Bet on Soldier

Review - Sam learns that betting is a mug's game...

Start developing an FPS and you should know that you are entering the most crowded market on the PC. A genre where a few towering giants look down with scorn upon the many pretenders flinging themselves desperately against the base of their colossal contributions to the field. If you want to stand out you need two things: some flash graphics and a fresh approach. With a market as overpopulated as this one, even a new angle wrapped in some standard graphics may be enough. This must have been the thinking behind Bet on Soldier as this marginally original spin on the shooter is decked out in the kind of graphics which only serve as an exemplar of what 50 years of Communist oppression will do to an artistic aesthetic. Although bafflingly, Kylotonn is not an eastern European development house but is based in Paris.

Unfortunately for the developers and publishers Digital Jesters, BoS's creativity is also let down by some uninspiring gameplay, tedious locations and some bizarre gameplay choices, which while retaining an internal consistency with the gameworld seem to have little effect other than pissing the player off. The title is set in a dystopian war-torn Earth where the only entertainment is betting on which super-soldier will defeat another super-soldier in the competitions televised straight from the battlefield. The Bet on Soldier leagues are apparently the only way to make any money, although quite where the punters get the cash for their stakes is a mystery that is never fully addressed. Rammed into this convoluted universe the player takes on the role of the ridiculously monikered Nolan Daneworth, perhaps the stupidest name for game character ever. Up to this point BoS manages to furrow its own path, but almost as if there is some as yet undiscovered law of attraction concerning cliches, the player is informed in a gravelly voice-over that Nolan is also suffering from amnesia and his wife was killed by nasty types. Maybe the Illuminati do rule the world and have a condition that the use of their name in countless games is bought for by rigidly adherence to the laws of attraction concerning cliches. The game then plays out over a variety of uninspiring levels as the player fights their way through standard FPS fare with the aim of finding that sector's BoS opponent.

The standard FPS fare is just that. Seen a million times previously, each level is a succession of trenches, alley-ways and wide-open spaces stuffed with bodies to shoot at. The enemy AI is fairly competent and will make rudimentary use of the surroundings to flesh out the combat a touch. The player can hire mercenaries to accompany him on most levels and while they have an occasional tendency to stand aiming at walls for the most part they provide useful support and are blessedly not adhering to the suicidal team-mate clichE There are no health or ammo packs in BoS; everything - including, in an effective touch, save-games - must be bought from the dispensers which litter the battlefield in the most improbable fashion. Find one of these in time and you can re-arm and re-equip, ready to face down the next wave of meaningless enemies. Further along in the game there are some stompy robots to contend with but for the most part BoS is made up of traipsing around the environments, picking up items or killing particular individuals, waiting until the screen lights up to tell you it's time to Bet on Soldier.

The first match I had against another BoS contestant started off with a tingle of excitement, with a ropey looking FMV followed by a 10-second countdown which was accompanied by some flashing lights on the screen and a palpable rise in tension. As it took approximately a second for my chain-gun to spin up and start firing and for the other warrior to drop dead my initial disappointment had to wait for astonishment to subside first - it was all over so quickly I thought I had been killed, having never taken out a boss, even the very first one, so quickly in my life. If only I had been playing at an easy difficulty setting... As the game progresses the standard of completion thankfully rises, but never to the point where the player is suitably gripped by a supposed life or death struggle. The bosses, for that is all BoS segments effectively are, do provide for some divergent entertainment but not enough to compel the player to slog through the tedious trench warfare that precedes every fight.

The environments are attractive in a non-committal sort of way, with some nice textures and impressive architecture. There is also some good variety and a few levels actually initially impart a sense of wonder. Unfortunately all the character models in the game are uniformly dreadful, horrible angular monstrosities so overloaded with shader effects that they shine and glint more than a silver barrel full of rappers going over the Niagara Falls. I struggled to find a model that didn't look like a placeholder rather then something that should be in a finished game. They not only look ridiculous but they move with all the grace and fluidity of Pavarotti on ice-skates, with wonky animations, waddling soldiers and girly grenade throwing all doing their bit to ensure the player never comes close to believing they are participating in anything remotely serious.

If you want to convey a sense of destruction and chaos but have decided to use up your graphic artist's fee on someone who has a major hang-up about the colour brown then maybe your sound artists can fill in the blanks. It's a pity then that the player's arsenal sounds like recordings of an overweight bumble-bee with a minor irritation in its top-most left wing and a slight attitude problem concerning windows. It's fair to say these sounds are not going to have your neighbours ringing the constabulary in fear that the street has been taken over by gun-toting terrorists. Overall presentation of the game is lacklustre for the most part, with tooltips obscuring information and menu screens that serve to confuse rather then help. The translation work is also prone to errors and while the voice-over work is charming and often of an incongruously high standard the story itself is tedium in a jar. BoS tries to create an original and atmospheric setting but unfortunately what the development team consider interesting and what this reviewer consider interesting differ widely. Consider these:

Who decided to give the player the option to buy chain-guns and rocket launchers from the first mission while simultaneously forcing them to buy at least one grenade before they could set out? Or that fallen enemies would drop nothing that could be picked up by the player, a decision which not only forces them to run back and forth between ammo vending machines but removes yet another precious layer of interaction from a soul-less gameworld. I actually had to die and reload a few times because I was trapped in an area with no access to fresh ammo, regardless of how many foes I knifed to death. And this is 2005? Believability takes a hit right from the off when you can unload a clip in your drill sergeant's face without even causing his eyes to water.

Bet on Soldier is not a total disaster. Given some sterner direction from the publishers many of the sharper edges that slice into the player could have been smoothed-off making a package more amenable to modern tastes. There is nothing fundamentally broken with BoS so it could well be worth a gander when it hits budget, a price point which this game instantly feels like it belongs at. It's a shame as I had high hopes for this when I first encountered it in playable form over a year ago, so with luck the developers may be able to fashion something more enjoyable the next time round.

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