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Cold Zero: the Last Stand
As a police sniper a pull of the trigger is
all it takes to cause your character to have to change his career due to
a bad judgment call. Taking a shot against orders, John Mcafrey
accidentally kills a hostage rather than the bad guy. Leaving the police
department he opens up a private investigations service which is not
doing so well, and then that one job comes along…you know…the one job
that makes everything get even worse. Of course getting mixed up with
the Mafia is maybe not one of the best things that can happen to a guy,
just when it cannot get any worse…it does.
These events send our hero all over the globe to places like Russia,
Mexico and parts of the United States. Not bad for a Private Eye, heh?
The action takes place both indoor and outdoors and in an almost top
down style of play. The movement of the character is performed by moving
the mouse point and clicking. The controls are so strait forward that
just jumping in and playing is assured, even before reading up on the
controls in the manual.
The movement may well remind you of other games such as Rome Total War,
or Never Winter Nights, or one of my old favourites, Commandos. But
unlike Rome Total War you do not have to go through the trouble of first
clicking on the character in order to make them move. The game is very
user friendly in my opinion. What could be simpler than point and click?
In fact most of the interface is mouse friendly and pointing and
clicking yields different results depending on what aspect of the game
you’re interacting with. As noted, movement is just point and click,
other aspects such as crouching or standing, picking things up, rearming
a weapon…all of these are a simple fast mouse click away, and believe
me, sometimes when there are multiple bad guys all shooting at you a
fast mouse click for reloading is very much welcome.
Another interesting aspect of the game is a bit of a Role Playing Game
slant, after each successful mission the character has the chance to
grow in skills and levels of abilities. Some of the abilities are the
normal RPG staple of abilities and stats such as strength and even
fighting skills to name just two.
Like other games where you have an objective to get to past lots of
goons with guns, you can choose to try to be stealthy and sneak past
them, or just pop out from hide and start hosing them down with gun
fire. While I must admit there is something pleasing about sneaking up
behind the bad guys and beating them down or knifing them, I’m just one
of those hose them with bullets kind of guy. But in this game you have
to decide on stealth or all out combat very carefully because in some
missions it is not just your butt on the line. Some missions have
hostages and if you start a gun battle with them in the area things can
go bad for you, and even worse for the hostage. After all you’re
supposed to rescue them, not get them killed.
Through out the game there are chances to outfit your character just
they way you would like. The choices are from clothing, body armour, and
over 100 different types of weapons ranging from revolvers and
automatics, to rifles and shot guns, and even something as simple as a
ball bat or knife. While the amount of weapons can be mind boggling at
times, not to worry because with use the weapons do degrade and you will
find your self having to get new supplies. Don’t worry though. You can
pick over the items from your defeated foes and snag some items to sell
at pawn shops. I Kid you not. Money and weapons and mundane things such
as Watches and…KOFF KOFF adult magazines.
Graphics in the game are passable, I mean they don’t rank up there on
the razors edge of gaming, but they get the job done. In fact I was
reminded of some of those old style quarter arcade graphics….high end of
course. I guess that’s why the game held me. Because of the fond
memories it sparked of my teen years in the arcades. Characters
movements such as climbing and character rendering came off in my
thoughts old style blocky. Or maybe that is what was intended and part
of the retro feel to it.
Camera views for the most part began to be more than a little
frustrating; I just could not get the feel for it. More than once it
caused the death of my character when not being able to see a bad guy, I
ended up shot or beat up. The environment, such as buildings and boxes
or what ever is about will not go transparent as they do in other games,
so seeing something around the corner is a no go. You walk around the
corner and BANG! Right into trouble and more times than not oblivion.
Since movement, aiming and camera are all controlled by the mouse…well
you can well imagine, moving views and aiming at the same time and
moving are pretty much an exercise in frustration.
Over all the sound is not too bad, gun fire pretty much matched the
graphics, dialogue was not half bad at all and serves it’s purpose on
moving the adventure along with out getting you out of the experience
and feel of the game world.
In the end, even with its annoying parts this is not too bad of a
distraction.
Have fun, play games.
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