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Platform Filters:   All Platforms  Xbox   GameCube   PlayStation 2   PC   Game Boy Advance   Site Sections:   Updates  News   Games   Publishers   Developers   Reviews   Previews   Release Dates   Editorials   Glossary   Contact Us		Review:       27th April 2005: CT Special Forces: Fire for Effect  Take on the terrorists at their own game, become the best free fall expert fo a one man army as you Fire for Effect. Posted by Chris Snook - PlayStation 2 - UK and Europe There is always a danger when transferring a well loved series to a different system, unless you get it just right it will fall flat somehow, no matter how good the transition actually is, leave something out and it doesn't gel. Doubly so when trying to make the leap from two to three dimensions. CT Special Forces: Fire For Effect has tried to make that dizzying jump and whilst not falling flat it has a less than stunning landing. Set in the near future, CTSF: FFE, follows the ever continuing combat against terrorist forces and the deployment of the CTSF (Counter-Terrorist Special Forces) units around the world to deal with each and every nasty flare up as it happens. This time you control two of the operatives. Stealth Owl who is a master of sneaking and sniping and Raptor who is effectively a one man special forces army as he goes and takes things head on. Each is also a capable driver of various vehicles, ranging from jeeps through to Hovercraft, pretty much if the enemy has it and you can hijack it, it is yours, each vehicle has it's own style of driving and handling and both Owl and Raptor have their strengths and weaknesses in terms of getting where they are going. By far and away the most spectacular method of insertion is performed by Owl, a nerve wrenching skydive routine than allows him to plummet from a great height, occasionally engaging in combat as he reaches terminal velocity, fast enough that even RADAR fails to locate him. Owl is indeed the more interesting of the two characters, he simply does more. Be it to Ninja his way into the area, free-fall in or to be the perfect long range killer with his sniper rifle. He also has optical camouflage that renders him practically invisible even as the next guard wanders up ready to be taken down swiftly and silently. Raptor on the other hand comes across as two-dimensional. Drive, shoot, rive and shoot, shoot a bit more and whilst fun for the simplicity of it there is a sense of repetition over time. Even with this dichotomy there is a lingering feeling that there si not enough to go around with the twenty-five levels presented a suspicion lurks that there was meant to be more but things were left out or transferred across to the characters given. Over time this does give a bland balance of things and you wonder just what else there could have been. Graphics wise nothing special. They do the job and do it more than adequately with bullets and explosions and a reasonable depth of background details. Animation is less than smooth and occasionally you get left a little confused by the sudden increase in detail in a few areas. However that said, the urban areas look urban, the jungle areas like a jungle and the free-fall sections are all done well. Voice acting is a little stilted, let down by dialogue that is painful at times and more than a little choppy in diction. Everything sounds as it should, bullets whiz and zing, explosions explode and armour spangs nicely enough. Music is almost anonymous, it is there but is almost forgettable straight away with no real variance. CTSF feels longer than it actually is. It is hard and you have to work in order to claw through the missions. Even the training exercise tutorial missions are hard, turning from the initially fairly easy through to difficult in practically a doorway. This is problematic as this kind of introduction is meant to ease you into the game, not place you up against the clock and wondering just what had happened, this is one place where you may just give up. Admittedly this is not helped by the control system, which has all the normal pitfalls when doing a first or indeed a third person shooter on a console, the control pads are just not geared for that kind of game either being over or under sensitive, often at just the wrong moment. Other than this everything else works fine, responses are timely and the layout doesn't require double jointed fingers to perform most moved. Ultimately it is the difficulty level which is the main killer, that plus there is not enough variety in what goes on, Raptor is just not an interesting character in this version and possibly the inclusion of a third operative would have been beneficial. Other than this there is nothing very wrong with CT Special Forces: Fire for Effect. The cover combat works very well better than most attempts at this, the various visual modes add to the feel of having to be careful, plus free fall is a joy and the extra's gallery of images, weapons and history of the creation and operation of the CT are all nice additions. It is a pity that it takes so much effort to get anywhere and when you do you wonder why. Chris Snook             Latest Images:		Review Scores:    Graphics:   Sound:   Gameplay:   Length:   Overall: Click here for our Review Score Guidelines.  Review Summary:  Unassuming update of a popular series on the GameBoy Advance and original PlayStation console. Transferred into 3D and bolstered for the current crop of consoles, CT Special Forces: Fire for Effect fails to do the business. With a variable intensity of difficulty at the beginning, reaching into he hard very quickly you find the nice extras swamped by a swathe of average fairly rapidly.  Related Games:  CT Special Forces: Fire for Effect for PlayStation 2  6  Screenshots  1  Review Click here for All Game Information.
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