This game should have been the one that made me forget about the likes of the early Splinter Cells and Thief III. This game was born in the era of the expectation of hideously overpowered graphics cards, tons of memory, multiple cores and physics processing units.
Graphically, it is quite good. And what is used to distract you from merely “quite good” graphics is piss-poor linear game play, poor controls, sterile environments and, in fairness, excellent voice acting.
This game has everything wrong with it that you would expect when a moderately successful console game is crammed onto the PC platform by people who’ve never played any of the sneak’em’up greats. Such developers should be forced to complete Metal Gear Solid, all of the Splinter Cells and all of the Thief series before getting their hands on what should have been the best stealth FPS ever to grace a personal computer. “Execute over 50 different brutal manoeuvrers to deliver a quick and silent death to enemy soldiers” the marketing says. What that says to me is I have 50 different brutal manoeuvrers at my fingertips, choice mine to dispatch an enemy. Bollocks. What in practice happens is you sneak up behind your unsuspecting target and click the left mouse button. That’s it.
At this point it can go two ways. 1) You take out the enemy and have time to drag to corpse into the shadows. Jolly good. However what happens depressingly frequently is option 2. Our heroine turns into Miss Stabby and goes to town. Definitely killing the target kraut but taking so long about it that you get caught by the next chap walking along. Repeat.
Then you get moments of sheer comedy:
Kraut #1) Deary me, look at this puddle with the electric cable running through it!
Kraut #2) Mein Fuhrer! Someone could electrocute themselves!
Kraut #1) Ja! Let us hope no-one throws that big switch over there while we are walking through it.
Kraut #2) Nein! That would be awful!
Krauts 1 & 2 proceed to splash about in the water.
Don’t buy this game, I did, and it’s rubbish.