Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)CLOSE COMBAT: FIRST TO FIGHT REVIEW
Starship Troopers Review follows below this).
Keeping in mind this is a 2005 game, I think it was perhaps the least enjoyable squad shooters I've played. I can't comment on the authenticity, since I'm not a soldier, but I found the squad commands to be somewhat clumsy. You can tell your guys, individually or as a team, to "form up" or "hold position" and you can tell them to go to a location, but you can't really tell them which way to shoot or which way to look. You can't pick where they are to focus their fire, which has been a feature of all the other squad shooters I've played. On the other hand, there is a "take down" which commands your men to enter and secure a room. There were also commands to make certain enemies (high value targets) to surrender and a command for your guys to secure the prisoner. More useful were the commands that called in air strikes, mortar strikes, or sniper attacks from other forces in the area.
Graphics were acceptable for a 2005 game, but not great. Among the common annoyances were misplaces shadows, enemies that partially protruded through walls and doors, rag doll bodies and weapons that made the game look like it was infested with poltergeists. With the rag-doll effect enabled even on "low" the bodies would actually ricochet off the ceiling and walls several times before finally coming to a rest.
AI was not good. It was quite common to find yourself standing right next to an enemy who didn't see you there. In one case, there was an enemy who was apparently killed and unresponsive, but still standing. I wasted a lot of ammo on that guy before realizing he wasn't going down. He finally disappeared like the rest of the dead enemies.
Weapons were few. You had only an assault rifle and grenades. The rifle did have a scope, however. There was no pistol and no rocket or grenade launchers that you could use. You could pick up enemy assault rifles and use them if you were running low on ammo, but there were ammo chests scattered around as well. Oddly, these ammo chests contained ammo that worked in Marine weapons. There were some mounted machines guns you could use. There were no vehicles you could drive, although you could sometimes use the machine guns mounted on a stationary vehicle. There was also night vision for use in areas in the game that are nearly pitch black.
One interesting touch was that you could replenish the health of your team members and even call a medic to evac a seriously wounded man. Only one evac was allowed for you and your three-man team. If you or more than one of your team members were seriously injured, the game would restart to the last check point. Health packs were scattered through out the game and were usually plentiful.
This game had the worst save system of any game I've seen. First of all, it used checkpoints, which only allows for you to save your progress at specific points. But, it didn't save the checkpoints automatically. You had to manually go in and do a SAVE operation in the menus to make it save the most recent checkpoint so you could restart from that point if you quit the game. Fortunately, most checkpoints were fairly closely spaced, so you won't play for a long time only to get killed and have to go back a long way and start over.
The game had it's challenging moments, particularly if you were low on health and had a lot of enemies to face down. It was not terribly long and it was basically the same from start to finish, but it was certainly ok considering the $2.09 I paid for it, especially since it comes with Starship Troopers. I'd give this game 3 stars.
STARSHIP TROOPERS REVIEW
Being a slightly newer game than CCF2F (only by a matter of months) I found Starship Troopers to be a much more entertaining game than CCF2F, but they are very different from each other. SST is more like Halo meets Serious Sam. The single most noteworthy characteristic of this game is the sheer number of enemies that can appear on the screen at any one time. And, unlike most FPS games, the enemies commonly attack from all directions at one, completely engulfing you in a sea of bugs. This makes for very intense action sequences where survival requires fast reactions and the ability to strategize on the fly.
This is another game where you can carry a huge number of weapons, many of which are quite cool. Only the default weapon is an energy based weapon, thereby never running out of ammo (although it does over heat). There are several variations of automatic assault weapons and shot gun. There is a missile launcher that holds 25 missiles and is reloaded with a single cartridge. There is also a huge missile launcher that will almost completely kill everything on the battlefield, but ammo for that is rare. There is a powerful sniper rifle and one of the assault weapons has a scope as well.
Your suit has a shield which can be depleted, but then automatically replenishes. You also have the traditional health meter which is replenished with health packs.
Enemies attack by means of contact or by spewing forth a toxic substance or fire. There are several variations of small, medium, and large enemies (bugs). The most numerous are the crab-like medium sized bugs. Large bugs are fewer, but much harder to kill. Then there are smaller plasma spitting beetles, bugs that emit a blinding flash, and bugs that cling to structures and shoot down with a laser-like ray. The large bugs are similar to level bosses in that you can spend a lot of time trying to kill them. It is not always required that you kill all the bugs to accomplish and objective, nor is there always a finite number of bugs attacking you.
The game has reasonably good graphics for 2005, an acceptable story line, but cut scenes were apparently clipped directly from the movie rather than custom designed for the game. Music was pretty good, but sound was about average.
This game allows manual saves/loads as well as quick saves/load. Unfortunately, when you die, it loads slowly and you have to go through three menu screens to reload. If only they had made the quick load key work AFTER you get killed, it would be perfect. Quick load was super fast, but can't be used immediately upon getting killed (no matter how fast you are).
I thought the game was above average length, taking me about 20 hours to complete. Most of the time the game is entertainingly challenging, but there were also frustrating moments (once at the end of the BAIT level, in particular) when I was just getting killed repeatedly while not being able to accomplished the required goals. Doing a search on line, I found out I was not alone. In any case, I could not find a walkthrough on line for this game (although there is one for an earlier Starship Troopers game from 2000).
I highly recommend this game and would easily award it 4 stars. I found it much more enjoyable than CCF2F. Having only paid $2.09 (new) for this 2-game combo, it was an unbeatable deal.
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