Score
Gameplay:	8
Graphics:	8
Sound:	7
FunFactor:	9
PlasmaFactor:	9
Overall:	8.2

Cold War Review
February 15, 2006 by Christian Costa

by Christian Costa - February 15, 2006

You wake up in a dark space. Your legs and arms tied to a crude object Russians refer to as a chair. You have been captured by the KGB, tortured, and are being pried into signing a confession of an assassination you had no part in. It is 1986 during what people refer to as the "Cold War" and you are Mathew Carter, American reporter. Now, if you wish to survive in Mother Russia you must use your wit, speed, and a hint of luck or you can blow yourself up with gas canisters like I did, many times. Cold War by DreamCatcher pits you against some of Russia’s finest and the frequent stereotypical drunk Russian

Where is my Vodka?

The gameplay in Cold War is interesting because you can find it either pure genius or incredibly dull. Being the nice, sensitive reporter that you are, you are convinced you can’t kill your captors. So you find bottles to make plastic bullets, ether, alarm clocks, and a slingshot to dispose of them. Now this was incredibly confusing to me because ether kills people or makes them hallucinate in high doses and if bullets when they are made from regular plastic bottles wouldn’t the plastic melt in the chamber? The friction alone would tear the bullet apart if it is not hard plastic or a special type of platic made to with stand a barrel of a gun. With this aside the gameplay is an advanced version of cat and mouse. You can use vodka, cigarettes, and coins to lure the guards away from their rounds, and utilize the materials at hand to make ether bombs to take out up to three guards at a time (this would kill a person in all reality). The game is based on stealth and being a reporter you can only crouch. The controls are a little choppy and it takes a while to figure out the camera. Think that if Halo was third person with an exact opposite camera control.

Ah! I found it!

So the game looks to be like a Splinter Cell, Metal Gear Solid, and a Home Improvement offspring. Luckily it looks like those mentioned above (not so much Home Improvement, I wouldn’t want to play Tim Allen in a game unless it was to rob stores or America of it’s humor). The graphics are very detailed down to the last pixel of shading. Since stealth is a big part of the gameplay, the lights in the corner and the shadows dancing on the walls are well done. The cut scenes, however, are garbage, betraying the attractive graphics of the game. They are cell shaded still frames like a comic book. They are worth nothing to the game except a frown and a thrown XBOX controller to the wall. There are very few cut scenes not like that, and even then those aren’t very good, because of their faces. Part of the characters’ faces are blocky and if they have a cut on them it looks like blot. But the in-game graphics are what matter the most.

I had Tom Petty on

You just knocked a guard out with the weakest punch of all time. You now must hide the body while another guard is turning the corner from hearing the noise. You do it! Well that was invigorating wasn’t it? Hardly. The music gets you ready for a huge gunfight between you, your plastic bullets, two ether bombs, and twenty Russian guards. Too bad it’s the same type of music no matter if you knock a guard out or if you shoot five of them. There is rarely ever a change of music except in the cut scenes. The music is good it is just repetitive. So I listened to Tom Petty to be patriotic while I took out Russians.

True or False Question

The funfactor on Cold War can go fifty-fifty. There are a lot of fun situations but then there are the parts where you say, "Are the Russians drunk?" Sneaking around and taking out the enemies silently is the bread and butter. Walk up behind a guard and hit him in the face or have him eat a bullet point blank range. Throw an ether bomb and watch them gag and pass out, or sneak up behind a guard only to have him turn around because you pulled out your gun too close. The game can be very frustrating when it comes to the little aspects like that. Hiding in the trunks of cars to avoid patrols, only to climb out and find them standing in your blind spot. It can also be very annoying when you waste items only to have guards avoid them. The XBOX online capabilities are worthless. You can only get on and see what people are playing and vice versa. You can’t link up with a friend and trade Martha Stewart’s plans to make nuclear bombs out of pinecones. So sad…

McGuyver would be proud

You make your own bullets. You use a slingshot to one-shot guards in the leg. You can even make your own bombs that gas people! Mathew Carter definitely read the Anarchist’s Cookbook and it pays off. There are many different objects you can use and make to thwart Russians. Of course not many of them make sense but since when do American reporters make objects like these? You also receive an X-ray camera that sees through doors, walls, not through female’s clothing unfortunately, and to blow up canisters and fire extinguishers. That is pretty cool. Too bad McGuyver was off saving the whole world from corrupt businessmen and Bigfoot instead of Russians.

 

I didn’t kill a single person

So in Cold War we learned that household objects and chemicals can bring down a whole Communist government. Awesome! Now all we need is real bullets, real bombs, a character without stupid one-liners, and fifty other people like myself to play with me and we the gamers of Cold War can take over the world. Or at least part of it. So DreamCatcher get to work on that and you will have a great game. Bringing down Russia is a close second.