BackTrack

"Not worth the $5 I bought it for at a garage sale..."

I was amazed at first at the concept of a first person shooter on a handheld-system. I'd already played the likes of Ecks vs. Sever, which was excellent, and Doom, which was still pretty good, despite having some gaping flaws. So, when I saw this game at a garage sale for $5, I couldn't help but pick it up. It was a stupid mistake. Avoid this game at all costs.

Graphics-2/10
BackTrack is in 3-D, the floors and ceilings are textures, but it looks terrible. Movement is choppy, character sprites are ugly as hell, environments look exactly the same, the draw-distance is horrible, I could go on and on. The frame-rate sucks, there's frequent slow-down, and did I mention how choppy the movement is? I've seen NES games that look better than this.

Sound-1/10
Abysmal. Sound is grainy, annoying, and consists of ten-twenty second strings that repeat over and over. Gets repetitive really fast. If you really want to enjoy this game, turn the sound off.

Gameplay-3/10
Frustrating, boring, and not worth the effort. The control lay-out sucks (actually, it's not so much that it sucks, it's just unresponsive half the time). Weapon selection sucks (who wants to fight in an FPS with swords and vacuum cleaners?), but what really bogs it down is the horrible draw-distance. You can't see enemies until they are right in front of you, and this account for frequent, unexpected deaths. Frequent slow-down also detracts from the experience. If you want to play a good hand-held FPS, look to Ecks vs. Sever, or Doom, avoid this one.

Replay-4/10
This game contains a decent death-match mode, which can actually be fun at times, but in the end, it's a forgettable experience. And actually finding someone to link-up with that owns this piece of crap game is going to be hard, so that really accounts for nothing. The main game itself isn't very long, and honestly, I doubt anyone that's not interested in writing a review of it will play through the whole thing. For instance, I've had this game since June-2002, and it took me about seven months to actually beat it (and that's not because it was too hard).

Cons:
Choppy animation
Horrible draw distance
Annoying sound
Boring gameplay
Weak weapon selection
etc.
etc.

Pros:
umm.....I'll have to get back to you on that one. OK, I'm sure there are worse games than this (I fondly remember plunking down the cash for E.T. for the Atari 2600), but not many.

Overall-2/10
I neither enjoyed nor recommend this game to anyone. Should you buy it, you do so at the risk of your own health.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 02/11/03, Updated 02/11/03