Reviewed: October 15, 2005
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud
Publisher
DreamCatcher
Developer
Mindware Studios
Released: September 27, 2005
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen
7
7
6
6
6.5
System Requirements
Recommended System
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
Like a precursor to the ever popular Splinter Cell series, Dreamcatcher has released a very similar action game in Cold War. The game is set in the cold war era of the 1980's and finds freelance journalist Matt Carter thrown into an international conspiracy to control Russia. The game starts with you as Matt Carter covering a story in Moscow when your knocked unconscious and thrown into a KGB prison.
You must escape and find your way out of Russia and along the way help to uncover the conspiracy. You get to use your wits along with some preset blueprints for gadgets to improvise weapons and other useful tools to help you, instead of having them conveniently given to you as in Splinter Cell. The gameplay follows the storyline and you find yourself with assignments that don't necessarily make sense at first but you get used to it. Eventually you get to help the one who is being framed to find out who is behind the conspiracy and find the proof to exonerate your newfound partner as well as yourself.
The gameplay is pretty good. You have to sneak around to accomplish your goals and find the objects that you turn into weapons and tools. You do get weapons like a regular pistol and later on Russian made rifles, but you can fashion tools and weapons like silencers and sling shots out of things like plastic bottles, rags and appliance parts. Now I know why the previews for this game make reference to MacGyver.
The AI runs well enough but sometimes it doesn't quite make sense. At times the guards and other people in the game can hear you when your on the other sides of doors and other times they don't hear you when your a few feet from them. The sneaking part works well, with a turn of the mouse wheel you speed up and slow down in your sneak, and the slower you go the lower you crouch, as you slow down you crouch lower to stay out of sight better. There is a meter to show how well others can see and hear you. Just keep the blue line as low as possible and your objectives will be easier to accomplish.
There is also an indicator to show the level of alertness of the guards, from green to red with red being an all out hunt to find you, just hide and wait until the meter goes to yellow or green to start moving again. The health meter works like many others, just keep an eye on it and when it goes down some, take a break and patch yourself up with the numerous health packs you find in the game.
The weapons interface works pretty well, but it could be a little smaller, or something. It pops up across the center of the screen just like the map does. It's semi-transparent but when your picking gear and trying to watch what is going on it would be better if it was along the side of the screen or something else. It's just too distracting with the pull down menus that are all across the center of the screen from the top down.
You get an unlimited number of saves so getting to the end of the game is more a matter of figuring out how to do each objective and not on how well you fight or shoot. That is the basis of the whole game though, figuring out how to outwit the guards and accomplish each objective, rather than shoot your way through the levels. When your playing the action is quick and you can predict when your going to get company even if you don't hear or see anyone. Sometimes the music starts into a quicker tempo when someone is close to you, giving away their relative position, or at least that they're close.
You have four different modes of play, one normal story mode and three others where you have different additions to the regular goals or objectives in the game. The other three modes are Time Run, Pacifist and Ghost, each one is pretty much as it's name. Time Run is where each objective has to be completed in a certain amount of time, Pacifist doesn't allow any killing and in Ghost you can only set off a certain number of alarms.
The graphics in Cold War are fairly decent, but nothing spectacular. The Splinter Cell series did better with the visuals of this type of game but it was not an annoyance or anything that detracted from the game. It is just like Splinter Cell with the over the shoulder view and a real close up over the shoulder plus a cross hair when you arm yourself with a weapon.
The game comes with some adjustments for things like resolution and whether you run the game in a window on a setup screen. In the game you can change the Gamma, Brightness and Contrast but that's it, there's no level of detail other than the screen resolution and the small changes like the brightness and contrast.
The in-game cutscenes are a little on the annoying side, they use a still cartoon scene that has people talking as they discuss what you need to hear during the scene and then they go to the next cartoon scene. It is rather cheesy but it is only during the cutscenes which you can escape out of. Any important information comes up on a screen before it loads the next level.
The one thing to note about the graphics is the X-ray camera. Since your a journalist you have your trusty old fashioned camera, but someone has switched it on you with a high tech X-ray camera. It is pretty cool, you see everything around you in an X-ray perspective when you use it. One of the goals is to find a guard with a broken arm, but it seems like they force this objective on you just to show off the camera.
During gameplay the thing you notice rather quickly is the sound or lack thereof. There are a lot of times when you hear very little but then when you get in the room nexy to someone the music will start or increase tempo, so you know ahead of time when you can expect anyone to be in the room your approaching, and it goes quite if the next room is empty. The guards will often speak out when they think they hear something but then if you hold still, they will tell you they heard nothing, this is again your cue to continue on.
Other than that there is very little about the sound that struck me as other than normal. The music for Cold War is typical of some older 80's spy movies with an almost jazz quality to it. There are in game controls for the levels of the sound effects, speech and music as well as controls to turn on and off the subtitles. Again, in Splinter Cell and especially in the third one, Chaos Theory, the sound was much better.
The game has the four different modes to play in but the gameplay is basically the same. You have to figure out how to achieve each goal or objective and use the things you find to fashion gadgets and weapons to help you along.
Cold War has no multi-player or online play so it is limited to how many times you will want to play once you've played it through to the end. It is fun to play on some of the different settings like the modes and difficulties but the game would get pretty boring as the AI only does so much with the characters. The game is not very different other than how many guards there are and how easily they see you. That seems to be the major difference in the difficulties.
Considering how few stealth type games are out there that come even close to Splinter Cell this is one that is worth purchasing. There is a help and support section and a user forum on the Dreamcatcher web site that are very good at answering any questions you might have.
Cold War is a stealth type game that is very similar to Splinter Cell, but not quite there. Then again, this is a $19 title and not a $50 one. It's gameplay and graphics are good but it does not stand out in any major way.
The game has a few problems with the AI and how the characters react to you when your close but overall it's worth looking at. If you like the action games where you have to figure out the best way to proceed and not shoot at everything that moves then this one is worth purchasing.