I guess the first thing I must point out is that I really don't mind getting shot in the head. I was fully expecting to get the one shot kills and sneaky strategy with this game. I had hopes of a game like the early Ghost Recon FPS games. I really liked Far Cry 2 and was expecting something more technical from this, but with it's free-roaming style and tactical game-play. I really fancied a strategy fps and had this on pre-order.
The premise is great. The graphics are fairly nice too, but not totally mind-blowing. The environment of a large Island is a great place for a battle and the controls are fairly decent, with the squad order controls being ok to learn, if basic. Having said that, there is a big problem aiming downwards while lying prone. It a bit seems too restrictive when you've just inched your way to the top of a hill for advantage over the enemy.
The weapons and vehicles you get to use in the game are quite decent, when available. There are no tanks or attack helicopters avaiable in the main campaign, which was a surprise, since the game seemed to pride itself on its vehicle count before launch. it is a shame that you can't choose your own initial weapons loadouts at all. The vehicles control adequately for an FPS - they control more like driving games, but with boat-like handling (less like Halo vehicle controls). The helicopter is quite hard to use because it has a "realistic" cyclic and throttle flight control, where the more you go forwards, the more you fly into the ground.
There are various weapons systems and ammo crates left around during the missions that add a good change of firepower to proceedings. Dead enemy soldiers also leave weapons and ammo around if you're quick enough to reach them before they disappear into the digital veil. Since they do vanish fairly quickly with all their worldy goods, ammo management can start to be a real issue if you leave corpse-robbing too long.
The free-roaming island aspect is just an illusion, since when a particular time limit is tripped, the mission can end in tick-tock, tick-tock, over. The time restriction issue first hits during the tutorial mission: Its set on a smaller Island, prior to insertion to Skira. I chose to clear out all the enemy installations so I could learn the controls, learn the waypointing and command system and complete the bonus objective of flying a chopper round the Island. So, with all enemies down, the "time over" mission failure screen appears because "I can't get extracted". Well, I'm flying my own helicopter, thanks! And everyone else on this Isle is dead, so why the time Nazism? I'd have to do this all over again, except quicker next time to get to try training in a helicopter and attempt the fly round the Island for the bonus achievement.
Same thing on mission One proper: Knock out a radar station before an air strike. At the start, they held off an attack until I'd knocked out some AA, but then, all of a sudden I had 5 minutes until the main attack, regardless of if I'd knocked out the radar. If not; game over. Which meant a silly mad dash (just like COD), punctuated by random death, to reach an objective in time, rather than plan my assault on it carefully. There's no temporal let-up in the further missions either. Time limits all over the place, requiring stupid run and gun tactics rather than proper flanking and planning. The ultra-realistic damage model in this game ensures this added "impetus" to speed up gameplay just gets you killed quicker.
The friendly AI also does have some fairly dumb patches, where they often pop up out over cover suicidally. The enemy AI can seem really determined against you - flanking and working together. Some of them also seem immune to close range head shots. But no matter now neat this game looks and feels to play (and it does look quite good and feel pretty neat), the pointless time restrictions make it too frustrating and random, since they limit any strategic options. They also interfere with the mission's checkpointing save system, since the time count-downs usually trigger at an auto-save checkpoint.
Codemasters could have so easily sorted this out by including an "easy" mode with no time triggers for console idiots like me. The game starts its difficulty range on normal - the setting I played on. The difficulty increases with the same enemy numbers and difficulty but fewer "aids", like save check-points, enemy "red marks" on the compass, cross-hairs and other increasingly masochistic removals. I assume the time limits probably decrease as well but have no intention of finding that out!
Attempts at multiplayer seem broken for me (as of 22 Oct 09). Its really difficult to get a match of any type up (1 in 20 refreshes, or so) and once in, there is no proper lobby and the lag in-match is awful. I've heard a patch is on its way... Supposedly 4 player coop or 4 player control - 4 man squads (16 soldiers - 12 AI) are possible in multiplayer. But so far, its way too broken for me.
I have to say the (Non-Brady) guide book is useless, giving little indication of mission planning, alternative strategies or of time limits, since the rigid structure of the missions leaves little room for diversion from the set way-points, objectives and timescales imposed on you. My planning had me finding out how to evade these waypointed "check-point" areas that started the time countdowns, so I could focus on the mission objectives - madness!
Perhaps I'll find some "unlock codes" for the evaporating dead enemies, hurry ups and the other silly annoyances that interfere with the immersion promised from this game. There is a "codes input screen" for unlocking extra on-disk co-op missions, so I'm told in another review here - Thanks for that Codmasters. I'm hoping the AI and the network code will be sorted out one day too. But to buy a half finished game and matching book for the hope it being fixed some time, or of cheating your way through it, make this game hideously un-lovable - 1 star.