Zippy wrote:The first part of the game is utterly horrible and forgettable. And just as you get to the point where you want to drop the game from boredom, all of a sudden the game does an extremely rapid 180 and becomes incredibly more dynamic, engaging, and interesting.
I disagree. If you're playing somewhat stealthy, the first-half becomes quite dynamic because you can be killed quite quickly and there are so many routes you can take to your objective. The second half is more forgettable in my opinion because it's basically
the standard, linear, modern FPS. The only distinction is that the basic enemies can kill you in one shot.
One example of how dynamic the first half is, in the third map, Relic, after you find Dr. Rosenthal, you have to make your way to the extraction point. As soon as I got to the river, I found a boat and figured I could use it to go the rest of the way. Unfortunately, I didn't notice the waterfall, and around the bottom was an enemy helicopter. I ditched the boat immediately and tried to hide, but the thing chased me quite a far way for about 15 minutes. I did hit it with the single rocket I had left, but that wasn't enough to bring it down. Eventually, I got near this one checkpoint on the road I cleared out earlier, but it was on the other side of the river, past this short bridge. I put on speed mode, beelined under the bridge, recharged my energy, cloaked and crawled over to a jeep I left earlier, and used the gun on it to shoot down the helicopter. REALLY satisfying!
This is impressive because it isn't scripted to happen like that at all. I could've shot down the helicopter earlier on with another rocket launcher I found; I could've been in a lot more trouble if I hadn't cleared out that checkpoint earlier; I could've avoided the boat and walked the whole way (or taken a jeep); or I could've just not run into the helicopter (it's on a patrol route; it's not just sitting there all the time). Any other FPS from this time or later would've forced you to get in the boat and put the helicopter on you immediately (Half-Life 2, anyone?
), for example. I just think it's a shame that it sets this convention of almost-sandboxy, objective-based gameplay for the first half (more like two-thirds because of how long the first half of the maps can take compared to the second), then abandons it (and stealth mode, and some of the weapons) entirely.
