Global Ops: Commando Libya, published by Kalypso media UK Ltd, is the equivalent of the third person shooters for consoles. If you are accustomed to playing this genre you should have a pretty good idea of the basic gameplay.
The story begins in 1968 when a B-52G bomber crashes somewhere in the Arctic Ocean and the cargo it is carrying, an atom bomb, goes missing. The story continues, fast forwarding to the present day, the CIA learn that the missing bomb is in the possession of Yebeivdenka, a Russian Mafia Boss. Yebeivdenka plans to sell on the WMD to a ruthless Libyan ruler intent on attacking the US. So it falls to you as a member of a special unit to put a stop to this deadly arms deal.
As previously pointed out, if you are familiar with the mechanics of Gears of War, there will be no real surprises in store, as the game uses most of the mechanics that made the game so great on the Xbox 360. The overall game pace is kept rather even, mixing vehicle usage with the standard covert ops missions, where you will find yourself 90% of the time hugging the nearest wall hoping not to be seen by the enemy.
Of course as you already know your main goal is to stop this arms deal from ever happening and saving the US. This will be carried out over nine individual single player missions. You will be given access to an array of modern weapons to take into each mission. There is also the option to play multiplayer on a range of six maps, with up to nine other players. Multiplayer offers a selection of diverse mission styles; including urban warfare and guerrilla action.
Single player
Single player has a great story to tell and you will find yourself wanting to experience the full game, by defeating the evil Russian mafia boss and saving the US. Along the way you will get teamed up with another agent that will work alongside you, that will aid you in taking down the enemy. (Russian scum) At one stage you will be up in a bell tower with a sniper rifle, you will have a little window in front of you in which you can use to shoot down the enemies. The only problem I found here is that there are about ten enemies and I only ever managed to kill three out of the ten before an enemy tanks arrives on the scene and destroys the tower you are. Once the tower has completely collapsed and the towers bell is grounded, you are able to work your way up to find different vantage points to take out the enemies. Tip: “The floors will actually be invisible as this is a graphical glitch”
Having a team mate should be very handy at times; however this team mate is more of a hindrance or a ghost at times. The reason I say a ghost, is when your team mate decided to charge ahead and past a load of enemies they seem to pay him zero attention and only concentrate on you.
At one time I witnessed the numbskull hugging the same wall as the guy he charged off to kill ending with both of them standing side by side ignoring each other. This flaw could have easily been avoided by implementing a better AI system or even a co-op feature to allow a friend or an online player to take control of the character.
Multiplayer
As stated previously multiplayer comes with an assortment of nine maps in total, however I was unable to experience the thrill of what was on offer due to the lack of servers. To really gain access to the games multiplayer fun is to physically input the other players IP address so you can hook up to their server, which in turn makes the whole process rather complicated for users. With so many games like this having great multiplayer support I feel rather disappointed by the lack of support given here.
Overall
The awkward looking animations, the characters speaking without expressions and so on is just some of the flaws that you will see from the get go. On the retail box it states “you are able to travel around the world to different locations”, well this might be the case but what you get is the same texture mapping design on all the environments with exception to the opening Arctic levels.
With inadequate Artificial Intelligence, which rarely does the right thing, it forces the player to choose a higher difficulty setting. If you choose to play on the easier settings then the game could be completed by running and gunning everything in sight, as opposed to covering yourself and seeking out the best possible covert opportunity to take down the enemy. But this defeats the point.
I had high expectations for this game on reading the description on the back of the box. I thought that PC players who preferred FPS games would finally have a game that joined the big boys in FPS on the console. On playing the game and its several faults I felt let down. On saying this with a little more time spent in developing the game to bring it to the standard of console games I feel it will be able to join the big boys in the league
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
