Rabbit Hole

Waiting, as the installer zipped through Marine Sharpshooter 4, I set myself up for a serious disappointment. Groove games doesn’t have a very good track record; except for maybe Playboy Mansion which I played for probably a total of 2 hours. I always like to give games a chance, I also always like to be as positive as possible when it comes to reviewing them. A no-name franchise from a no-name game development company doesn’t give me much to hope for, but alas I did what I always do; break out a can of coke, put on my headphones and got cracking.

I’ve always wanted an extremely good marksman/sharpshooter/sniper game. One that takes in account your entire surroundings. One with a Battlefield 2 type feel, but more of an assassination twist. One that makes you take in account wind speed, direction, where enemies are positioned, your recoil, your breathing everything… boy was I hoping for too much. Marine Sharpshooter might as well been a shooter on rails with a completely linear environment, and invulnerable player, and about 10 different guns with scopes that in the end all operate the same.

A video I didn’t take

Which brings me to my first point. When developing a sniper game one would think there would be an excellent selection of sniper rifles. I was surprised to see that there actually was; unfortunately as I got deeper and deeper into the game I realized the only difference between them was the scope sprite and the sound they made… At least make some more powerful than others, or larger clip size!

Someone might as well write a book at how bad the A.I. in this game was. Enemies would spawn with their backs facing towards you begging to be shot in the head. If you missed or shot them without a kill they would continue to stand there motionless like a paralyzed special ed student. When they did move they often ran backwards while their legs were doing a forward running motion. If their buddies got shot they also would stand still. You could practically run directly up to them, hump their leg and still have time to scope in for a head shot. However if they saw you and you were “caught” so to speak watch out! Because these little fuckers can see through everything… EVEN GROUND! Hiding behind a tree? forget it! If you can’t see them doesn’t mean they can’t see you. Hiding behind a mountain? Fuck that; they have mountain piercing bullets… oh and to top it all off the enemy sniper can probably shoot off a million rounds a second and still not have to reload.

Fortunately there are so many medpacks around that you never have to worry about dying. Auto healing medpacks in fact. No need to hit a button to heal yourself… if you loose the slightest bit of health the medpacks kick in. They might as well modeled a little R2 unit to follow you around and prod you with a needle the entire time.

The friendly A.I. was also one to be desired. I’m not even sure why I had an ally; most of the time he was stuck behind some tree or jacking off in a corner. I don’t think I ever saw him shoot his gun once in the entire game… I shot him a couple of times and yes hes invincible. Instead of programming a useless friendly A.I. they should of spent some time into programming grenades so I could blow some ganstas up… that would have been much more enjoyable. Or they should have remodeled the friendly A.I. into Jar-Jar Binks because he was equally as annoying and useless. Rag dolls are horrendous; I’m not sure what physics engine this game is using, but I do not ever want to encounter it again. It’s almost like your bullets have a billion kilo-whatevers of electricity in them and when they pierce skin they force the unfortunate being to enter convulsions.

So lets talk about visuals. The environmental textures look pretty nice when you get up close; unfortunately the mountains/hills look like they are made of play-dough and the trees look like a four year olds cotton ball creation. Not much else to say about visuals except every level is exactly the same only with a different linear path. One thing that boggled my mind was the boxes… sure every game HAS boxes, but these boxes seemed to be out of place. Obviously the first level you are placed somewhere in the Middle east so the boxes have Arabic writing on them. Then you are shipped to Korea… same boxes; seems like there was a sale on Arabic storage units. Shipped to Russia… same boxes; wow the Arabs seem to have a crazy monopoly on the box market. Then finally the U.S… yup, same boxes; U.S. customs won’t allow a single middle east citizen in their country but sure as fuck will they allow boxes. Oh and on the topic of culture aparently every person in the world has the same accent, voice and catch-phrases. Doesn’t matter if you are in Russia, Korea or fucken Mars everyone talks like an American from California; in fact I think there was only one voice actor for all the enemy npcs.

I can’t complain too much about the gameplay because I did finish the game. It was short (around 3-4 hours) and after a while got pretty repetitive. The game is extremely easy, I can’t communicate how easy it was, but I will sure as hell try. First off I didn’t die through the whole game and when I did want to die I had to wait an extremely long time for my medpacks to finally fuck off. It doesn’t help that you are super invulnerable, but your rifle is 100 bajillion times more powerful than the enemy weapons. It was like God came down and blessed all my weapons turning them into a one hit killing machine. Once and a while you will enter a sort of Max Payne bullet time. In fact it looks exactly like Max Payne bullet time, but you can’t toggle it; it will just happen randomly. It’s like the game is programmed to enter bullet time when you are getting shot by a million fucken enemies; or when a chopper is landing. Doesn’t matter too much anyway because my automated medkit system will surely keep me alive.

Here’s my suggestion to you Groove Media Inc… if that is your real name. Since you are already on the fourth reincarnation of this game it looks as if you don’t plan to drop the series so why not try to do something intelligent with it. You have a good concept… your a sharpshooter with a partner. Why not spend some time looking into what real snipers have to do on a mission, what they have to take into account for when they are looking down range. On the topic of game play you should really have some extra game-play modes. Maybe something like: Play through the whole level without getting shot or… Attempt to have your friendly A.I. completely follow you through a whole mission. Also add some stats; you know at the end of the mission it would be nice to see how many head shots I got because I am sadistic and like to know those things. Lastly make some fucken variety! Unfortunately I will probably play Marine Sharpshooter 5 when it comes out… and boy do I dread that day.

Marine Sharpshooter 4… I give you a: 4/11