Shadow Ops: Red Mercury [Xbox]

Atari's forthcoming cinematic shooter Shadow Ops: Red Mercury gets its inspiration from action blockbusters like Black Hawk Down. However, this title is more concerned with a driving, dramatic experience than a strictly "realistic" one. We got hands-on time with both single- and multiplayer modes of the Xbox version in a recent visit to Zombie Studios.

The plot reads like something out of a Clancy novel or today's headlines, which are one and the same these days. Players take the role of a Spec Ops captain on a worldwide tour of duty. Your mission is to track down a threat called Red Mercury -- essentially, a "loose" and all-too-transportable nuclear weapon that's hit the market from the rattletrap of the former Soviet military.

Shadow Ops will offer a 26-mission solo-player campaign set in meticulously recreated environments including post-collapse Soviet republics, the Congo, and a number of Middle East hotspots like Syria and Iran. The cinematic-minded missions/levels are broken up with dramatic cutscenes that move the story along.

The Zombie designers clearly intend for Shadow Ops to be an experience to rival that of a military thriller, and seem to have spared no expense in terms of time or effort. Not only did they go on "photo safaris" to places like Russia, Morocco, and the Hawaiin Islands (poor guys!) to give the various textures a convincing look, but they've tapped Hollywood sound-house Soundelux ( Kill Bill, Black Hawk Down) to produce the game's ultra-realistic weapons fire effects.

The attention to the immersive audio of gunfire is so extensive that you can tell the nature of your immediate in-game surroundings (narrow corridors, open courtyards, open areas) just by the accoustics of the gunshots. It's a claim that many games since the Half-Life days have claimed, but few have delivered on to this degree. In addition, Zombie has also hooked up with composer Inon Zur ( Champions of Norrath) to assemble a movie-worthy, orchestral score.

In the latter half of our studio tour we got a chance to have a cathartic go at each other in some of the multiplayer modes. Shadow Ops will offer at least 10 maps designed for cooperative play (in addition to those for the solo game), plus another 10 purely competitive maps for old-standby modes like deathmatch, capture the flag, and VIP escort missions. Players can pick from a small range of loadout types; available maps encouraged a lot of heavy shotgun action, although after an hour or so we had some annoying, aspiring snipers to deal with.

Mechanically, the game is very easy to get into, especially for anyone familiar with first-person shooters. The single-player campaign immediately drops you into the thick of combat with no boot camp or training mode. The standard dual analog stick controls are user-friendly, and include alt-fire modes, and a "through the scope" view that's available with a quick press of the button. This also doubles as a lean-out function, allowing cautious players to crank off shots from behind cover instead of charging into danger.

The enemy employs similar tactics. It was neat to see the behavior variation between enemy types -- less-disciplined militia or conscripts would do that silly, ineffective "blind-fire" stuff you see in the movies, while those better trained use combined advances and flush-out tactics. True to the cinematic nature of the game, the campaign missions were full of well-timed "scripted" events to heighten the tension.

Visually, there have been great tweaks to the Unreal engine. A combination of pre-assigned and rag-doll physics for the enemy death animations adds to the visceral feel. The grenade explosions could use some work, but Zombie has some crunch time left to polish them up.

Shadow Ops: Red Mercury is a promising addition to the lineup of forthcoming Xbox and PC action games, and we're looking forward to getting our hands on the release version. We'll have a full review ready by the time it hits stores in June. Let's just hope the plot is still fiction by then.