PC Roundup

Crimes of War

• Developer: City Interactive
• Publisher: City Interactive

It can't be easy, working in that low-budget twilight development world where survival depends on taking other people's popular ideas and churning out cheaper versions. Perhaps not quite as soul-destroying as producing knock-off trainers and handbags, but anyone with an ounce of creativity must chaff at having to put out a bargain basement World War II shooter - surely the least essential addition to the gaming catalogue right about now.

The best thing you can say about Crimes of War is that it's not as bad as you think. It's firmly in the Wolfenstein mode, rather than the grittier realism of Call of Duty and all the others, but it still manages to provide rudimentary versions of the sort of things you'd expect from the genre. Physics, for example. Yes! It has physics. Admittedly, it only seems to be there so that cardboard boxes can fall off crates when you shoot them. Sometimes you'll shoot a glass bottle and it'll shatter as expected, sometimes you'll just leave a bullet hole floating in the air. But - hey - physics. It's there.

The game opens with an overlong on-rails shooting gallery as you careen around crude forest scenery in a jeep, swinging your sights in the direction of jeeps that explode with surprising ease. After that it becomes a much more predictable corridor shooter as you investigate a Nazi super-soldier programme. Gosh, never heard that one before.

Perhaps the only fresh idea on display is that of "emotions". Basically this means that if you get three headshots in a row, in a short space of time, you enter Uber-Sniper mode. The same is true of close kills, triggering Berserker mode. Okay, it's not exactly a fresh idea, but it's all the game has. And that's the problem. Crimes of War is functional, but any praise feels rather patronising. Well done, you made a FPS that's almost as good as the best of the genre from ten years ago. It's sort of fun, providing all you demand from a shooter is the ability to point a crosshair at vaguely intelligent enemies.

But technically, it's all below par. The game demands a staggering 5.5GB of your hard drive, yet still requires the disc to play, and still features agonising loading times before each level. Control is stiff, accuracy is inconsistent and the game can't seem to decide if it wants to be a story-driven action game or a mindless arcade fragfest. It's not particularly good at either, and given that the PC is hardly short of budget FPS games - many of them far, far better than this - it's hard to recommend except in the broadest terms for the least demanding player.

4/10

Terrorist Takedown 2: US Navy SEALS

• Developer: City Interactive
• Publisher: City Interactive

If Crimes of War represents City Interactive adding another unnecessary game to the World War 2 stockpile, here's its entry in that other overstocked genre - the Middle-East first-person shooter. The menu screen even features a looped audio track of Arabic chanting that is presumably meant to sound like the Muslim call to prayer. Yeah. That should get you in the mood.

As far as gameplay goes, much like Crimes of War, it's just about functional, never particularly gripping and serves only to remind you of other, better, games that you could be playing instead. The presence of physics and AI is touted on the back of the box as if these are still worthy selling points rather than the basic level of expectation for a modern FPS, while the levels are linear, scripted and devoid of surprise or challenge.

Even playing on a rig that far exceeded the minimum technical specs the game was rough, jerky and awkward. Tinkering with the settings managed to smooth things out a little, but it's clear that the problem lies with a game that has been thrown together and shovelled out of the door.

All of the criticisms directed at Crimes of War are relevant here as well - Terrorist Takedown 2 is a shooter for people with very low quality thresholds. It does a passable job of looking like a modern FPS, but when it comes down to the crunch, you'd be better off downloading demo versions of the big boys to satisfy your bloodlust.

4/10