Breakdown: A Review

(Alternate title: Do Not Buy This Game!)

First off, this game is hard. Take everything you know about video games, and all the tricks you know to handle them, and how to deal with tough enemies. Now throw that all away, because none of it will do you any good.

This game is REALLY hard. They like to throw you at enemies you don't have a way to damage yet, and go through some 'frantic puzzle' shindig where you're trying to evade one-hit kill enemies left and right just to get to the door at the end of the level. Except that the door is a vault door, and it takes your character nearly thirty seconds to turn the wheel. Did I mention the enemies aren't very slow, and it's a small room?

Yeah. Expect, if you buy this game, that you will die. A lot. Fortunately, there are checkpoints, which are triggered regardless of if you save or not. Unfortunately, the game doesn't pull any punches.

This game is billed as a first person fighter, and I suppose it is that. Unfortunately, people who like fighting games are probably not really going to get into this, as it doesn't feel much like a fighter. People who are into FPS games might get more into it, but quit because the controls are really designed for it to be a fighting game, not a shooting game.

You get guns in this game, of course, though their use is somewhat dubious once the fighting element comes to the fore. Why bother shooting a marine at point blank with a half a clip from your M-16 to take him down, when you could just punch him once, and have the same result? And, you can block bullets with your hand, but not a gun, thus making the guns even more useless to fight anything except for bugs. Which the game will give you, but still.

If you are the type of gamer who likes to face an enemy that can only be beaten a single way, and not having any clues to what that way is (thus allowing you to retry, thanks to the checkpoints, repeatedly, until you do figure out that one way you were meant to be allowed to win), then this game is probably for you. It'll keep you coming back, probably forever.

If you are the type of gamer who's more concerned with progress through the game than mastery over the game, this is not the game for you at all. And that's a real shame, because the story of this game is fantastic.

You wake up with no idea of who you are, and everything you go in this game is from the first-person point of view. Everything. This makes the back-flip manuever a little dizzying.

From there, the game's next innovation in storytelling is that your character hallucinates. You see things. This is just plain awesome, because you see wierd, plot-relevant things, as opposed to the Max Payne continual review of paths of blood through a dark abyss. At one point, he looks down at his arms, because his skin and muscles have completely melted away. He's just a skeleton, until the hallucination ends.

There's intrigue, as you meet characters who hint darkly at what's really going on, and what's still going to happen. There's a bit of sci-fi that comes off as schlocky, but you suspect is that way for a reason.

And unless you want to deal with the game's increasingly ridiculous challenges (you and a mine-card versus three m-16 armed soldiers, and their tank) that just go to a scale that leaves you stunned (running from the game's final boss at about the midway point, if even that, and unable to damage him, yet still needing to put enough distance between you and him to turn a series of increasingly slow valves), and then just get worse (you versus a helicopter, with a rocket launcher. Except, the helicopter can only actually be hit while it's already firing its vulcan cannon at you, and needs about six direct rockets hits to be taken down), however, you're never going to be able to see exactly how the game turns out.

And given how the game's greatest challenge is due to poor design instead of intent, every time you have to fight multiple enemies in HTH combat, you might as well just reach for the reset button if you make a single mistake. Then again, given how quickly the game kills you, chances are you'll be reloading to your last check point before you even get out of your seat. I think it's a real pity a story and plotline this much fun were hidden in a game so needlessly challenging (and the 'easy' mode isn't, folks) as to render it unplayable. This is the kind of story I'd like enough to watch as a series, as long as I didn't have to be the one pressing the buttons to make it happen, because lets face it; it's not going to happen.

The difficulty is approximately enough that a six year old thrashing on the buttons randomly is going to fare about as well as someone who's been playing the game for hours.

If you liked this game: Go cure cancer with your spare time. I'm sure it's easy in comparison.

If you didn't like this game: Go to EB today and trade it in -- like I'm about to.