Amid all this realism, nFusion and Infogrames have also managed to include a pretty entertaining first-person shooter. With capable graphics, solid environmental sound effects and immersive multiplayer options, Line of Sight is a pleasant surprise. True, you’ll see the game on the discount rack, but it was placed there by design; it launched with a retail price of $20. Amazingly, the quality of the game belies its reduced tag. And while it’s a few technical and gameplay issues short of a great $50-caliber PC game, it more than holds its own among the lower-priced titles, and even a few full-priced ones.

Line of Sight follows the (loosely congealed) story of a soldier in the elite Studies and Observation Group of the U.S. military. After surviving the crash of your helicopter deep in enemy territory, you must fight your way out, regroup with some friendlies and make your way through 12 levels of tense military combat. The entire time you’ll be able to switch from first- and third-person modes, although the first-person mode is clearly the way to go.

In the same vein as the Rainbow Six series and myriad other military shooters, you’ll also be able to command and control a teammate on most missions, although in Line of Sight this involve a little less strategy than most games, simply because you have a smaller team and need to focus more on stealthy gameplay than squad-based tactics. Your mates will generally do a pretty good job at covering your back, as well, which significantly reduces the amount of babysitting you need to do. Now if they would just follow your lead a little better and not get hung up with occasional pathing issues….

Fortunately, they do a decent job of hiding themselves in the brush, which is of crucial importance in a game so focused on sneaking quietly through the jungle and eliminating enemy soldiers one by one. Make no mistake, Line of Sight is not an action-packed shooter, although it certainly has its trigger-happy moments. Quite the contrary, for the majority of the game you’ll be walking slowly (even crawling) through the jungles looking to "off" anything that moves before it sends you home in pine. You’ll also have to keep a careful eye out for mines and tripwires, which have been sprinkled throughout the jungle in anticipation of your arrival. It truly is a game based on methodical, deliberate movement and combat, but that’s part of what gives the game an edge. Some reviewers have called this "boring." I call it realistic. Is it so bad that I like a little variety in my shooter diet?

If there are a few gameplay aspects that aren’t overly realistic, they revolve around the enemy AI and the number of shots it takes for you or your enemies to go down. Similar to Splinter Cell, which is a fair comparison given the stealthy gameplay as a government "agent," the enemy AI is simultaneously fantastic and farcical. In some instances you’ll be spotted from hundreds of yards away, even though you’re dressed in camouflage and lying on your stomach behind a four-foot bush. Blap blap blap. You’re dead. Time to reload your last save point.

In other instances you’ll take out a Viet Cong soldier and retreat to the bushes, only to have his comrade come racing to find you and not be able to see you hiding in front of a small shrub three feet away. Blap blap blap. He’s dead. Time to high-tail it to a different place for cover. You’ll also want to pick up his weapon, presuming you aren’t carrying too much weight already. More weight equals slower movement, and in this game, you want to travel fast and light. Rifles and grenades are the way to go, with an enemy Ak-47 for good measure.

While in these occasional firefights, and I do mean occasional (your best bet is to stick to high ground and pick off troops one at a time), you’ll at times feel like Superman because of the number of shots it takes to kill you. One interesting touch, though, is the fact that as you’re being shot, your soldier can’t lift a weapon or fire. It’s supposed to simulate the "shock" of being shot, and it’s a rather nice, if not frustrating, feature. Unfortunately, it happens far too often because it takes you just as many shots and just as long to kill opposing soldiers. In the end, this basically means whoever draws first blood is guaranteed victory. Again, slow and methodical is the way to go. Take them down before they even know what hit them.

Hands down, jungles have never looked this good. Crank the resolution up on your monitor, then on the game, and sit quietly in awe as trees sway, bushes rustle, rain falls in sheets and jungle canopies open up to the sky like 10,000 flowers greeting the morning sun. If ever a game’s jungle environment could win an award, the jungles in Line of Sight are they.

If only the rest of the game looked as good. The weapon models are decent approximations of their real-life counterparts, and the handful of non-drivable vehicles are equally capable. But the character models are a bit repetitive, especially for Viet Cong soldiers, and the jungle levels, as impressive as they are, feel pretty much identical from one to the next.

Yes, the entire game takes place in a jungle; I realize this. Variety is not the graphical element du jour in such greenscapes. But the design of the levels is so similar that you will know how to progress through just about any mission after only playing four or five of the game’s 12 levels. Find the valley, get on its upper ridge and take down enemies as they patrol their routes. That’s the level design in a nutshell. The gameplay is fun despite this, but a little more variety in the design would have been a nice touch.

Environmental sounds and voiceovers are essentially the only two sound elements you’ll really take notice of in Line of Sight, not counting the standard sound effects of guns firing. Fortunately, both of them are well done. As immersive as the jungles are graphically, they’re equally impressive from an aural standpoint, with crickets, frogs, cicada and innumerable other animals all making their respective sounds in good fashion. If you’ve been to Walt Disney World and can imagine the Jungle Cruise environment, you can imagine the sounds in Line of Sight.

The voiceovers between missions are also believable, with the briefings and backstory all delivered by what sound like seasoned military vets. If there’s a downer to the voices, though, it’s again in the Viet Cong soldiers, nearly all of whom have the same unintelligible line of dialogue when they spot you in the jungle. A nice touch with the opposing forces is their use of a whistle to call for help, because the minute you hear that sound, you know you’d better duck and cover. The positional audio is also a feature in Line of Sight’s cap, especially when you’re sneaking through the jungle and need to listen for audio cues for Charlie’s location.

The single-player campaign in Line of Sight is relatively short, with only 12 missions that feel startlingly similar. Fortunately, the game has several solid multiplayer components that more than compensate for its solo-soldier brevity.

For starters, you can play the single-player campaign cooperatively with another gamer via the Internet, and although we obviously have broadband access here, we’ve heard 56k-owning players say they’ve never experienced any slowdown when playing online. The game also supports four combative multiplayer modes: deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, and a timed mission-based mode in which teams compete to see who can achieve a given objective the fastest. The latter is easily the most fun combative mode, but cooperative play is truly where it’s at. Playing alongside a friend is just too much fun, regardless of the game at hand.

Occasional faults aside, it’s important to look at Line of Sight for what it is. It’s a solid game that delivers rather realistic jungle combat. It’s a game that offers cooperative play and throws in a dash of squad control for good measure. And, above all, it’s a $20 title. I look at it this way: I can grab a hamburger, hit an 8:00 movie, buy a small popcorn and blow $20 in two hours, or I can pick up a game that’s not the best I’ve ever played but will give me dozens of hours of entertainment by spending the same amount of money. Line of Sight has its faults, but it has its own very strong aspects as well. I can easily recommend this game for anyone looking for a new first-person shooter and who has $20 burning a hole in his or her pocket.