BackTrack

"Deserves to be taken down a dark alley and shot by one of its GBA FPS piers."

BackTrack Review

Introduction

The First person shooter. A genre that you wouldn't expect to find on a hand held machine. Nintendo themselves shrugged their heads and said it couldn't be done, not on a GBA. Well at the time of writing (June 2003) I can quite happily have a good laugh at the idiot who said that because there now must be close to a dozen on the system. Some are good games as well. We may well have to with old school style FPS games rather than the likes of Halo but this is a GBA after all. Anyway I quite enjoy a bit of old school FPS and the likes of Duke Nukem Advance take pride of place in my collection. But what about some of the other GBA FPS games? I'm here to take a look at Backtrack published by Telegames and developed by JV games. This was the first FPS game on Nintendo's portable.

I've owned BackTrack for a good few months now and since I own four other FPS games on the GBA I feel I'm in a good position to give my opinion on it. The game is probably most well known for its inclusion of single player death match, being the only GBA FPS to give individual computer controlled opponents in a death match situation. But how good is the game? Is a worthy game to add to your collection? As you'll know from the score the answer is no. When I purchased it I already owned Ecks Vs Sever and Dark Arena, even compared to those early FPS games BackTrack simply pales into comparison.

Story 5/10

The evil Domingoaniax and his army of mutants and robot soldiers have taken over the secret base. These aliens have then been abducting humans and assimilating them into a new army of droids. This army now poses a significant threat to Earth. As Jim Track you must help infiltrate the base, destroy every alien encountered and free as many humans as possible. Then you must trigger the self destruct sequence to terminate the moon base and the remaining aliens.

Credit to the developers for making some sort of effort with the storyline unlike some games (Doom anyone) Actually the introduction story in the manual goes on for six pages but the above is a pretty good summary of the story. As you can see its a cheesy Sci-Fi style story line which although mildly amusing doesn't really help to set any real atmosphere like say Dark Arena does with its story. In the end its really just a bit of fluff to give some sort of meaning to the shooting. The cheesiness of the story at least matches up with the game itself which as you'll find out is very cheesy. As you can tell from the story in the manual the game doesn't take itself too seriously, the problem is did the developers take the game seriously when they designed it?

Graphics 3/10

Yes it might look 3D but as far as I'm concerned this is the worse kind of 3D you can get. The game really is no more advanced than Wolfenstein 3D. Like all GBA FPS games Backtrack uses a raycasting engine to give its impression of 3D. The problem is that this is by far the most simple graphics engine used by any GBA FPS. The engine supports wall and floor textures but no ceiling textures. This may sound alright but the fact is the colours used are so drab it looks awful. The game is so samey it hurts, with no visual difference between the levels what so ever. The choice in colour is also horrid with the colours looking very drab. The result is a game that looks incredibly dull and muddy. Even compared to other Early FPS games on the GBA Backtrack just looks awful. This is further compounded by an short draw distance and dodgy frame rate. Considering the engine is so simple you would at least expect a good frame rate and draw distance but Backtrack fails to deliver on both. Okay the frame rate isn't bad but considering its outperformed by Duke Nukem Advance which has just about the most advanced 3D engine of the lot, it looks pretty bad for Backtrack. The draw distance is also shabby, with you only being able to see enemies that are close to you, this detracts from the game play as you can't see enemies until they are right on top of you.

There is no interesting graphical trickery here. The action stays on one level with the ceiling remaining at the same height all the time. The game doesn't even support stairs, the most basic of effects. You travel from level to level by a lift but this has no animation at all.

To round things off the enemies themselves are also badly drawn and have just a few frames of animation. It honestly looks like your fighting a bunch of card board cut outs. Some 3D games on the GBA look good, this doesn't.

Sound 5/10

For once we have an FPS game that has music that runs whilst your playing the game and not just on the menu screens. The problem is the music is just annoying although I suppose it does fit in well with the Sci Fi theme and its not so offensive that you'll be wanting to reach for the volume control. Its just a bit non descript thats all.

The sound effects aren't too bad. Some of the gun shots sound fairly authentic. We even have a bit of speech as well which is quite good to hear coming out of the GBA speaker. The door and elevator sounds are quite nice too.

Game play 4/10

The one player game is just lame. There is no other way to describe it. The game play is very cut and dry like Doom, but no where near as good. You run around and shoot things and pick up keys to unlock doors. The developers have however tried too add a bit of individual style to the game however. Despite having twelve separate levels the game is structured like one big level. Although each level is separated by a lift you'll often find that there are parts you can't access straight away and have to move on and then return to these at a later time when you can, hence the name BackTrack. Although its nice too see the developer trying to thicken out the games limited number of levels, having to back to boring and samey areas you've already been to doesn't exactly make the game anymore fun.

An FPS so often relies on good array of weaponry to make it stand out from the crowd or in this case save itself. Well BackTracks weapons stand out but for all the wrong reasons. To complement the cheesy Sci Fi theme the developers opted to give the silliest array of weaponry possible. Weapons like the chain gun and the laser gun are by the by, but when you start blasting at the bad guys with aerosol cans, catapults and bubble gum guns then you start to wonder. In fact as the weapons they get more powerful, they get sillier. The most powerful weapons is a vacuum cleaner (No I'm serious!!) It doesn't exactly inspire you to go and blow the heads off the bad guys if you have such cheesy weaponry at your disposal.

The enemies are probably one of the better bits of the game even though there isn't a massive variety of enemies to shoot at. You're mostly limited to about half a dozen poorly animated bad guys. There is at least a bit of variety here. With not only basic foot soldiers and more heavily armed walking men but hovering drones and also ghost type enemies. I complement the designers for at least coming up with something original here.

Since the game is pretty basic the GBA has more than enough buttons for BackTracks controls. A fires and opens doors, B selects weapon, Start brings up the map, select pauses and L and R strafe. The controls are pretty accurate and although turning can be a little more sluggish than I would like it to be I have no real complaints about this area if the game.

There seems to be little story to BackTrack. Although occasionally you will walk into a dying soldier who gives you some information its mostly cut and dry run around, shoot and collect the keys. This isn't nessecerily a bad thing but BackTrack does feel pretty unadventurous in comparison to other FPS games like Ecks Vs Sever which have a decidedly mission based feel.

The game does however suffer from several flaws. The most apparent one is the location and discovery of secret passages. These play a fairly major part in the game yet the way they have been implemented into the game strikes me as pure stupidity on the part of the designers. The only way to tell a normal door from a secret door is that a secret door is a slightly darker shade. The problem is due to the darkness of the GBA's screen it is almost impossible to make out these secret doors which means the only way of discovering them is by rubbing your character across every wall of every level until you find a section where your weapon will retract so you know you have found a secret door. This is boring and frustrating and not the way an FPS should be played.

The game features a cartridge save which is very commendable since many GBA FPS games do not include this feature. What is even more commendable is that the game can be saved anywhere at any time. This is very useful as you can power down the system and return to your exact position at anytime you wish. The problem is however that it is quite possible to save in a position that makes it impossible to complete the game. This happened to me once after getting quite far in the game and to be honest it just makes for a frustrating experience. It also stinks of bad design on the part of the programmers. Trust me after that little experience BackTrack almost found itself being thrown out with the trash. The problem is further compounded by the fact there is only one save slot (The other is temporary save) so I advise caution when saving.

Death match 7/10

What saves BackTrack from atrocity is its single player death match and its inclusion of bots. For those who don't know what bots are well they are computer controlled opponents who can fill the void if you cannot find a single person to go up against. BackTrack is at the time of writing the only GBA FPS to make use of bots so this a an important selling feature in itself. With a choice of two types of death match six arenas and a choice of five characters shooting veterans are well served. The first part is a regular death match where you have to try and be the first to kill twenty people. In the second mode which is called Matrix assault you have to score four frags with each of the five characters. Its slightly annoying that you are restricted to just one weapon in death match but since each character has their own unique weapon its just as easy to go and switch character should you not like the weapon you have. Still I'd rather have the ability to pick up weapons rather than each character having their own unique weapon. It would have also been nice to have more options for example being able to change the number of kills from twenty. Despite this I find the death match to be much more enjoyable than the single player game. If you can find friends to play then great but even if you can't then your still well served. All your records from from death match including number of matches won and lost and number of frags, times fragged are saved to cartridge.

Lastabilty 5/10

With only twelve levels the single player game is pretty small when compared to other GBA FPS games. You should be able to get through it quickly. The single player death match should keep you going a bit longer but its only a matter of time before you get bored of that as well.

Overall 4/10

A poor FPS. I got it at less than half its original price and still felt hard done by. If you want a good cheap FPS then Dark Arena and Ecks Vs Sever are both vastly superior to this. The one player game is dull, the graphics are rubbish the games only real saving grace is the death match, all in all best avoided. I heard the game was also a Shareware PC game and to be honest BackTrack does feel decidedly shareware like. I can just imagine this was knocked up by a couple of students in their summer holidays. I don't know if this is the case but if it isn't then the programmers should take a good look at themselves.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/22/03, Updated 06/22/03