The hero of the story is a man called Shane Carpenter; he is a solider in the army of a private corporation called Mantel in the year 2023. Mantell are engaged in an action in an unnamed country, which could be Mexico by the look and feel of it. Each soldier wears an advanced armor suit, built into it is a nectar administrator. The soldiers are given the drug called nectar routinely by this administrator. Nectar functions as a performance enhancer in combat. Heightened awareness, improved vision etc.
A man called Duvall, who seems to be a genuine gun-toting idiot, leads the squad that Shane joins. From Duvall we find out that we are fighting a rebellion in the country led by a Dictator called Skin Coat. Apparently this is a man who wears the skin of his victims. After a few skirmishes with the rebels it becomes clear to Shane that Nectar isn’t just a performance enhancer, there seems to be other effect. Occasional lapses and malfunctions with the suits administration system show us atrocities, which have been hidden from our view. This eventually shows us that it may be Mantell that is the problem in the country. An eventual meeting with Skin coat himself shows Shane that he cannot in all conscious continue to fight for Mantell and sees him joining the rebels in their fight against Mantell.
There are only a few characters in the game, Duvall, Shane and Skin coat or Merino as we find out his real name to be. Duvall is our nemesis and the face of the duped and powerful who give their all in a misguided fight. Merino is the wise man fighting because he has to save everything he knows. Shane is simply the player and little is known or indeed needs to be known about him.
My problem with the story is that it’s a premise and not a story. The corrupt drug company, the drug fed to all to make them do and see things that they wouldn’t normally. The company soldiers brainwashed into being unfeeling immoral monsters, you realizing this and joining the rebels. Fighting back and using the drug against the company, the problem is that the story simply is so sleight in the game that it does no justice to the premise. You simply fight pointless battles for many levels until there has been enough of a game to actually get to the story points of knocking out the nectar control system and then taking on the Mantel land carrier. The greater portion of the middle of the game is pure padding.
The final revelation at the end of the game about Merino was just unnecessary, not clever. Someone has been reading Animal farm.
Everything about this game feels a little clunky, 5gb of an install before playing, a long patch download before playing. There are long delays connecting to an online server every time you start the game, even if you are only playing the single player game. Needless button presses in the menus, you are left thinking that the game is still loading when it’s stopped and is now needlessly waiting for you to press a button.
For the first few missions you are playing as a Mantell trooper and get to play with Nectar. Holding L2 boosts your nectar levels, though you must be careful not to overdose. Nectar light’s up the enemies and makes them easy to see. Health restores itself over time. Clicking the right stick sights along the weapon, which is far less intuitive than L2 would have been.
Nectar seems to be more of a hindrance sometimes than help; occasionally you go into overdose, which makes your fellow soldiers look like rebels. Also you get nectar disruptions, which make the color drain from the screen and you lose your crosshairs.
There are occasional vehicle combat sections, where you drive around in jeeps and quad bikes etc. The vehicle sections are quite fun, don’t overstay their welcome, however they don’t really add anything to the overall experience.
There is some backtracking in the game, although not enough for it to become something to mark the game down for.
There are some terrible design choices in the game, which to me were so glaringly obvious that play testers must have seen them. The flamethrower weapon being the most obvious, when you get the flamethrower you encounter similarly armed enemies; the problem is that the flamethrower has a limited range. Basically you have to walk into each other’s range to kill. This means that you can only set each other on fire. Once you realize this you stop using the useless flamethrower and go back to the other weapons. The fun section of the game with the flamethrower is reduced to a laughing stock. Was this the designer’s idea or did they actually want you to have fun with the flamethrower?
Once you are liberated from Mantell and nectar you have a few new abilities. Like taking guns from soldiers, playing dead, and making grenades into nectar bombs using the administrators from dead Mantell soldiers.
Since Mantell troops on Nectar can’t see atrocities then if you lie down and play dead then they ignore you. Unfortunately they don’t go anywhere, which means that yes you can avoid death when health is low by playing dead. You only buy yourself time, the enemies mill around in the area; you can’t shoot at them from the ground. Which seems really, really stupid, what you have to do is get up which takes ages and then shoot at the enemies again, rinse and repeat. Suffice to say it feels really unnatural and stupid.
Nectar bombs produce a cloud of vapor that makes the Mantell troops shoot at each other.
Taking weapons from enemies is such a stupid idea that I did it only once when the game makes you do it to progress. Sorry much easier to shoot someone than walk up to them as they fire at you and grab their gun.
Dying after a cut-scene or tutorial means that you see it again until you want to snap the game disc, as they are un-skippable.
Mines rise up out of the ground and explode as you get close. There is no way to shoot them from afar. This means you have to get close then dance back away before they explode, would you make a mine that did that? A mine that announces it presence and gives you a chance to run before it explodes.
The a.i. is fairly standard for an FPS, notable bad points I saw were that only certain events trigger them to move. I threw a grenade down a flight of stairs trying to kill some soldiers. The grenade exploded and I went down to look, the men were still standing with their back to me, the explosion didn’t start them shooting at me or move to investigate, only me getting close. When you play dead you see them mill around pointlessly rather than go and do something less boring instead.
At one point during the game I fell off a bridge and expected to die. I didn’t and after a long time finding my way back up to the top of the bridge I found that all the enemies and helper a.i. had vanished, leaving me free and easy to get to the next objective.
There are a few boss encounters, tanks, drop ships and of course a showdown with your nemesis.
The art direction is middle of the road; the only thing standing out in my opinion is the design of the Mantell troopers’ uniforms. The Mantell landcarrier was impressing me when I thought it was a floating aircraft carrier, when I found out it was a huge aircraft carrier on wheel I had to laugh.
There is jungle, factory, swamp, village, beach, hotel and and mountain type environments. None are rendered badly, though nothing about the game screams beauty.
The game runs in a lower than average resolution, and as such seems to avoid slowdown and screen tearing.
Sound is adequate.
Checkpoints are absolutely terrible, a few times I put the game down for a while because I was sick of being sent back too far after dying. There are some huge swathes of the level with no checkpoints whatsoever. This game is without doubt the worst I have played in this regard in a long time.
I couldn’t get the multiplayer to work, something about not being able to connect to a Demonware server. I didn’t care anyway; I wasn’t ever going to play it. I only play a few multiplayer games and I never score a game on multiplayer components for that reason.
Scoring
Graphics 6
Gameplay 5
Story 7
Level Design 6
A.i. 5
Total 5.8
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