"When I grow up, I wanna be CounterStrike."

This is a review of the game Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror. This is another one of those games that involves some generic terrorists that are bad and then the counter-terrorists have to go in and kill them, yadda yadda. It's quite similar to CounterStrike in many ways but it's also somewhat different. This game isn't horrible like some games are, but it is flawed compared to CounterStrike.

GRAPHICS- Well, this game is apparently a mod of Unreal Tournament. The graphics in this game are actually pretty good compared to UT, although somethings just look plain idiotic. For example, in the map, Terrorist Mansion, there's a chandelier in the living room of the mansion that is completely made of individual 2D pieces just chucked together to look like something. This was when I was using my crappy system graphics. Then I changed over to an actual graphics card and it was the same thing. Still, the environments are pretty detailed and the character models look pretty nice. Plus the guns look pretty sweet, although they look really stupid on the ground. 7/10

ANIMATION- This game is... meh when it comes to animation. First the bad stuff. The characters, be it SWAT dudes or crazy terrorists in masks, all run the same way and they have the same death animations. It's like they're all identical twins separated at birth and just happened to be trying to kill each other in enclosed maps. The death pose is so pathetic, it's kinda funny. If they get shot, they fall backwards and spread their limbs. If they're killed by a grenade, they fly through the air with their limbs spread exactly as if they got shot. If they fall to their death, they fall backwards and spread their limbs. If they drown, they... you get the picture. Another issue is the knife. What kind of frickin' slash is that Mr. Terrorist man? The knife slash is the person holding their arm out and barely flicking their wrist. And if you set your knife to throw mode, switch to another weapon and return to the knife, you'll hold the knife normally. Then the knife will magically rotate 180 degrees in your hand! What? The good is that the gun animations, reloading and stuff, looks pretty good. 5/10

SOUND- Boom, bang, ow, die, explode, click, etc. It's what you expect in these kinda games. The accents of the terrorists is just plain racist though. Not all terrorists are Russian or Iraqi. 8/10

GAMEPLAY- Hmm...this game is basically the classic CT's vs. T's in random areas. It does nothing to innovate, but it isn't bad. You start off at your team's spawn point with a pistol and $1000. You can buy stuff without danger for a few seconds and then the game will start. First of all the buy menu is freakin' awesome! It's so easy to use, and you can sell crap for money. I really wish CounterStrike did this. You can play several different gametypes, but in my game the only gametypes I could play were Hostages, Bomb Defusal, and Find the OICW. Strange. It's pretty straightforward then. I really liked Find the OICW because the Terrorists have to find some super weapon that kills in like 3 shots and comes with a grenade launchers that has 5 grenades in the clip. The CTs have to stop the T's from getting the OICW, but they also could just let the Ts get and steal the OICW from them. Interesting. The rest are things you probably have played if you've ever played CounterStrike before. The weapons are all pretty generic, nothing special, although the T sniper rifle is pathetically weak. It won't even kill with a headshot! WTF Hax? And the grenades are pathetically useless. It takes 5 seconds to throw a 'nade at max power and it takes another 5 seconds before it detonates. You'll be dead by then. And the flash bangs do absolutely nothing if you don't play with a graphics card and smoke grenades look like a cloud of pixels without a graphics card. Now let's talk AI. The AI in this game is stupid. S-T-U-P-I-D stupid. They take the same exact routes through the map every single round. They get stuck in corners. They camp like crazy. In this game, you can give commands to your bots and half the time they won't listen to you. If you tell them to attack in force, they'll just say Roger and stand there. Pretty much the only command they might listen to is Follow and for some reason, they will randomly follow you and that isn't helpful if you're trying to be stealthy because they will started shooting as soon as they see an enemy. Of course they are also unbelievably cheap. They can drop you with an Ak-47 from halfway across the map. Uh, cheaters. On the higher difficulties, they will strafe like you have never seen before and you will die. Speaking of dying, you can barely get shot in this game. Hint., don't get shot. Once, I got shot with full armor and it did 44 damage to me. 44 damage with full armor!!!!!!!!! Needless to say, I died later. Despite these flaws, it's still fun to shoot the crap out of stupid bots.
7/10

REPLAY VALUE- This is a multiplayer game. Go online and play it. Hope there are people who actually play this game. Or just play with bots. If you will like this game, its replay value is pretty high. 9/10

So...should you buy this game? Well, it's a good game that just happens to be flawed. I recommend it to anyone who likes Counterstrike or just wants to shoot stuff.
FINAL SCORE 7/10 (Not an average)

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/30/08

Game Release: Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror (US, 04/24/02)