Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

Developer: Rare

Release Date: 11/17/2005

Available Exclusively On

OK, all I want to say is, What the hell? I dodged this game since I got my 360 on Christmas of ’06, and now that I finally paid $4.50 for this game, I feel like I got ripped off. The game is ugly, derivative, poorly designed, and buggy. The multiplayer is terrible, the shooting mechanics are flawed, and the story is retarded. If there’s anything positive about this game, it’s the fact that Joanna is hot, there are some pretty cool gadgets, and that’s about it. I wish I could stop my review now, but I must enlighten you.

When you start the game, you are brought to an equipment loadout screen where you can select your weapons, but you only get a pistol to start out with. OK, fine, cool, but once you enter, you have no idea what’s going on. Enemies are hard to track thanks to the offbeat, weird (not the good weird) art style and the way you move your gun. I mean, what? The thing feels like I am moving it through the mud. What happened to a smooth-moving reticle? This thing has a drag on it or something because I could never aim properly in this game, and I’m pretty damn good at FPS games, never having a problem aiming even in the worst of them.

Anyways, each gun has a useless secondary fire that you’ll never use; the P9P has a silencer (useful), but the SMG is thrown as a delayed (long delay) grenade (not useful). The enforcer can bounce bullets around corners (not useful), so, c’mon, what is this crap? Even James Bond wouldn’t approve of these lame secondary fires. Not only are the guns hard to shoot, but the AI is freaking retarded. All they do is strafe back and forth in the same line or just stand there staring at you. If you think it’s hard to hit those guys, try using a sniper rifle that uses the pressure-sensitive trigger to zoom with a bolt-action. What super spy has a bolt-action sniper rifle? What happened to ten round clips? Hell, even the Germans figured that one out.

OK, if you think the action levels are hard, try the stealth levels. It’s so hard to see enemies and to kill them stealthily that you’ll just get pissed and run through the level. There is so much trial and error, it’s absurd that even Metal Gear doesn’t have this much T&E. Yes, there are some cool gadgets like the Locktopuss, but who plays a minigame on this thing when people are shooting at you? And a puzzle on a demo charge to place it?! Joanna’s gadget creator needs to be fired because super-spies don’t have time for that. I haven’t even gotten to the most frustrating part yet—the checkpoints. There is one in each level, so if you spend 30 minutes sneaking through a level and then get caught but complete two objectives, you’re screwed and have to start over again. That is the main reason why I stopped playing after level six.

If you think the single-player is lame, try the multiplayer, where somehow it looks even uglier than the single-player. Not only are there only two modes, but the game types are random and just stupid. You have deathmatch and team deathmatch, then you have other modes that are never explained and make no sense. The players move extremely slowly and have that running floating effect like old PS2 games; the aiming stinks even more, thanks to it somehow being more sticky; the maps are terribly designed, with dead ends and tons of empty rooms and halls; plus, there is no jump button. Plus, all the achievements are wrapped around multiplayer (yes, all but two), and there’s no one playing online!

If you think that’s even worse, the game is ugly and probably the ugliest Xbox 360 game to date (ok, one of the ugliest). I mean, this game looks like a really good Xbox game with shiny plastic flat textures and just old-looking animations. I honestly think this is the most disappointing Xbox 360 game I’ve ever played, so everyone should just stay away.