Be it
Halo on the Xbox, or a gripping
bout of Return to
Castle Wolfenstien on the beige desktop, the experiences offered up
by the first person shooter genre are some of the best in the industry.
I still find myself battling an urge to lean over to whomever happens to
be nearby and brag a little whenever my thoughts fall on the first days
of Quake I had some dang good shots with that rocket launcher, let me
tell you and that was some time ago for sure. I can still taste the
midnight snacks that kept me alive on those weeklong vigils to Nerddum;
I can still visualize the images that were burned into my mind by the
adrenalin rush that accompanied the warm backwash of exhaust from the
tail of my rockets. That popularity has spawned many a clone. Drop by
your local software dealer and youll find a number of FPS titles trying
to grab onto a passing rung on the success bicycle wheel, and a good
number of them can be had for budget prices and played briefly for a
budget experience. GORE, though it carries a price tag of less than
thirty dollars, avoids that pitfall altogether, offering some fun
gameplay and a very smooth (meaning functioning without a glitch)
interface for finding other GORE games running over the Internet
(courtesy of Gamespy). Sadly though, GORE is a game that is defined by
the quality of its coding, not the experience of the gameplay. Plagued
with technical errors, crashes, and odd behavioral quirks, GORE is a
pretty solid game for the price, but only after you get it running.
To start with
(Ill just get this out of the way), it took a lot of work to bring this
game up to a functioning level. It took at least one trip to the
Internet (the Keeper of Patches) to acquire a reliable start menu, since
half the time the "new game" button would loop me back to the main menu
again. While the patch did seem to take care of that problem, it still
managed to eat several of my saved games that were, though Id only
managed a little actual game play at that point, the only testament to
the fact that Id played at all. Additionally, I was never able to force
my carefully built surround sound system to blurt out anything beyond a
single solitary note that quickly vanished and was never heard again
(Im a little suspicious it just had gas or something), and while my
computers sister system had sound, it also froze solid less than 60
seconds into every game. On top of that, one of the gaskets on my
kitchen sink gave way and flooded my trashcan, which though Im not
exactly sure how yet I think is somehow GOREs fault. Finally, after
three re-installs, one patch, a roll of plumbers tape, and a pair of
old BDUs from my paintball days, I managed to be back in the game. It
was about that time that I realized that underneath the coding there was
a game that was not only entertaining, but really pretty well polished
well worth a look for those of us seeking to hone our skills a little
before Unreal II appears on, and then disappears from, the store
shelves come the end of 2002.
In the near future an all out war has broken out in the streets of
America between the U.S. Government and an organized crime ring known as
the MOB. In an effort to win that war, the U.S. Military develops a
training system that simulates the brutalities of warfare, hardening its
new recruits before they even see the flash of a rifle. Thats the
setting as laid out by the game, which is odd, since almost none of the
game actually takes place in the training program (well not count the
training mode, which preps you for battle before an attack by the MOB
has you outside on the roof chasing down hackers in the "real" world).
After the opening sequence, you spend your time single handedly bringing
down those who would commit crime through a variety of missions.
While not
exactly about to rock the world with the intensity of its storyline it
never claimed to be out to win any Oscars GORE is fun to play. In
single player mode, the levels are entertaining, if not spectacular,
with imagery that fits in with the storyline. During one of your first
real missions, for example, youll step out of your training program
unarmed, preparing to defend your headquarters against an enemy
incursion. Fighting alongside one or two of your fellow defenders,
youll find yourself in an environment that feels convincingly like a
real headquarters. Not huge metal doors and expensive security systems,
but instead boardrooms and lobbies, places for visitors to sit near
large fish tanks; in short, an office building located in an urban city.
While they didnt reek of stark imagination, the levels were generally
well designed; including one or two that really impressed me.
Additionally, though the graphics arent fantastic, they are easily up
to par. As far as FPS go, GORE falls in right with the party lines,
offering little thats new to the field, but still more of a winning
formula.
That, in fact, is one of GOREs great failures. Though it pulls off
the established elements of a FPS rather well (there isnt a whole lot
to complain about, really), there is a noticeable void where either
innovation didnt happen, or didnt succeed. The efforts that were made
werent strong enough to make GORE anything more than another budget FPS
on the market, which isnt the most appealing of positions to be
in--even if its one of the better ones. For example, along with health
and armor, GORE interjects a third stat that you have to keep an eye on
while dodging the bullets of your next door neighbor: stamina. Whenever
you jump, carry heavy weapons, or get hit by a particularly nasty blast,
you lose stamina. This can ultimately result in blacking out or the
inability to move. Unfortunately, its actual impact on the game is
negligible. In the single player missions, where you set your own pace
and are rarely short on resting time, your stamina is an ignorable
factor. Only in multiplayer does it have any impact at all, and even
then it normally only appears in the extremes of combat, like just after
being hit by a rocket launcher. Laying unconscious and near death,
watching your stamina try to recover, knowing that your enemy is
probably now standing above your head with a pistol ready to finish you
off, wondering how long it will be before the bullet tears apart your
skull
its neat, but not ground breaking.
The moments of
genius that flair at unexpected points in GORE are counteracted by other
limitations in the game. Not glitches, this time, but a number of small
elements that just dont have the level of detail that wed like. Small
things, like the fact that you cant shatter the glass of the fish tank,
or break windows. Bullet holes disappear after a few seconds, and the
police cars that make an appearance from time to time cant be blown up.
Youd think a rocket launcher could flip a vehicle, or at least move it
an inch, or that a flame thrower could make a tree burn, but you would
be mistaken. And perhaps Im just being a pain in the rear, but it
wastes a second starting you back at the beginning of the level whenever
you die instead of your last save. To be fair, there are small plusses
as well; you can see what type of armor an enemy is wearing because it
shows up on his body in the right locations. If you shot a fellow in the
head, it snaps back as he collapses to the ground. Shoot them in the
groin, and you can watch their knees buckle (dont ask me how I figured
that one out). These are all neat things, but when added together and
compared, the list of bad outshines the list of good.
Friendly and enemy AI is equally poor, which at first glance would
seem to cancel each other out, except in reality it just means that both
those fighting for you and against you are equally annoying, and
therefore make equally good targets for the trigger happy. There are
times when youll find yourself blocked from a passage because of your
big muscled and little brained comrades that sometimes adventure with
you. It would also have been nice to see a little more variety in the
characters. If Im fighting aliens its ok if they all look alike
those guys all look the same to me anyway but I can sure as heck
recognize when Im killing the same two ton gorilla for the twentieth
time, and itd have been nice to see a little more variety.
And that
brings me to the weapons. The box makes claims to over thirty individual
weapons, most with a secondary form of fire. I didnt check their count.
I didnt have to. Aside from one or two things (like the shield that
comes equipped as the secondary fire for the shotgun), there isnt
enough actual variation between the weapons to make a difference. If one
character has a machinegun under button number five, you can be sure the
other characters will have some form of fast shooting toy tucked away in
their numeral five key sleeve as well. Who cares if it looks different;
most of GOREs weapons boil down into the standard fair, many times with
weak secondary functions (Ive seen tennis balls do more damage than the
gas grenade launcher on your machinegun).
When it comes down to it, GORE is a competent game. Its not a waste
of money if youre looking to tide yourself over for a little while in
anticipation of better games to come. Budget titles are hard to pull
off. Often the designers are given half the resources and half the time
of the bigger budget titles, and are expected to produce more than half
the game. From that perspective, GORE doesnt have to worry about a
thing. Sure, there are some minor glitches in game design, but overall
it delivers what it promises to deliver. Five years ago this game would
have amazed people for the evolutionary steps it represents in FPS
games, but now its just a competent game. No landmarks made, no records
broken. There are worse things a game could do than that.