Combat: Task Force 121

"Budget multiplayer shooter with low aspirations"

Combat Task Force 121 is practically as generic as its name indicates, but that doesn't mean there isn't any fun to be had. It's essentially structured around multiplayer gaming, as the main selling point on the game's box is that it has 16 player online, and all of the screenshots on the box are ones taken from multiplayer matches.

The game itself is very simple, catering to the casual audience. Controlling CTF121 is easy enough - you have your movement keys, plus the ability to reload, zoom in with your weapons and lean around corners; pretty much every standard action available in FPS games since 1999. Getting into multiplayer is as simple as joining a server and then selecting your player class - before long you'll be in on the action. The game has five different player classes, and the only difference is in the weapons you'll be carrying. The most well rounded class is the Soldier, who is given an assault rifle and grenade launcher. Interestingly enough, the Demolitions class is given the stealthiest weapon in the game, a silenced SMG. The rest of the classes - Sniper, Heavy Weapons and Close Quarters - are pretty straightforward, being equipped with a sniper rifle, heavy machine gun and shotgun, respectively. The weapons are strangely balanced, with the standard issue pistol being more powerful than all of the automatics, the shotgun wavering between useless and overpowered, and the assault rifle/SMG taking almost half of a magazine to kill someone. It makes for some interesting, and sometimes frustrating, combat. CTF121 has a ton of gameplay modes too, but they're the usual affair: deathmatch, king of the hill, VIP mode, etc. They all play well but that's to be expected; it's rather hard to mess up a game mode as old school as deathmatch. There's pretty much nobody playing this game, but you can practice against bots in deathmatch mode.

With a practically non existent community for a multiplayer-centric game, all that's left is the plainly mediocre singleplayer campaign. The story is flimsy at best: as a member of CTF121, the most elite group of special ops composed of members of various other special ops groups such as Navy Seals, USMC, Rangers, etc, you must crush an uprising of Marxist rebels in an unnamed country in Southern Asia. This involves slogging through 10 mindless levels shooting small groups of rebels while looking for assorted items (keys, keycards, switches). It's a small blessing that game levels are so sparsely populated: the AI doesn't miss often, and even a single enemy can do a lot of damage to you. You cannot recover lost health, you can't recover health at checkpoints and the only way to gather ammo is to scrounge it from rebel corpses, making the combat feel like a chore. During the campaign, you're also subject to dealing with the multiplayer damage model. While it's nice that the sniper rifle doesn't insta-kill with a chest shot during deathmatch, it's annoying to have to exclusively nail headshots every time on moving targets that don't miss during a singleplayer level. Even with these frustrations, the campaign manages to be short. It's fun at times, but you can breeze through it in an afternoon.

In terms of presentation, CTF121 is right in line with the rest of its budgetware neighbours. Graphically speaking, CTF121 is above most other budget games since it runs on the Unreal engine. Levels look pretty good, even if their layouts seem ill-conceived for multiplayer. Textures are sharp and of a decent resolution, and character models look great even if they animate strangely. The game is poorly optimized though; on a system that can run Call of Duty 4 and Stranglehold well, CTF121 stutters on maximum settings. Weapons sound like pop guns, and the rest of the sound effects are pretty average. The music is a decent mix of orchestra and rock which sounds better than it should.

Summary:
Pros:
+ Online play
+ Balanced (if strangely so) guns
+ Decent graphics
Cons:
- Paltry campaign mode
- Nobody's playing
- Poor graphical optimization

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/08

Game Release: Combat: Task Force 121 (US, 03/24/05)