. The lone exception is the eighth mission, which has you guarding Moscow's Red Square against German attackers. The game isn't particularly clear about what you need to do to protect the square from being destroyed, which makes this one mission a little harder than the rest. But for the most part, it's smooth sailing. A little too smooth, perhaps.

You'll upgrade your planes as you play using points earned in each mission, and you should have more than enough to buy everything by the end of the game. Different upgrades include better gun sights, faster-firing machine guns, armor and maneuverability enhancements, and so on. One upgrade makes your missiles explode if they get close to a target, which means you don't even have to score a direct hit to take out most planes. In combat, you'll be able to order your wingmen around a bit, and each guy has a special ability, just like in the previous game. One wingman will come back and taunt enemies to give you some breathing room, a skill you'll probably never actually need. Another will go on an aggressive attack and take out a handful of enemies, which is much more useful. The third is a mechanic that will occasionally repair your plane, though unlike in the first game, you don't have to hit a sequence of onscreen buttons to perform the repairs--he just fixes it automatically at checkpoints.

The single-player campaign is pretty satisfying, though it won't take too long for players to bust through it. That's not automatically bad, as flying around and blowing up everything in sight using a variety of destructive tools is actually quite fun. There's also a multiplayer side to the game, and it offers a lot of different modes and options for solo flights, team games, and cooperative play. The catch is that there seem to be very few people playing the game online, and aside from a solo dogfight here and there, it seems impossible to find anyone playing in any of the other modes. For what it's worth, the multiplayer matches we were able to actually get into weren't very exciting. Many matches take place in skies filled with little power-up icons that you can collect to reload your weapons, repair your plane, get double damage, and so on. The power-ups just don't really fit with the vibe of the rest of the game and make the whole thing seem a little hokey. On top of that, if you have a laggy connection to other players, they'll skip around so badly that no one will be able to hit each other. Being able to play cooperatively through the campaign missions is an attractive offer, though, so it might be worth convincing a handful of your friends to get a copy so you can all play together.

Collecting stunt icons gives you additional points to spend on upgrades.

Blazing Angels 2 looks a bit cleaner and more colorful than the first game. The ground looks nice, even up close, and the various plane models look realistic. You can go in and swap around the colors for each plane and also unlock additional paint schemes. The game's effects and explosions look OK, and for the most part the game has a good, smooth frame rate if you're on a system that meets or exceeds the system requirements. The audio gets a little too repetitive in spots, as the main theme for the game seems to play every few minutes in one form or another, eventually getting a little grating. There's a lot of voice acting throughout the missions and a handful of between-mission cutscenes, and most of it is good enough. You might not like the movielike feel the game is going for, though, because the Germans and Japanese have really awful accents and speak English most of the time.

Blazing Angels 2 is a very clear improvement over the original game, though the balance has swung over to the easy side in this sequel. And, of course, if you like your WWII games to be historical and rooted in fact, you probably won't enjoy flying a prototype jet under the Golden Gate Bridge very much. But if you're after a loose, simple game where you get to fly a lot of different, crazy planes and blow up a billion German fighters, you'll probably have a good time.

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