CT Special Forces

"Bad Video Game Ideas 101"

I've been reviewing and playing so many bad games lately that I truly hope I don't end up with permanent damage done to my thinkin' parts. Take a look at Seanbaby; all the man does is play terrible games. He's been studied by top psychologists and doctors. All they've come up with is that ''his brains have turned to tapioca''. After playing the latest Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen game Seanbaby was heard to remark, and I quote; ''Wurg''. He couldn't even form coherent sentence fragments anymore. Still, if I must suffer in order to warn people against certain games then so be it. Today's lesson in Bad Video Game Ideas 101 comes to us from CT Special Forces. The lesson is as follows; do not, under any circumstance, try to copy Metal Slug.

The problem with CT Special Forces is exactly that; it tries to copy Metal Slug. It's a side-scrolling 2D shooter with a variety of different weapons and cartoony graphics. This is just about where the similarities end. There's no excellent animation, no killer sound track, no vibrant backgrounds and no characters with personality. When you start up CT Special Forces you're not greeted with a flashy intro, a nice movie that explains the back story or even a nice tune at the start screen. Nope. Just ''PRESS START'', blinking there, taunting you. You're given no choice of characters to use, either.

As soon as you enter the game you're thrust quickly into the first mission, where your objective is explained to your character in a codec-type scene ripped completely from Metal Gear. You are a counter-terrorism agent clad in what appears to be some sort of SAS gear and it's explained that your skills are necessary to stop terrorists at work atop.. a snowy mountain? Indeed. You, as a black bodysuit-clad, gas-mask wearing agent of doom must traipse about a pristine white mountaintop shooting bad guys full of holes. Perhaps a stranger packed your luggage and put in the wrong outfit. I've always wondered why airport security always asks me that. Anyhow, you arrive on the mountain, a vast wonderland of repeating textures and bland backgrounds, occupied by terrorists that all look alike. They're rather angry terrorists, however, because someone apparently forgot to pack the terrorist lunches and they get grumpy without some Cup-O-Soup. This causes your enemies to behave irraticly, pacing frantically back and forth and firing off shots every so often. Either that or it's how they were trained. The terrorists in CT Special Forces are some of the dumbest foes you'll ever come across in a video game. They never react to your presence. These baddies simply pace back and forth, firing thier weapons every so often, using a grand total of three frames of animation. ''Snipers'' perched in windows fire shots, duck back into cover and then repeat the process over and over again, weather you're nearby or not. You can stand under an enemy and he won't even flinch as you pump the exhausting amount of ammo into him that it takes to get him to flicker, fall over, and then die. Your trip through the snowy mountain of snow will last some three stages, but you'll be sick of it by the end of the first. The game does score a point for variety though, by mixing in some sniping and parachuting (!) during your adventure. These sections are rather small though, and through the course of the game they don't pop up enough to keep you entertained through the torturously boring side-scrolling sequences that remind you with the notion that you could be playing Metal Slug instead.

I'd explain further about the next few long and boring stages (of which there are only three), lame characters and infrequent journeys away from the poor shooting adventure but I'm getting bored just thinking about it. I'd also hate to keep comparing this game to Metal Slug but it's got to be done. These little extra games wouldn't be necessary if the core game play were actually fun, like in Metal Slug. Here we've got poorly animated characters waddling around bland stages until we're told ''Okay! Now snipe some people! Now parachute off this cliff you just spend the last five minutes climbing up!''. In an action game (I use the term loosely) like this you've got to have a lot of stuff happening on screen all at once. The adventure has to be fast-paced and it's got to be fun. Give me more stuff to dodge aside from a couple of bombs or two slow-moving gunshots. Give me a reason to work my reflexes. About half-way through the first stage CT Special Forces turns into a chore to play. The stages are long and boring, the graphics and animation are pitiful, the storyline is a joke and the sound is wretched. Still, you've got to give credit where credit is due. Those extra bits are a little fun, at least, and they distract from the slow-paced shooting. If CT Special Forces were just a bit more fun to play it might be worth it to trudge through it to experience those extra pieces but as it stands it's just not any fun. Skip this one entirely.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 04/23/04