So in IGI, you take control of a good 'ol boy from England that pretty much kicks ass and takes names even though he sounds like someone you could punch a hole in without too much effort. He is supposedly a sneaky little bastage that can get into and out of trouble in good style and with no one the wiser. But much to my surprise, almost all of the missions ended up in a bloodbath without too much sneaking involved. In fact, you can really only sneak around so far. There comes a point when you really just have to up and shoot everything that moves in order to get past some of these incredibly difficult missions. This would be a bad thing when attacking most fortified terrorist bases, but luckily, these terrorists are incredibly stupid, but I'll into detail about that in a sec.
The missions are set up as such... You are given a briefing showing points of interest and then dropped a little ways away from the target in some kind of stealth helicopter that no one in the vicinity seems to notice or much care about except in one mission. So there you are, plopped into the fray with only your wits. Well, there're the guns also, and you can leave your wits at home, as you won't find anything too mentally challenging here. The challenge will come in trying not to get shot by some of the most accurate enemies you'll ever see. As long as you make sure that their back is to you, you'll be fine. The AI is so dumb, you get the impression that you could use that "tap on the shoulder and run past them while they're looking the other direction" trick you used to use in second grade to fool your friends. Of course, why would you do that when you can just stab them in the neck and pick up a shiny new gun? But if you do accidentally step into their line of sight, there is a very good chance that you will be shot.
Your missions, with a couple of exceptions will involve infiltrating a base (a.k.a. killing everybody there) and finding someone or a computer or something to this extent. So pretty much, you'll need to run to the base, find a way in, and kill the people guarding it in order to get wherever you need to go. And if you have a sniper rifle, this can be pretty fun even though it shows off the AI stupidity even more. So you take a potshot with the rifle killing an enemy. Fun stuff right? Sure I guess, especially since the guy that looked to be having a nice conversation with the target is still having that conversation even though he's covered in his friend's brains. "Ya hear that, Bob?"
There was an attempt to make the AI semi-smart but it was a very sad attempt. If you miss an enemy closely or even hit one, they might fall to a prone position. But will get back up in a couple of seconds even if you're still trying to shoot them on the ground. They forgot to teach these guys the cover part of "duck and cover." If you miss a guy with the sniper rifle, he'll look from side to side trying to figure out if a huge bee just zoomed past and then go on his way, even if that bee managed to push a hole through his buddy's chest. You'd think that if a base heard AK's firing and death screams, they'd tend to be a little more on the alert with some troops sent out to investigate the area. But gun sounds don't travel in this world, you need to be right next to the barracks shooting guns in order to bring out the reinforcements.
And then there is the pathfinding. Ugh. How many time did guards run right past me only to turn around about fifty feet from me and then take aim to shoot. A whole lot. Mostly because I couldn't hit them before they got turned around due to some choppy frame rates that suck for aiming. If someone manages to trigger an alarm, you should also know that guards will make a b-line for your position, no matter how far they are coming from. They don't start a search or anything like that, they just find you and shoot you till you die.
You take damage just about as quick as your enemies do, so you'll need to think fast and aim well when dealing with an all out firefight. Once they get a lock on you, you'll get dead. I had a rather large collection of death screenshots that I was going to put up, but narrowed them down for the sake of time. And the sad part about dying so much? No mid-mission save feature. It isn't so horrible with this game except in a couple of places, but really, why not at least put in a feature where players can save once a mission or something.
Other than the boring mission design and the terrible AI, the game isn't really that terrible. It's really pretty damn average. The graphics are decent, but the frame rate really can be a problem. Running the game on a good machine with a GeForce 2 and 256MB of RAM, the game still ran slowly. This could very possibly be because the game runs on a modified version of a flight sim engine. The reason they used this was for the ability to generate large expanses of terrain. And it does that fairly well, but I can't say that it was really all that impressive for what it did. The Land Warrior engine did a much better job of it with much less choppiness.
The sound was also very average. That's all there is to say there really. The sounds weren't bad, but they certainly didn't try to hard to make it very realistic. I didn't hear any echoes across the mountainous landscapes when firing weapons, shells didn't clink on the ground, death grunts were fairly boring, and really everything was just... okay.
But then that is really where this game lies. Smack in the middle of the just okays. It's exceedingly average except for the AI, which is exceedingly poor. Cool things like being able to shoot through wood, having cool binoculars that point out enemies and a satellite map of the area that will let you plan your mission out better just don't make up for the lack of fun. There are much more interesting FPS games out there that you can enjoy for the same price. With 14 missions and no multiplayer support, this game will last only as long as you can take having to run back through missions over and over again.
-- Dan Adams
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