Without Warning

"An otherwise good shooter mixed with a few frustrating parts"

After release, this game got bashed a lot for no real reason. After finishing it I have to say this game is good with some annoying parts where patience is required. Basically if you liked Winback or Kill.switch, you should definitely give this game a try.

Graphics 8/10:
Nothing extraordinary, just nice, no special light effects or normal mapping. Reminds me of Metal Gear 2 or Kill.switch graphics style. Character detail and animation is nice, explosions are well done, glasses break nicely. Shot marks on walls and dead bodies do not disappear which is a nice thing too. The Xbox version has a good texture resolution, I have not seen the PS2 version, but probably almost the same with probably less texture detail. No widescreen support, which is a shame in 2005, would have been very useful too.

Sound 6/10:
Music is almost non existent, gunshots are on the other hand very realistic.

Story 4/10:
Terrorist take over a chemical plant, if they blow it up, a lot of innocent people will die. They have hostages too. This is a bad thing, so they send in some soldiers who get killed, only three of them survive. Big book of cliches, page 1. You control different people though the game, three of them are soldiers, assault, sniper and bomb expert. Also there is the heroic security guard with a pistol, a secretary with no weapon stealth only, and a wannabe journalist with a camera and a gun.

Gameplay - shooting part 9/10:
The soldiers are the main characters, the others have much shorter levels, mainly for breaking up repetition. There are some mini-games in these shooting levels too, no check points during levels, some are timed.

As previously mentioned, this part of the game is pretty much like Winback or Kill.switch, except you can not lean to walls or pop-out from corners. Basically a third person shooter with Splinter Cell-like camera control. The levels are usually small, linear, and as you go around, small groups of enemies come from different places/doors, you shoot them, then move to the next room/switch/hostage etc. to have the next wave appear.

You only carry one weapon and grenades, but grenades are not too effective, aiming them is almost impossible, the throw animation takes ages. Enemy AI is also heavily scripted, they either run at you like crazy or take cover first and then run at you, but it is ok for a shooter. Manual aim is very difficult, but with the left trigger you have an auto-aim function to lock onto enemies closest to the cross-hair. After lock on, the cross-hair follows the enemy, but with the left stick you have a limited control over the locked cross-hair to move it a little bit around. Useful to hit running enemies or go for a head shot. Lock-on is lost when the enemy is not visible for too long. If you duck behind some cover and you pull the left trigger, your character will automatically raise to a stance to shoot above the cover. With the white button, you can do a quick 180 degrees turn, which is helpful. After you get used to it, the controls are quite good.

Negative things are the enemies sometimes appearing from seemingly all sides and angles, especially from above. Most of the times on later levels, you only see the enemy when you already got shot. Also, the bomb expert uses a shotgun, which is only useful for close encounters, so sometime you have to get closer to your enemies more than you want to. Timed levels can be frustrating, as the map screen does not help too much, and you have to run-and-gun without time to take cover. When you need to defend someone, since no real AI, they will walk into their death which is again very annoying.

Gameplay - other characters, mini-games 6/10:
The security guard gameplay is similar to the soldiers so it is ok, but playing stealth and filming stuff could be annoying, as these levels are heavily scripted, you have to try the same level a few times until you figure what and how you suppose to do. Mini-games for the soldier characters are breaking circuits, picking locks and defusing bombs. Some of them are like rhythm games, some require actual thinking. Almost all of these parts are annoying and frustrating, as the conversations and movie sequences can not be skipped even if you retry the level, the mini-games are just a little tedious.

Overall 7/10:
They should have concentrated more on refining the shooting part and make the other parts of the game smoother in gameplay. Breaking up the repetitive shooting and telling the story is ok, but when it gets frustrating and tedious, it hurts the overall appearance of the game. Difficulty is somewhere in the middle more towards easy, even the annoying parts can be easy if you figure things. The game is short, 6-8 hours, no single-level replay or extras. Definitely a rent.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/09/05, Updated 11/11/05