Historical Letdown
As a history buff I was somewhat looking forward to this game, the idea of a time travel game that had you using the weapons of that time period and participating in some of the greatest battles of that time. But like most ideas it comes out poorly, and this game has it in spades. This game suffers from problems involving the poor execution of the game-play, numerous plot holes, even glaring historical inaccuracy.
This game starts off in 1876 at the Battle of Little Big Horn as a soldier in General George A. Custer’s army. As most of us know, it goes poorly and as your fellow soldiers take arrows to the face you are rescued at the last second by a guy in some sort of exoskeleton who puts you into a sort of time bubble that sends you to thfuture (no date given) where you meet your new “boss” who goes by the name of “Mother” she gives a lecture about a company called Kronotek and gives an exposition that the founder of this company (named Dr.Koell) solved time travel and used it to research history. She goes on to say she is a co-founder and that the company they created has a strict policy of not messing with history. She states that Dr.Koell has gone missing; and not only that but she has noticed that there have been disruptions in the time stream (no idea how she knows) and that you have to fix it by saving a person who is not where they’re supposed to be, Cpl. Welsh from the Union Army in the American Civil War at the Battle of Antietam and a Russan Army Officer named Perovich in World War I attle of Tannenberg. You’re then introduced to an Agent Dexter and sent through boot camp. After boot camp you begin your time travel adventures.
You are given two choices/time periods to begin your mission to find Dr.Koell and save history. The two time periods you can choose are the Battle of Antietam in 1862 during the American Civil War and the Battle of Tanneberg in 1914 on the Eastern Front of the First World War. Unfortunately these two periods are really it, you do go to a POW camp in World War II but that‘s only for three missions, and to Pompeii in 79 A.D but that’s only at the end. These two periods are stretched out through the entire game sending you into portions of the battles. This is sad because it seems that you could easily have thrown in other areas and/or sections of the Wars.
Game play is a basic shooter, the only difference being the weapons you use. You can use historically “accurate” weapons of those areas. Such as muskets in the Civil War and bolt-action rifles and machine guns in the WWI sections. The weapons even reload “historically” with muskets only having one shot and reloading it via barrel, the reloading has a meter which at the right time if you press reload again you can reload instantly (ala Gears of War) or if you miss your game jams for a few seconds. As a history buff the attention to detail is nice as they even name them and use both sides’ weapons. The missions are pretty basic, you need to hunt down you’re targets and you have to kill your way to them, but you always miss them for whatever reason until the last missions.
The plots of the missions are weird as any time “Mother” talks she goes on and on about keeping history the way it was and pretty much sounds like Doc Brown from Back to the Future. But, once you’re in the battle you are sometimes given access to future weapons such as tactical shotguns, assault rifles, and such. The reason for this is that you’re outnumbered so you need to make sure you can even out the odds, this seems weird cause if you left well enough alone the battle would be the same. Also you have to fight through the entire battle to get to your target, but it would seem easier/ less risky to just pop in grab the target and pop out, but you need to kill thousands of Germans/ Confederates. At one point you even have your target but a Union Commander orders you to go to Bloody Lane, even though you have your target and you’re essentiality just a guy in a Union uniform your partner (Agent Dexter) says we have to go there because those are our our orders (even though you just grabbed the target, plus Dexter had said how shitty Bloody Lane ends at the beginning of the level.)
NITPICKS:
Some problems I had with the game involve my historical buffness, such as the historical inaccuracies. I really only want to say two inaccuracies as not to sound like a history snob, both are in the World War 1 section as those two got me the most annoyed. First, in the beginning couple of WWI levels where you’re fighting in the first months of the war, during one of the levels you come across a section of the level that you have to run away from, and what is keeping you running is a never ending onslaught of Germans and a German’s tank machine gun. The problems are with that are simple. The Battle of Tannberg took place in August of 1914, Tanks didn’t enter combat until The Battle of the Somme which was in September 1916, two years after the game has them fighting. The next nitpick is in another WWI mission in which after you protect the side of a hill from a German attack, you come under Mustard Gas attack which quickly covers the hillside and you have to put on a gasmask and quickly run away, I have several problems with this. A. Mustard Gas was not used effectively till 1917 at the Battle of Ypres against the British, B. Mustard Gas does not rise that fast, nor does it move the fast. C. Gas Masks at the time were no more than simple pieces of cotton as the only gas used during that time (1914) was tear gas.
In conclusion the game is not horrible, but it’s not great either. To someone who can’t stand firing a weapon that doesn’t fire dozens of bullets at once, it’ll get stressful and frustrating fast, but if can but that past you it’s a good rental and a good weekend.
The Good
· Good Ideas
· Interesting Story
The Bad
· Poor Execution
· Plot Holes
The Ugly
· Glaring Historical Inaccuracies
