Reviewed: October 29, 2002
Reviewed by: Drew Thrasher
Publisher
Xicat Interactive
Developer
7FX
Released: September 23, 2002
Genre: FPS
Players: 30
ESRB: Mature
4
6
5
5
5.0
System Requirements
Over the years we have seen many games in the FPS genre. Games like Unreal Tournament and HALO have been breakthroughs in this gaming genre, while others have just been a blast to play. Unfortunately, US Special Forces: Team Factor doesn’t really come close to competing with any other shooters on the market today.
Features of US Special Forces: Team Factor:
- 16 daring missions in hot drop zones around the globe to choose from
- Choose your character: Soldier, Scout, Sniper or Specialist
- Unique three-team play made up from elite forces spanning the world including, US Special Forces, Russian Spednatz, SAS, Fallschirjaeger and Terrorist Independents
- 50 detailed firearms from manufacturers' specifications
- Supports 30 players in a LAN or Internet session
As you gather from the name, Team Factor is a team-based game, much like Counter Strike and Unreal Tournament. It is designed primarily around online play wit, so those of you who enjoy singgle player games will want to move along - nothing to see here. Well, not entirely nothing. You can play this game solo using AI-controlled bots, but that kind of defeats the purpose the designers had in mind when creating this title.
You have your specialized units ranging from sniper to scout and a broad range of missions from hacking computers to defeating all of your opponents. This game was definitely intended on being multiplayer, but good luck on trying to find a server. I went online a few times and was unable to find readily available game. Single player isn’t much better. Be sure to change the team settings in single player to where you will be by yourself, or you will only get about a minute or two of playtime before the computer completes the mission objectives for you.
The game controls were the standard W, A, S, D and moving the mouse left to right for turning. Each character had a couple of interesting attributes to them. One of which was breathing, which I felt was misleading and should have been changed to endurance. This trait determines how fast your character runs out of breath. A higher rating will lead to a bunch of bobbing up and down to make it harder to aim your weapon.
Special Forces comes with tons of maps for you to run around, everything from jungles, to deserts, and to alpine hills. The maps are nicely done with plenty of room for you to run, hide and snipe from. US Special Force does come with a map editor, however you have to download it from the 7FX website. There are also several rather large upgrade patches available for downloading as well.
The graphics were about par for the course. There were some major hiccups here and there that screwed up my game play every now and then. I tried various settings, with the default of 1280 x 1024 with OpenGL to 1024 x 768 with direct3D and they still ran poorly on my machine. This simply has to be poor engine coding because it is definitely not my computer - I can run Morrowind flawlessly. From what I saw, the graphics were a bit washed out and didn’t have much character to them. All it really needed is just a touch up on detail and the game would have been really exciting.
There isn’t much sound in the game at all. The only music is a nicely done intro piece and that’s it. There are a few sound effects during the game such as rifle shots, footsteps and sirens. It’s interesting to note, however, that less equals more, especially for this game. These few sound effects really add to the realism of the game and make it feel like you are actually involved in a military operation.
You can probably rip through the 16 single-player missions in one or two evenings of gameplay, especially with the bots doing most of the work for you. Of course, this is designed as an online game so the replayability is virtually endless provided you can find someobody online to play with or against. With no support for GameSpy or any other matchmaking services finding an online session may prove more challenging than the game itself.
US Special Forces does offer some community support at their 7FX website, but this site is heavily under construction. There are links to several fan sites that are surprisingly more comprehensive and complete than the official site. Once the 7FX site is further developed it will be a great tool, and this title may actually turn into the next Counter Strike or Rainbow Six.
US Special Forces really felt like it wasn’t complete to me. While it had some good ideas, they were all set back by various other faults in this game. The lack of any matchmaking support really hurts a game when it's targeted toward the online community. 7FX should really go back and take another look at this one, because I feel that they are on to something and US Special Forces could be a few patches away from perfection.