Full Spectrum Warrior (PS2)

The premise of the game is that you are acting as section commander directing the progress of 2 and sometimes 3 teams of soldiers as they move through the streets of Zekistan - a fictional middle eastern member of the axis of evil. The game is allegedly derived from software used by the US Army for training section commanders. It's an interesting and refreshing idea, which I suspect will launch similar though superior games in the same genre.

So you're not actually taking control of individuals or looking down sights and pulling triggers yourself - rather you are commending groups of 4 men to do all this for you. The range of commands are very, very limited: run here, go there whilst covering each other, throw smoke, lay down covering fire, or observed fire really covers it - sometimes you can call in artillery and air strikes but only as set-pieces, you are not free to do this just anytime. The soldiers themselves do the rest. In that sense it's a little like someone playing the game on your behalf and you just directing some of the action. The result is a rather detached feel, with little to do and lots of repetition. But it's still enjoyable.

The campaign missions are very unvaried and very linear, the stories unimaginitive. The streets of Zekistan are rendered nicely, the cut scenes are good. Enemy AI is OK - they will take pot shots at you and then disappear to the next street to take more pot shots. But they stand and gawp when you throw grenades at them, making no attempt to seek cover. Your AI is pretty good too - but not flawless. Last night I was approaching the entrance to an alley - I had one team cover it with point fire whilst I moved the other team from the opposite direction to peep around the corner of the alley. As the forward team approached the alley's entrance, a terrorist came running out, the team just stood there while, in visceral slow-mo, the terrorist mowed them down. The other squad who were supposed to be covering the alley entrance just stood and watched - they should have killed the terrorist the second he careened around the corner and into plain view.

You cannot drive Hummers, cannot enter buildings meaningfully, cannot fight at night with nightvision. What each mission inevitably boils down to is you creeping from corner to corner, covering each other, around a ghost town. Eventually you'll make contact with the enemy, use smoke to cover yourself while you manoevre your two squads within grenade range, or flank the enemy, and then kill them. There are very few enemy - but they are usually placed intelligently, giving mutual cover and forcing you to cross a killing ground. So the real trick of the game is to avoid risk, and kill the enemy by outthinking and outflanking them - but your options for doing that are severely limited, leading to repetition. I suppose this is consistent with the game's premise: in real life your job is to get the baddies without exposing your men to unecessary danger - and each mission is 90% creeping around but finding nobody, then 10% chaos and shouting. The violence, the firefights and enemy deaths are understated and, I think, more powerful and realistic for it.

I do recommend the game - I still get a kick from the shaky camera effect - but it is unchallenging and unrewarding and has zero variety. You might want to wait for some developer to take this idea and make it better.