Two Boobs Good, Four Boobs Better!

I’m a firm believer that if anything is going to be good that it’ll grab you by the nuts in the first moment and shake you about.

A new album can be judged by flicking through the first 20 seconds of each song.

A new movie by the opening scene.

A comedian by his first joke.

At least that’s how I judge shit and thus far this method has served me well.

So I judge video games on their first level.

It’s one of the reasons I’m still playing LIMBO as recommended by Cucipher last week.  You download the first bit, if you like it, just click “unlock” and you have a great game for a reasonable price.

I did something I don’t do a lot.  While the missus was out shoe shopping the other day I stumbled into a game shop, more to kill time than anything else.  A little surprised and turned on to see girls browsing and working in the shop.  It gives my winky a tingle when I see that, kind of like when a girl would come into the pool hall when I was younger.  They don’t usually inhabit these dark places.

Anyway, a casual stroll towards the Xbox 360 shelves to take a gander at what is on offer and I begin my browsing.

Some sports games, not for me.

Some role playing games., not for me.

Bayonetta is still pretty high on the list, but too expensive to buy when I had already gotten rid of it, even though I love that game, so not for me.

And all of the other titles you’ve read about in gaming mags and online for the last while.

But then, I spot a new game I’d heard nothing about and it’s number one in the game “charts”.  The title alone looks interesting.

SNIPER – Ghost Warrior.

The cover sees a sniper kitted out in sniper gear, clutching a sniper rifle and overlooking some random jungly rainforestery type area.  Looks good so far.

The tag line “One shot, One kill” is a bit dramatic if not a bit disappointing.  I’m used to knocking off two birds with one of my sniper stones thank you very much.  But we went on.

With a publisher name I’d never heard of in the form of City Interactive I should have been weary.

The only reason I sound so down on the game is because I had really high hopes for it.  I never buy new releases because I’ve been burnt in the past.  Too many times to list.  But Army of Two springs to mind.  This is why I spend most of my time killing noobs in MW2.  I like that game.  I love that game and it loves me and when Black Ops comes out we’re going to run away and make babies together.

I got home, stuck the disc in the Xbox and waited.

Looks impressive, but actually took 4 magazines of bullets and some creative bad language to get the controls to actually work for this shot.

The customary cinematic opening greeted me and it all seemed a little Call of Duty reject stuff.  The language, the voice overs, the names.

When you skip past that you get into the “training ground”.  Instead of being the rookie in Call of Duty training rounds, you’re the one doing the training.  That’s a creative twist, isn’t it?

The point of course is to give you a chance to get to grips with the controls, but all they really had to say was this:

“Thanks for taking the time to put Call of Duty down for a bit, we won’t take too much of your time and to make sure we don’t piss too many people off, we’ve copied everything functional about Call of Duty.  The controls, the weapons, the screen layout.  But we haven’t given you any decent game play.  Fuck it, we’ve got your money now.  You can go back to Call of Duty or to some forum and bitch like a little girl.  As you were”

It’s really that bad.

What you are about to see is the trailer, not actual gameplay as it suggests, but a fucking trailer made for trailer purposes.  I’ve been playing the game, and this is not actual game footage.

The controls are exactly the same as COD, in theory.  They’re just not responsive.  Having had too check the batteries in my controller a few times I finally realised that it was the game that wasn’t responding when I pushed the buttons.

Trying to crouch means holding B down for a second, in theory.  In fact you’ll have to try it a few times by which time you’ll have had your brains splattered all over your ass.

And you’ll find the same when you try shooting someone in your sights.  “Shoot!” you’ll scream while your dude just sits there getting shot at.  “Shoot you stupid motherfucker, you’re going to die!”  And he dies. You could try running and hiding, but here lies the other problem.

In the training area you have to hide from your recruits.  You have a little meter on the screen which flashes red when you’re in danger of being spotted, handy.

Trouble is, in “The real world” of the game, this does you fuck all good.  Crawling through grasses means you’ll be spotted from about 700 miles away by every cronie who cares to carry a better gun than you have.

You’re kitted out with so much camouflage that if you had a thought to yourself you’d wonder who said that.  But it doesn’t matter a fuck when you’re on your belly snaking through long grass.  You get shot at by people you can’t see but who can see you and that bugs the shit out of me.

By all means, challenge me, but do me a favour.  I doubt a real sniper in full gear would be spotted by some militia from over 300 meters away when he hasn’t even raised an eyebrow yet.

The other thing is your “radar”.  The thing with little red dots on it to show you where the bad guys are.  Handy little things sometimes.  Fuck all use in this game when the little red dots don’t show up until you’ve already been shot dead.

Maybe I’m a goober.  I have tried to get passed the first level so many times now that if I try it again I risk massive damage to my self esteem and my telly because I’ll be putting my controller through the screen.  It really is that frustrating.  The trouble is that they give you missions to complete that could be done with an assault rifle, not a sniper rifle.  After all, if every motherfucker is going to open fire when you blink you might as well jump out and go apeshit with a fully automatic of your choice.

I reckon that Microsoft and City Interactive have tried to cash in on the culture of those cunts who use a sniper rifle at every opportunity in COD.  They can have those wankers for all I care.

So I’m judging this game on one level, but trust me if you waste your money on it, you’ll be doing the same thing.

If I was to say anything positive about this game it’d be that it has a nice cover on the box.

And for that, I’ll rate this game 2/10.  It’s a snazzy cover.

Out now at around €39.99 in all the usual places.  Leave it where you see it.