ricwhite

IGI2 was entertaining, all right. But for the wrong reasons. I can't remember another game where I burst out in hysterical laughter more often than with this game. At times the ridiculous happenings were quite frustrating. I have also not used the term, "Yeah, right!" as much as in this game.

Let me begin with my observation of the saving system. I don't usually like games with limited saves. This game is no exception. Unless you have already played the game, you don't know how far you are in the level or what difficulties lie ahead. Therefore, it's very difficult to plan your saves. Sometimes after all the objectives are completed and all your saves are used up, the MOST DIFFICULT part occurs. Then you wish you would have saved a save (that sounds odd) for later. I would rather have them make the game more difficult and allow for unlimited saving. That would be, in my opinion, more fun and much less boring.

Yes, I used the "b" word. Boring it was – far too often. On my "fun meter" on a scale of 10, this game ranks a 3 – at least for the single player mode. Going back and redoing a 20 minute section of tedious work is not fun -- especially since you are often killed by a something ridiculous and impossible. All that work for nothing. It is difficult to plan on the ridiculous. And doing it over and over gets old, VERY fast.

The AI is way off and unbalanced. Your opponents shouldn't be smarter and more skilled than you, the master spy. Yet, that is exactly true in this game. Your "basic" trained opponents can pull off the impossible that even James Bond himself couldn't even dream of doing. Let's begin with marksmanship.

Guns operate under the laws of physics. Forces of wind, humidity, and gravity play keys roles in the trajectory of bullets and other ordinates. If you have a very high power sniper rifle with laser sights and calibrated scope, you can possibly down an enemy from a great distance, such as 800 or so yards away. But even with a high power sniper rifle, you may need to adjust the angle of shot by several degrees to compensate for wind and gravity. They even have computers on sniper guns now to help adjust for these elements.

In IGI2, the sniper rifle was my favorite gun. Hide in a dense forest 800 yards away from your target, lie down, zoom all the way and fire. Sometimes, even with the sniper rifle the first shot may not down the target. Now here comes the ridiculous: Your opponent fires an AK-47 back at you and nails you 5 shots in a row and kills you. I don't know how many time I just burst out laughing and almost fell over backward on my chair. Absolutely impossible. Even if the AK-47 had the best power zoom scope (which it doesn't), it is not built for that distance. Those bullets would be WAY off target. This is most glaring problem with the game – and the most frustrating.

Your opponents CAN TELL exactly where a shot originated. You can't. When you're hit, you generally have NO IDEA where it came from. You must turn and look around and, hopefully, see where the light from the shot is coming from. This, obviously, is not realistic. In reality, if you're shot, you will feel the impact and, most likely, know in what general direction the shot came from. The inclusion of directionality would have been a good feature in this game. The omission of this causes points to be deducted – especially since your opponents DO have this ability.

The marksmanship of your opponents with guns is only ONE ridiculous element in this game. Let's turn to grenades. I'm sure if you play the game, you will end up blown to bits by the most amazing acts of grenade throwing ever to be witnessed. From 150 feet away, your opponent can lob a grenade inside a 2 foot circle. . . or so it seems. Sometimes they can even guess where your going to run to. In one level, I was up in some hidden duct work of a building. There was a 2-3 foot opening which was partially concealed by pipes. Yet an opponent was able to throw a grenade more than 100 feet directly through the opening. A MIRACLE SHOT! One in a thousand! Yet, it happens over an over again. Once it happened when I was at the top of a high crane. The compartment was chain-linked enclosed, yet a grenade made it all the way up and through the chain-link! And speaking of grenades. . . have you noticed that a grenade is deadly within 15 feet of an object but if it explodes 16 feet away it's harmless. Interesting.

I also didn't like the injury system of the game. If you shoot an opponent in both feet, he's still able to run away. Why not pull a "Medal of Honor" here and have people limp, huddle, lie moaning, hold arms, etc, when injured. This "all or nothing" approach to injury is not appealing to me and adds to the "ridiculous" nature of the whole game.

But the amazing abilities and intelligence of the enemy is offset by some very odd stupidity. For example: Lying in the open, 800 yards away, you're opponent can easily find and target you. But if you're in a bush 2 feet away firing your gun, they cannot see you or find you. In fact, in several levels, I was actually WALKED UPON while next to bush. For some reason, they are suddenly blind and deaf.

The best way to take advantage of the stupidity of your opponents is to use the "bait and kill" method. Go ahead and jump in and wave your arms. Wait for the alarm to sound and find a corner and crouch. Aim you gun at the entrance to your hiding place and watch your opponents, one by one, come walk in your line of fire. On some levels, I have had piles of over 25 bodies and they STILL came. If there is any ONE technique to use to outwit your opponents in this game, that is it! Stupid, but effective.

One of the more humorous events is when your opponents who are inside a building hear you walking around the outside of the building and THROW GRENADES at you!. Oops, there's a wall there!! They bounce back toward them and blow up. (Yep, that's pretty smart.) But the funny thing is, they cannot get hurt by exploding grenades THEY throw. They just stand there in the explosion and mumble their very annoying repetitive "osey boyro" or whatever the hell they say.

There are SO many problems with this game, that it would take 10 pages to explain. Suffice it to say that it's very buggy. Whether it's an awefully inconsistent and unbalanced AI, opponents walking through walls, sliding on the snow kills you, etc, etc., this game is laughably bad.

Now the good things about this game. First, it is challenging. You won't think it's too easy. You just need to compensate for the laughably ridiculous and find techniques that take advantage of the weaknesses of the AI and you're set. But it's not easy. Second, the graphics are pretty good. Not amazing. But I'd give the graphics a solid 8 out of 10. (Might be kind-of generous, but I "am" looking for some positive here.) The sound is okay. I was not impressed with directionality, however. For example, I couldn't identify exactly where a shot originated by it's sound location. The voice acting was okay for the main characters, although some phrases were repeated far too often with the others. I would give the sound a 6.5 out of 10.

Summary

Presentation: 6 out of 10. Limited saves was the biggest drawback.

Sound: 6.5 out of 10. Fair. But too many annoying repetitive phrases.

Graphics: 8 out of 10. Solid. I enjoyed the look. Nothing outstanding.

Gameplay: 3 out of 10. Unbalanced. Boring. AI is too intelligent AND too stupid. Challenging but not very fun. Felt more like a chore than a game.

Overall: 5 out of 10. Suggestion: Wait for the bargain bin. Not worth spending more than $10 for.

I haven't evaluated the multiplayer game yet. From what I hear, it's much more fun than the single player game. Let's hope so.