Reviewed: June 24, 2005
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Electronic Arts

Developer
Electronic Arts - Tiburon

Released: June 13, 2005
Genre: FPS
Players: 1-8
ESRB: Teen

7
7
4
7
6.8

Supported Features:

Speaking of Metroid, if you have played that sample disc that came with your DS then you already have a good idea of how Rogue Agent plays. FPS games require dual inputs for movement and camera look and the touch-screen gives you just want you need on the DS, assuming you have enough dexterity in your right thumb to pull it off.

Rogue Agent mirrors the story of the console original, although the cutscenes have been trimmed down extensively and you’ll be reading text rather than listening to voice actors. Instead of playing Bond you play as a former 00 agent who was wounded during a mission and now has a cybernetic “golden” eye.

The powers of this eye are pretty much the only hook this game has over any other Bond title or FPS game for that matter. Well, that, and this time you are evil, so you can kill indiscriminately and even take hostages and use them for human shields.

Rogue Agent gives you several options for control but the one that the designers are expecting you to use, and the only one that really works, is using the D-pad for moving forward and back and side-stepping while using the thumb-strap and touch-screen for real-time camera look. Yes, time to put the stylus away and use that forgotten plastic nub on the strap.

The first thing to do is increase the sensitivity to about 70 otherwise you will have to drag your thumb across the screen several times just to turn 90-degrees. At 70 you can get a full 180-degree swing by sliding your thumb from center to either edge. Of course this takes away some of the smoothness of your aiming so you have to teach yourself to move your thumb slowly and not just jerk it around.

The left and right triggers fire weapons or throw grenades, whatever is in your respective hands at the time. To pick-up weapons you simply stand over them until the name appears then tap the left or right weapon icon on the lower screen. The eye powers are problematic since their activation icons are very small and hard to tap with the standard thumb-strap. Thankfully, you won’t need to use them often.

There is a training level that pits you against endless streams of enemies in both solo and multiplayer modes, and then you have the main game, which can be finished in about 8-10 hours. There is single card play for up to eight players and wireless multi card play for up to four in standard deathmatch and team games as well as domination and tug-of-war. Naturally, all this is locked until you earn the right to play it by completing the solo campaign.

The main campaign takes you to numerous levels, both indoors and out, all full of enemies waiting to be shot, and more than willing to shoot back at you. The game can be quite difficult if you don’t master the control scheme early on. There are a variety of weapons, and you can wield two at a time unless their size dictates you must use both hands. You can also carry a gun in one hand and a grenade in another. On a more interesting note, you can only carry the weapons you are wielding, so there is no cycling through a massive arsenal.

Combat is problematic for two reasons. First, you have no visual indication of whether you are hitting anything. There is no blood and the bodies don’t recoil or react when hit, at least until they are dead and fall to the ground. Many of the enemies are in body armor so you either unload a clip or two into each or you try for the elusive head-shot. The game is challenging on Easy, hard on Normal and impossible on Difficult. You can even unlock a fourth difficulty level once you complete the game.

The cutscenes are a bit bland, basically static pictures taken from the movies of the console version with all the pertinent speech being replace with text. The levels are fairly complex and feature some surprising detail in a lot of areas while sacrificing details in other areas, mainly character design and animation.

Apparently the enemies in Rogue Agent all came out of the same cloning machine because you are only going to see about 5-6 different style henchman during the entire game. None have particularly detailed animation, more like robotic movements with repetitive reload animation and the same death sequence that you will see over and over again.

On a positive note, the framerate is a consistent 30fps regardless of what is going on in the level, and there are some pretty fancy effects, weapons fire, lighting, explosions, etc. It’s a very nice 3D engine for the DS that screams for a better game to show it off.

The sound effects are merely adequate. You have all the sounds of gunfire, but the weapons don’t sound all that different other than their rate of fire. Explosions are loud, but they easily distort on the tiny DS speakers. And then you have the beeping of the interface when you approach death and the repetitive cries and death groans of your enemies.

I was impressed with the multiplayer levels, especially their large size that easily accommodates up to 8 players, but some were too large for only two players, which is more often than not, the number of players in my impromptu games.

So, for a while, EA gets to enjoy the luxury of having the only FPS game out for the DS. Whether you want to play it or not will only be determined by your love of the genre and how much patience you have to learn a whole new way to play and control the game.