So, with a premise like that, you’d assume New World Order would be competing with tactical squad-based shooters like Rainbow Six, but in all honesty, it’s not even in the same neighborhood as the other games in its genre. New World Order is bad from start to finish, and I would be remiss in my duties as a reviewer if I didn’t spell out why I feel this way and why you should save your hard earned money for something better.

From the developer’s description, New World Order is meant to be a squad-based action title, with you commanding a team of urban guerillas as they fend off the vile scum of the world. Strangely enough, there’s absolutely no team aspect to this game. NWO is essentially a one-man romp through level after level of repetitive combat against mindless opponents. At no point in this game will you ever see your supposed other team members or have them render any assistance. Sure, you can pull up a command menu, but issue all the commands you like, nothing ever happens. There is no team play element to this game at all, which is frustrating since the game is portrayed as the next Ghost Recon or Rainbow Six.

One you get past the fact that you’re totally alone in this game world, you’ll realize it’s nothing but a straight shooting title. As you go from room to room, opening doors and finding equipment, you’ll be blasted at by the dumbest collection of terrorists ever seen in a game. Most of the time, your opponents will either jog in place shouting at one another or pace back and forth mindlessly. Your A.I.-less opponents apparently have super-powers as they can see through walls and doors, shooting you from across the map at times. Many a time you’ll wonder where those shots are coming from, only to find the assailant hidden two rooms over from where you are and shooting through the wall. You’ll find this; coupled with the fact that it only takes two or three shots to finish you off makes playing through a level nearly impossible. Frustration levels will run high when you’re playing NWO.

Weaponry and equipment choices are pretty much a joke, being so limited that you might as well just stick with a handgun through the whole game. There’s no option to upgrade your flimsy body armor, which means it’s two or three shots and you’re out of the game. You would think that an elite anti-terrorism force would have a plethora of gadgets and guns at their disposal, but I guess they’re the budget elite.

I’m going to be short and to the point here, one word describes the graphics in New World Order: unacceptable. There is no way that a game this new should look this bad. The character models are chunky, environments are texture-free, and there’s no detail to the weaponry. The framerate drops to single digits whenever there are more than three characters on screen at a time, making it impossible to figure out what’s going on in a heated firefight. When you’re the only character on screen, the framerate hovers around 15fps, making motion intolerably choppy. Perhaps the game is spending all the CPU cycles and bandwidth on the annoying "bounce" effect when you move. Whenever you’re walking or running, your weapon will bounce up and down as if John Dobbs were skipping his way through the level, which makes it impossible to draw a bead on a target, even when you’re creeping along as slowly as possible.

There’s no soundtrack to speak of in NWO and the sounds themselves are utterly generic. Heavy weaponry sounds no more impressive than a cap gun, and everything sounds like it was recorded in a metal drainpipe. Most of the voices are unintelligible and the terrorists seem to all have the exact same accent. I loved hearing seeing two guys talk to one another, in the exact same voice! There’s absolutely no saving grace in the audio for New World Order.

The single player missions tend to be frustrating due to the infallible aim of the terrorists and the terrible frame rate. You will have a hard time mustering up the strength of will to finish NWO, much less ever come back to it for some replay. While there is an online multiplayer option, it’s just a basic deathmatch that suffers from horrible lag, which, when combined with the framerate, makes for a game you’ll quickly wish you had never purchased.

When I review a title, I really try to find some saving grace, some raison d’etre for a game’s existence. Sadly, there’s no reason New World Order should have ever been released in the state it is in. It feels rushed, incomplete, and wholly unplayable.