Smuggler's Run: Warzones

"Like shooting fish in a barrel."

You would think driving across a battlefield of civil war in a dune buggy evading cops and other law enforcement would be hard. Smuggler's Run sounded great as I read the back of it in the store, I popped it in had fun doing the training missions and a few regular missions. Then tragedy struck.

Gameplay: 5/10

This game would have been awesome if they had some creativity in the missions. I mean they get repetitive it's either: pick-up his and drop off here, chase him, or knock over and destroy this. And the game was too easy the hardest things to do was the destroying missions. But they had a good concept of the game and you'll still have fun in some missions.

Story: 4/10

The story doesn't really help the lack of difficulty. Its about you doing smuggling missions for countries in a civil war. Its not that bad of a story, but they have cheesy movie clips and acting. And it doesn't change much.

Graphics: 6/10

They're not great as Resident evil, but they get the job done. The graphics are amazing for length of the levels, I mean they have levels that take 5-mins top speed to get to one end to another. They don't skip or slow down or anything, even when you've got a 10-car pileup.

Sound: 7/10

They did some great work on the sound effects. The revving of the engine or how the engine stalls. Even the voice of the radio sounds good with static and faintness. They have realistic sound in this game. The music is pretty good too, not my favorite its on the techno side good to get you in the bouncing mood.

Play Time: 3/10

You'll probably send more time trying to find the hidden tokens and driving around joyride mode than the game. I mean I got to almost the 14 level the first day with about 1 and 1/2 hours of playtime.

Replayability: 6/10

You'll have a great time with friends with this. The multiplayer mode is really great. You'll play this more than the missions. There's the standard pick-up and drop-off. Then a bomb tag. Then they have a cops and robbers game. And one more that I forgot.

Rent or Buy?

I'd rent it first, unless you got an extra 15 or so dollars laying around. This game has great multiplayer, poor single-player, and with ok-graphics and good sound.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/15/03, Updated 07/14/03