Headhunter

"Great fun with a plot that understands excitement"

Many high profile releases seem obsessed with creating a movie like quality and I am thinking specifically of MGS2 here. They spend most of their time detailing some ludicrous plot with unfamiliar and frankly dull characters. Headhunter does not.

When you go to see an action movie you expect to see something explosive, exciting, thrilling and Headhunter, for me, represents one of the closest experiences to that in a video game.

The game is split into two main sections, stealth and driving so I'll look at each of them in turn.

Stealth

The main body of the game is the walking, sneaking, shooting mode. At first glance it resembles MGS. You have the ability to peek round corners, disable bad guys, sneak up and eliminate them. On further playing however the game reveals itself it be a close cousin to the Resident Evil games with a much closer focus on object collection and opening locked doors than Metal Gear. To be honest I thought this was a good thing. It was good to see a game that could combine stealth with a real sense of infiltration. Playing the game I really had a sense that I was making my way through the buildings rather than just clearing one arbitrary room after another.

The graphics in this section were nicely done. To be honest I never understand the importance of graphics to games, if they work then good, if they don't then bad. In Headhunter's exploration they work just fine and look nice.

The sound in these sections is great, I loved the score, especially during a shift of focus later in the game where a terminator 2 Sarah Connor rift kicks in.

The actual tasks that the player is required to complete help maintain the level of fun, little sub tasks that just manage to avoid the game sinking into repetitiveness. This combined with scenes that come right out of you favourite Stallone / Willis actioner help keep the pulse rate up.

The second major section of the game concerns the motorbike and you can tell there is a lot of love here. The fact that the game was going to include a web game of racing shows how important these sections were to the designers and its same they had to be lost.

The bike handles nicely, the wheelie being particularly well done during sections where the player must drive fast and safe for a time to earn points. Picking out a route and dashing through the traffic resembled a racing game with a much greater sense of freedom, easily my favourite part of the game.

The bright daylight of the motorbike scenes is also an improvement on recent racers. Its nice to see where your going rather than remembering the course on some dreary neon cityscape.

Overall this is a great game, good fun and a million miles away from the childish and patronising preaching of a certain solid snakes latest outing. It gets a 7 because it is flawed, controls are not perfect and everything has been done before, but I would still recommend it as way above average. if you play games because you want to enjoy yourself then given Headhunter a chance, you won't regret

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/03/02, Updated 09/03/02