Cold Zero
The lonegunman against mob thugs, not Hollywood, but still redefining cliché
Tags: Cold Zero: No Mercy Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Andrew on Sep 23rd, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Cold Zero: No Mercy (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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Cold Zero: No Mercy pits the player against countless underworld guns-for-hire as a mercenary that gets caught up with the mob. The players is forced to complete mission after mission of shooting, hiding a little, shooting from the hiding spot, and then when the other bad guys come, shooting some more.
In the game, you play the part of John Mcaffrey, a ex-S.W.A.T sharp shooter who is kicked off the force when he takes a shot when told not to and kills a hostage. Forced to try and find mercenary work after being blacklisted, John’s secretary finds a job freeing a man held captive on the docks. After freeing the man, John finds out he was an enemy of the local Italian Mafioso and is shanghaied into performing various missions to pay off the inherited debt.
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The actual game play itself is a point and click system where the left mouse button moves the character while the right mouse button is reserved for firing the different weapons in the game. The game has over 100 different weapons, ranging from various types of hand guns, to shotguns, machine guns, heavy artillery and high powered rifles. There are also various hand weapons, like knifes and baseball bats as well as different weapon modifiers like silencers, sights, and different style weapon clips.
Also the game progresses you loot each thug that killed, and can take money or cell phones, jewelry, credit cards or basically anything you can get your hands on to pawn off and pay for your little mass killing sprees.
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The movement through the game is pretty straight forward, with different obstacles to move around, and an interesting element of 4 different walking styles available so that you can sneak up on enemies, duck behind objects (which can be destroyed) and run up and shoot away. The game also offers various RPG elements, such as experience and different skill points which can be used to offer better strength (to carry more items) to better weapon use or the ability to pick locks better. The RPG elements give the game a little replayability but don’t change the game play too much.
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The graphics in the game are a little above average, with interesting locals – you travel around the globe, to places like Russia, Mexico and throughout the US. The view is overhead (or ¾) and shows a decent amount of the action. The main problem with the view is the wheel on the mouse is reserved for changing the angle, which makes the actual movement hard to keep up with in the middle of a firefight. The bad angles often made the game much harder then it needed to be and can frustrate very quickly.
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Overall the game is a decent action game, with some interesting elements, a very cliché storyline, but its quick, addictive and has a little replay value. The graphics are decent, the controls except for the camera angle simple and ergonomic and the action can either be very Metal gear solid or Diablo depending on the player and the situation.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
Variety of weapons Simple controls |
7.1 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
Bad camara controls Slow load times between levels Mediocre enemy AI |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Hey, if Hollywood can put out bad story lines with tons of action, explosions and dead guys, why can't JoWood? | |
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Tags: Cold Zero: No Mercy
Posted by Andrew on Sep 23rd, 2003 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
