It was nice to see the Microsoft Game Studios logo come up, it was like an old familiar friend. For those who don't know what I'm referring to, Halo begins that way. Since I said the H word, let me just say that this is not Halo but I think it's a close second place.
Getting the easy stuff out of the way, graphics are awesome. The environments I've seen are lush and have a nice touch of interactivity. There are a lot of items you can shoot that create explosions helping out with killing enemies. The environments are also very large, and diverse. I forgot, I've only played four of the 20-something levels there are so my scope is limited.
Sound. Well the music I've hear so far does the job. Like I said, I haven't been that far in the game yet but so far it's better than average. As far as I can tell there is no custom soundtrack which is probably a good thing for story progression.
Control. I was trying to avoid the comparison but I have to say it, the controls are just like Halo. Actually, it's Halo with a team to control. Shooting, grenades, picking up weapons on the run, sniping. All the same. I just now realized that melee attacks seem to be missing but that's probably OK. The D-pad controls your team. You can switch at any point between any of your team members on the fly without missing a step. The individual or group commands are also pretty easy to do with very clear on-screen button commands. I also like that when you are sniping the gun sways because you are breathing heavy but if you wait a little bit, it becomes steady. Nice touch.
Camera. Since this is a third person shooter, camera problems are usually an issue but I haven't had one yet. When you are in tight quarters the your character becomes invisible and you are in almost a first person perspective. Kinda like when Sam Fischer (Splinter Cell) pulls his gun out.
Gameplay. I made the mistake of playing the first four levels on easy and I got a little scared. I flew through the first three levels with little thought just runnin' and gunnin'. This came to an end on level four when I got attacked by these crazy psychic things but that's another story. I then went back to play on the normal difficulty and this is where the gameplay really shows. There is no running and gunning. The AI on the enemies is awesome. They avoid you like the plague. At one point I was sniping the enemies then they ran back to this bridge and started sniping me. Very cool stuff. Also, in the four boards I've played the environments were very different and the enemies for each of these boards were very different as well, not only in design but in their actions and weapons. I don't know if this will keep up through the game but it's really cool so far.
Multiplayer. I didn't really get to play this much because my lovely assistant wasn't too into it. From what I saw, there are weapons throughout the board that you can pick up. The boards list how many people it recommends too. One thing that actually is very cool is that you can have four different teams in one match. This is something that we wanted in Halo, cool. There is also the squad based multiplayer. I didn't get a real chance to play it but I was looking at the boards for it and they are HUGE. The two I saw were bigger than sidewinder ( the snow board in Halo).
I know this is kinda brief but it's late and I wanna play somemore. my final decision on this game is that it's awesome. At this very early stage in the game and not yet really playing multiplayer I can say I am very happy with the game. It's far better than the Wolfenstein single player game. It's quicker paced than Ghost Recon's single player which makes sense because that is a sim and not meant to be fast. It's not run and gun like Unreal (thank God). I think this game is going to stick around for a while especially since the multiplayer looks so promising.
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