I really wanted to enjoy this game. It had a cool idea and plenty of potential. Unfortunately, it ended up being just another bland shooter that doesn’t do anything to set itself apart from the rest of the crowd.

There isn’t a whole lot to say about the gameplay. If you have played most any other shooter, you will jump right into this one. Anything that is slightly different about the controls will have a pop-up before you have to perform the action to explain how. The game is simple enough that you won’t need a reminder of the controls the way some other titles require. The one unique aspect of the game is the use of the drug Nectar. You can inject this into yourself to increase your combat abilities, but you only have access to this for the first half of the game. After that point, it is replaced by the ability to play dead and, yes, that is as boring as it sounds.

The story was supposed to be the biggest drawn of the game, but ends up being it’s greatest failure. It is tagged as a ‘mature and compelling storyline’ but I had the entire plot figured out from the first one page ad I saw in the game magazines. Even if that wasn’t clear enough, the back of the game’s box basically ruins the entire first two to three hours. The game begins with your character working for Mantel, a private military corporation that takes jobs from governments to clean up hot spots (like rebel uprisings, in this case) around the world. They keep their troops morale up by giving them a drug called Nectar, which keeps them in good spirits and increases their combat abilities. Right from the start, you notice that everyone is way too happy to be there. Before you can say Sci-fi Channel original movie, you start to see weird occurrences: soldiers being overly brutal, not caring about fallen comrades, and the news stations broadcasting false information about the war. Like the back of the box states, after a few hours of gameplay, you turn your back on Mantel and join the rebels. This hurts the game by making the first part feel like a waste of time since you are killing the same people you already know you will be siding with later. The story may be predictable and unoriginal, but it is still told very well. The voice acting is great (yes, it really is meant to be that cheesy in the beginning) and although I always knew what was going to happen, I was still interested in seeing how. The entire game is seen from your first person perspective, including cutscenes. This can be both a good and bad thing. Good because it really puts you in the experience and makes you feel like part of the story. Bad because you see the big events from the perspective of a single person and the game doesn’t feel as epic as it would have with wider camera angles and aerial shots of the pivotal moments.

My favorite thing about the game in the beginning became the reason I didn’t like it in the end. Soldiers on Nectar don’t see blood or dead bodies because the drug is designed to protect them from the horrors of war. When you kill someone, there is a small impact flash and they disappear almost as soon as they hit the ground. As you continue on with the Mantel section of the game, your nectar wears off (at pre-scripted sections) and you begin to see the real world. An enemy you just killed is writhing around on the ground while screaming in pain, but instantly disappears when the Nectar kicks back in. In another area, you walk through a room where a battle occurred a few days earlier. At first, there is nothing in the room. When your drug wears off for a minute, there are bodies everywhere and blood all over the place. These moments are disturbing and really add to the atmosphere. Once you join the rebels and no longer have access to Nectar, the game loses this aspect. When you shoot someone, there is a small splash of blood, but the bodies still disappear after a bit. Enemies don’t stay alive and scream like they did earlier. The game plays almost exactly the same as the first part, just without the ability to use Nectar to improve your combat ability. This successfully removes the one unique aspect from the game and turns into ‘just another FPS’. It feels as if the game was designed to lead up to your eventual betrayal of Mantel and then the rest was just slapped together to close out the storyline.

The graphics continue the bland streak the rest of the game started. Nothing really looks bad, but the environments are sparsely decorated and everything is spotlessly clean. There are a couple of panels and barriers that move when you shoot them, but most everything else doesn’t react. Plants don’t move when you walk through them. Explosions occur just above the ground and don’t leave any lasting marks. There is a fade to black every time the game switches between a scripted conversation or event. I’ve never seen any other game do this and it really breaks up the overall flow. Although the game was relatively glitch free, it did lock up on me four different times. The checkpoints are frequent enough that it didn’t set me back too far, but it was still quite annoying. I recall the moment that I completely gave up on the game; a helicopter crash sequence that was incredibly poorly done. My character was inside the chopper and there is a explosion outside. I wasn’t even sure we had been hit because there were no windows or open doors. The screen went black and every few seconds I was shown a still shot from my characters point of view, but all the images looked almost identical. After Call of Duty 4 had such an amazing first person crash sequence, seeing this in a game was just pathetic.

There aren’t really any saving graces to this title. The gameplay can be seen anywhere else. The story isn’t worth more than one play through. The entire campaign can be completed in around five hours. There is some fun to be had here, but it can all be had in a rental period. I didn’t see any reason to own this game. Just another opportunity to take advantage of the PS3’s supposedly superior hardware blown.