Project: Snowblind (PC)

 

 

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If you are a true PC player, don't get your hopes up with Project Snowblind. No words describe PSB better than "a console port". The single player offers a basic shoot'em up for a few hours, the graphics and movement make you feel like you are playing Halo on Xbox. The barely given two stars are solely for the basic single player story although I really considered giving just one. Although the sp may be mediocre, the multiplayer is a complete disaster. I am a keen online player myself and have tested numerous fps games during the last decade, including e.g. CS, CS:CZ, CS Source, UT, UT2k3, TO, RTCW, JK2, SoF2, DX, just to mention a few. PSB is honestly one of the worst I've seen because it has been designed for console platform in the first place, then hastily ported on PC and trust me, it shows.

To illustrate, the game is a kind of slow Halo/UT2003 mix with console style graphics and feel. The physics modelling is not very convincing. Menus are rigid. The futuristic atmosphere suffers from cheesy pseudo-techno clichés like a robotic female voice commenting on your bioenergy reserves etc. Although Eidos has put some effort into extra stuff such as player stats on the Snowblind site, any basic and really important features that an online player would be used to in other (real) PC fps games, such as toggling developer console, seeing your ping or a 'talk' button for messaging, are screaming their own absence. The reason is obvious; you don't really do anything with a talk button when you are playing with a joypad, do you? No patch whatsoever can save a game which is so fundamentally foul considering what PC at best could really deliver. PSB looks so bad because PC players are used to better. Comparison of general gameplay and the mp features with exclusive PC online games such as CS Source reveal the shameless truth about PSB.

Even though PSB advertises itself being something totally new, most of the older fans of the genre should still remember Deus Ex 6 years ago, the game which originally invented augmentations. Compared to DX and its immense depth of gameplay, PSB (which was at first supposed to be a DX3: Clan Wars) offers pitiful 5 augs and limits them to certain player classes, probably because too many augs would make it problematic to play using a joypad. The original DX-like freedom of creating various playing styles with different skills and augs is gone, also the masterful aug-counteraug setting which made online DXing such a thrilling and addictive stone-paper-scissors experience. The progress has in fact gone a lot backwards, which a PC player finds hard to cope with since when it comes to games, usually the sequel is expected to be better than the original. Instead of pruning the game type to a fraction of what the original DX offered, Eidos should have upgraded DX with a new engine and genuinely put effort to the mp features and we would be playing the most profound shooter ever made.

Whereas Deus Ex 2 also suffered from being a console port but was still a playable game, PSB is a total waste of money as a PC game, especially if you are looking for a good, deep online game. Instead, invest in a game made for PC players, such as HL2 for example.

Lets face it. There are A LOT of shooters out there; you could easily be led to believe that there may be no happier gamer out there than someone who blows stuff up wth ever-enlarged weapons of destruction. When it comes to Project: Snow blind (P:S), these sentiments are also true - its a shooter's game that will keep him/ her happy. It has all the trappings of an FPS game: a hashed plot that could have been much better, hordes of enemies and varied environments to blast your way through. Having said that, it feels highly reminiscient of many other shooters than giving any original experience per se. For example, this game features the inclusion of power-ups, like an energy shield, and enhancements that are very similar to the 'Augmentations' in the mind-blowing Deus Ex. These enhancements make P:S more interesting varied in dispatching enemies but makes the game easy to the point of very little challenge. Many of these power-ups and weapons are not particularly original either, but they are done more entertainingly here than some others.

The backdrop for the game is also one that I highly welcome. P:S is located mainly in Hong Kong when our hero Nathan's specialist unit is sent to stop a rising Nationalist terrorist threat that could bring the country near to civil war. But as the plot unfolds, there is a masterplan by a master-bad-guy that is truly global in proportions. I like the fact that it is based in Asia and sees a potential threat from one of the world's hi-tech, financial powerhouses instead of the routine "America under attack" scenario. But the plot simply becomes a stodgy, disappointing affair coupled with some mediocre voice-acting and scripting; I really believe that better story-telling, script and voice-acting would have truly made this game shine given its story potential. But the cut-scenes are very well edited and keep in tune with heavy-shooting gameplay style. I barely noticed the music, but who does unless it really is remarkable? The graphics seem stuck in the middle of "next-gen" and, er "old-gen", the environments are well-made but the look and feel does begin to show a slight dated quality. At least you don't need a behemoth graphics card/ system to make it perform. However, the game is overall well-presented and produced with some frantic fire-fight sequences and eye-catching futuristic weaponry.

The enemies seem to again nod towards the enemies in Deus Ex: a mixture of armoured soldiers and a myriad of cool looking robots. In fact, P:S almost wants to be a shoot 'em up version of Deus Ex. Could this game really have been possible without Ion Storm's classic? I wonder... Overall, your in for a varied, yet run-of-the-mill shooting experience and if you are looking for a good shooter for 8-10 hours or so, then you cannot go wrong with Project: Snowblind. But either my standards are raised so high because of playing dozens of shooters over the last 12-15 years or P:S simply seems much more style than substance that is indicative of short and sweet, console-style gameplay than as a venerable PC shooter.

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