When peace and joy are
threatened, you defend your nation with the best male and female agents you can
find. What do you do if one of your agents is an angered female who is out for
revenge? You let her take the lead and see where she goes. Revenge is an
inherent fuel that drives us all. Nikki Connors, the star of Kemco’s highly
anticipated spy/espionage game, Rogue Ops, has only one reason to go on living:
to make her family’s killers pay. An evil terrorist group called Omega 19
killed Nikki’s husband, as well as her daughter. Intriguing, but is this only
the tip of the iceberg?
Despite having a lot in
common with Splinter Cell, Rogue Ops does not follow the stealth/action rules.
The game controls like a third-person shooter; the left analog stick handles the
forward, backward and strafe movement only. Pressing down on the stick causes
Nikki to move back very slowly. To run in the opposite direction you’ll have to
turn the character around by pressing the right analog stick, which controls the
camera movement. That aspect should be pretty easy for any Splinter Cell fan to
handle, but the strafe movement is a little weird. You may have noticed that
Nikki is always wearing glasses. She needs them to be able to zoom in and out
of targets, increasing her aim whenever necessary. This is cool because you can
zoom in and out even when no weapon is equipped. To zoom in, all you have to do
is hold the L1 button and press the left analog stick up. To zoom back out you
press the stick down.
More and more of the
games developed each year require more than the eight buttons given to Xbox and
PS2 by their respective creators. Thus developers look to the D-pad for
additional actions. In Rogue Ops you’ll switch weapons (up/down) and various
devices (left/right) with the D-pad, making me wonder if the next generation of
consoles will include controllers that have 10+ action buttons. If it weren’t
for fighting games the days of the D-pad would be numbered.
One of Nikki’s coolest
devices is her Fly Cam. Like the name implies, the Fly Cam can fly wherever
necessary. Nikki can use it to sneak into areas that have yet to be explored,
giving her the edge in deciding what to do next. The Fly Cam’s controls are
virtually the same as Nikki’s, the only differences being its flight mechanisms,
which are similar to that of a plane (pull back to ascend, push forward to
descend, etc.).
Rogue Ops also includes a
grappling hook to scale heights, and an interesting shadow hiding system in
which your character is hidden from all enemies after a certain period of time.
When Nikki enters a shadow hiding area, you’ll notice that a new graphic bar
appears on the screen. Once the bar is full, Nikki will be hidden from all
spy-cams and non-playable characters (enemy threats).
Hiding bodies is nothing
new, but it must be said that Nikki’s way of disposing them is a bit cooler (and
more realistic) than Solid Snake’s. Snake will take a body, stand it up and
carefully insert it into a locker. Nice and neat for a spy who doesn’t want to
make mistakes. Nikki, however, just drops the body in and shuts the door! No
procrastination included.
Like Splinter Cell and
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Rogue Ops includes the three main forms of
being sneaky in a game: crouching, leaning up against walls, and sensitive
analog control for delicate movement that doesn’t alert the enemy. In Metal
Gear Solid you could lean up against walls just by touching one. Seamless and
innovative at the same time. In Splinter Cell you had to press a button to do
it – not-so-seamless, but still good. Here you press the left stick up whenever
Nikki is standing near a wall or object that can be hidden behind. Nikki cannot
do this with all walls. If there is a door nearby she may only be able to lean
on a small portion of the wall, if at all. This doesn’t prevent any important
game actions from taking place, but it does take away a little something from
the whole spy/espionage experience. I like being able to do what I want, when I
want, regardless of whether or not it has a purpose. Few games offer that.
At the end of this
stealthy trail is a game that, while worth experiencing, is not the Splinter
Cell-killer I was hoping for. It’s a good game, but it’s more of an expansion
and a variation of the other, more innovative spy games that are out there.
With MGS 3 and Splinter Cell 2 not due out until next year, Rogue Ops is free to
shine at retail. And there’s no reason why it shouldn’t. You’ll enjoy the game
as long as your expectations aren’t ridiculously high.
Gameplay: 7.9
I’ve got a
sneaking suspicion that spy fans will like this game. If you love hiding in the
shadows, crouching behind walls, hiding dead bodies in lockers, and trying out
new gadgets, Rogue Ops should be on your “To Do” list.
Graphics: 8
Nikki looks
terrific! Most of the characters do. But the backgrounds and explosion effects
are a little dated. They lack the polish that PlayStation 2 game should have.
As a whole it’s a great-looking game, but those dated effects make it less fun
to look at.
Sound: 8
Good, stealthy
music from the composer. It sounds like something you’d hear in a spy flick,
but is not at all a rip-off of Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid.
Difficulty: Medium
Rogue Ops can get
tough at times, but you won’t be pulling your hair out over it.
Concept: 7.2
Rogue Ops is a
good game, but it doesn’t play like the type of game that could have been made
if its competitors didn’t exist first. While it has some unique qualities, it
doesn’t really have anything that makes it really stand out from the crowd.
Well, it does have one thing – an attractive star. Solid Snake is cool, but I’d
rather look at Nikki Connors. Wouldn’t you?
Overall: 7.9
Not a Splinter
Cell-killer, but still a good game. Rogue Ops’s most impressive features are
the ones you don’t see too often in other spy games, like the Fly Cam. Aside
from maybe Perfect Dark, I can’t think of any game that has used a similar a
device like that.
The third-person
shooter-style controls seem out of place for a game like this. But I think the
logic behind it has to do with your goals. The developers wanted the focus to
be on whatever was in front of you, albeit an enemy or something. So when you
press down on the analog stick and expect to move backwards, you don’t. The
other control aspects are good, and you’ll become comfortable with less
appealing aspects in an hour or two.
This isn’t a
run-out-and-buy-it-now kind of game, but it is a good, stealthy game that fans
of the genre should at least rent. If it’s your favorite genre, there aren’t
any better games out there that you haven’t already played, leaving Rogue Ops as
your best option.
