Normally, I like to wax poetic about a game when I start my reviews. You know, throw around a little prose about the history of the developers, the richness of the genre, etc. etc. But once in a while, I'm just too busy spitting bile after playing a game to waste my time on a pretty intro. In the case of Atari's Shadow Ops: Red Mercury, there's no poetry to make this game seem better than it is. I care not what others have said about it, this is a bad game. A game so bland and annoying, it took twice as long as most other titles to play for a review because I could only bear it in 20-minute doses. This is basically a single player Counter-Strike, but frankly, I'd rather play Counter-Strike over this any day.
Let's start off with the storyline that Atari professes to be a "cinematic" experience. It probably would have been more effective with some decent visuals to back it up. Instead, you've got some quality voice acting in the cinematics coupled with chunky characters. The in-game voice acting is almost painful, with terrorists yelling the same pseudo-middle eastern phrases while your team shouts inane comments like "Oh, my God" and "run for cover." And knowing how the military rank system in the real world works, I have some serious heartburn with an enlisted squad leader ordering an Army Captain around. I'm no military elitist, I just know how ranks work, and this little slip makes the game seem far less realistic.
Who am I kidding when I look for realism in Shadow Ops: Red Mercury? The graphics, on a standard S-Video-equipped TV, are about on par with Counter Strike for Xbox, and that's not saying very much. Character motion is cartoony and frankly, the physics are laughable. Weapons lack meaty recoil, and hits; when you're lucky enough to score some without having to be zoomed in, lack any sense of realism. In a world of rag doll physics and the Havoc engine, there's no way these physics could pass for modern. Character models are pretty much from the land of flat-u-la. Faces lack any depth, just flat models with differing skin tones. It gets pretty tiring pretty quickly to face wave after wave of generic bad guys.
The AI is pretty unbelievable, and I don't mean that in a good way. When you can watch a terrorist come face to face with you, shout a few phrases, and then do absolutely nothing...that's bad. I've had times where I've been busy reloading my weapon, only to look ahead and see a terrorist who's been watching me the whole time. I pull up my scope (because even at close range, scoring a hit with some weapons is a bear) and pop him. The only way you'll get taken down is by the fact that the bad guys tend to spawn from anywhere, magically, as if they were teleported in. And of course they attack en masse. So while you're dealing with the attacks of the first Mr. Copperfield, you've got five more swooping in on you.
Weaponry feels and acts pretty generically. The grenades being the worst. Throw a grenade, and you will swear you're playing a game from the early 80's. I kid you not; an overhand grenade toss looks like something from Cabal. Forget about timing and aiming a grenade, you just throw and pray. Same goes for the underhand grenade roll. Unlike most of the weaponry, at least the grenades do a fair bit of damage. There isn' t much variety in the weapons either, just assault rifles, pistols, rocket launchers, you get the idea...generic. You'll also have to constantly watch your ammo, since this is one seriously cheap game when it comes to supplies. There seem to be enough health packs around, but good luck finding assault rifle ammo.
As I’ve mentioned before, the voice acting is pretty standard. The in-game sounds are fairly realistic, especially when presented in lovely 5.1 Dolby and THX. But the sound simply cannot overcome the fact that the rest of the game needed a lot more polish before heading to store shelves.
There are the standard online options for playing Shadow Ops: Red Mercury online over Xbox Live. You've got deathmath, escort, capture the flag and team deathmatch. There aren't a whole lot of people playing this game online however, and those that are happen to be very very good. So you won't be able to enjoy this much unless you play for hours on end to get as good as those other few that are playing for hours on end. I'm a pretty decent FPS player, and I was getting real tired of getting shot every ten seconds by someone who was better at playing "run and gun" than me. There's no real strategy to the online play, so those of us used to SOCOM, Rainbow Six 3 and Ghost Recon are going to find the multiplayer more like Unreal than a tactical shooter.
Wrapping it all up, there's really no reason for this game to exist, as store shelves are full of run-and-gun shooters as it is. And in a world where Rainbow Six 3 is the king of Xbox Live gaming, Shadow Ops: Red Mercury just feels painful to play. If you really want to play this, rent it first. If this were a bargain bin title, I'd have to be paid to take a copy home.
