by Dave - November 21, 2003

Hi, my name is Dave and I am a console game-oholic. I have been clean for two years now (Insert scattered applause and sympathetic head nods here). That all changed last week, when the powers that be sent me a console game to review (shocked silence). Yes it seems that the most diehard of PC gamers was fated to reclaim his Playstation 2 from his daughter�s clutches. As I placed the dvd into the tray, I couldn�t help but wonder if the PS2 could handle a game like Kill.Switch after spending two years extolling the virtues of games like Rug Rats and Ecco the Dolphin.

Gameplay

As always, with single player games, I will not release any plot details. I feel that a player should experience the story when they play the game, not read about it. So don�t worry about reading any spoilers here, not that reading any would actually spoil the game. It�s that weak� Mainly because it�s been done to death in just about every format. So if there is little to no storyline why is this game getting such a high score? Read on my friends�

Like Max Payne�s �Bullet Time�, the creators of Kill.Switch have come up with a revolutionary concept and somehow built a game around it. Dubbed the �Offensive Cover System� it lets you use the abundant existing cover in order to deny the enemy a viable target, while eliminating them at the same time. In other words, you get to hide behind stuff and do shooty things to the bad guys. Although many other action games provide ample cover to hide behind, Kill.Switch is the first one I�ve played that has made it integral to the playing of the game. Once behind a suitably sized piece of rubble, wall, crate, pillar or anything else under the sun, you have two options on how to dispatch the bad guys gunning for you.

The first is to actually lean around the side, corner, or pop up over the object and shoot. This gives you more excellent accuracy while cutting your exposure to enemy fire in half. Not too shabby eh? The second option (and my favorite) is to blind fire. Using this option you stay safely hidden away and only stick your gun out to fire in the general direction of the enemy. I say general because the accuracy is abysmal (and rightly so). I tend to use this mode a lot and as a result, chew through my ammunition faster then Chow Yun-Fat in a John Woo flick. Just remember that in Kill.Switch: if it moves, it�s fair game.

One other thing I want to point out is how the enemy soldiers react to your presence. The quality of the AI is quite simply astounding. An enemy soldier might run away in a panic (to return with more help usually) or he might stand his ground and blast away with his rifle. He might use the offensive cover system as well and a normally quick firefight turns into a drawn-out affair with both sides tearing up the scenery. Should the AI outnumber you, expect to be aggressively flanked with one or more person shooting and keeping you pinned down while the other circles in for the kill. More then once I was caught with my pants down and the first time I died, I just sat there stunned on my couch thinking; �did I just get flanked by a console game�?
Weapon-wise you will be using a wide variety of automatic rifles, grenades and the staple of shooters everywhere, the shotgun. My personal favorite is the M4/M203 combo. The grenade launcher really saved my bacon a few times when I ran into heavy resistance (like stumbling into a machinegun nest).

The one major problem I had with this game was the controls. Years of perfecting the perfect mouse/keyboard combo positioning have left me, quite literally, all thumbs with a PS2 controller. Whereas most players took about 8 hours to finish the game, it took me over 10. I just couldn�t get the hang of using my two thumbs to control both movement and torso twisting. In a game with action as heavy as Kill.Switch can dish out, this makes for a steep and devilishly unforgiving learning curve. Still after two hours I was in the thick of it, cutting through hordes of the enemy.

Graphics

Kill.Switch is an attractive game. But it just reminds me of how quickly consoles are falling behind PC�s in the graphics department. Still the character models are excellent and really surprised me with the details my almost archaic PS2 (by PC standards) can push out. The weapon models are great and the weapon effects (recoil, iron sights, muzzle flash, etc.) are better then some PC games that I have played recently. Although not true rag-doll physics, Kill.Switch does a good job of capturing that feel when you cap one of the baddies.

The levels are also above what I thought possible in a console. The maps have abundant cover in all shapes and sizes and they are large enough that you can almost always tackle a problem from another angle should you run into difficulties. PC gaming has spoiled me as far as graphics are concerned, but to have your buddies over and screaming about where the bad guys are (as pieces of KFC fly across the living room) more then makes up for any shortcomings.

Sound

With all the lead flying around in this game, it�s possible to forget that there are other aspects to this category. The voice acting is not up to par and slightly on the wooden side. Picture if you will, the Baldwin brothers reading Shakespeare while balancing plates on the tops of their heads. That is how wooden the dialogue can get. A couple of times I almost hit the start button just to skip the cinematic. In-game is a whole other story; you quickly learn what weapons are being fired at you just by the sound they are making. The weapon sound effects are good with plenty of variation. The music, mostly consisting of a repeated sound loop does it�s job in helping set the mood for the missions and giving you that �Oh yeah, I�m a bad-ass� mentality. When you are squaring off against this many baddies, you need every advantage you can get.

FunFactor

Kill.Switch comes in only two levels of difficulty: Normal and Hard. Normal is quite adequate and provided me with enough challenge that making it through a mission felt rewarding. The hard setting increases the number of adversaries and although I tried, there were just too many for my awkward thumbs and I to handle. There is no instant action mode or any sort of multiplayer mode at all in Kill.Switch. It�s purely a single player game with none of the trimmings. There is some replay value as you can choose to replay any mission that you have completed, but what this game really could have used was a co-op or a head to head mode. I�d even settle for an option to let me save wherever I wanted. Still, I had fun playing this game and it made me remember why I used to be a big fan of the game consoles.

PlasmaFactor / Closing Remarks

If you want a deep and immersive storyline in your shooter then look elsewhere for satisfaction. But if you crave action that only an insane bullet count and challenging AI can provide, this game will fit the bill. Kill.Switch does away with the storyline and gives you the sort of balls to the wall action that only big budget Hollywood used to be able too. Will this game make me trade in my mouse and keyboard for a gamepad? No. Did it convince me that consoles are a threat to PC gaming? No. But you know what? Kill.Switch did make me take a good, hard look at console games. I don�t think I�m ready to put away the Playstation just yet� And for a diehard PC gamer like myself, that�s a tough thing to say.