Combat Task Force 121 (xbox) Review

cool cover i guess

well look who's back...ME!!! yeah schools been a bit annoying, but here i am. I actually did try a SOldier of Fortune on dreamcast review back in september, but gave up. So here i am, doing a review of a little known budget title on the xbox. I kind of want to make this quick for a few reasons. 1) I never got to far do to one of its problems. 2) there really isn't much to say about it. And 3) i'm doing a PSP review later as well, so hold tight. COmbat task force 212 is a budget FPS released in 2005 for the PC and xbox. Both ports are generally the same (i got them both). It was meant to be a budget shooter with good online multiplayer. when all is said and done, you get what you pay for.

Presentation 

Honestly, could this be anymore boring? Dull, black menus with plain music and a still backgrounds.  The intro simply shows you gameplay and you can't skip it till its about half over. the Pause menus are exactly the same as the main. Muliplayer interface is simple and gets the job done. Before each mission you are given orders by a very bored general with only about 4 face movements. yeah like I said, not to much to say in this game. I can't really tell the story since I don't have a clue about it, sorry!

Graphics

 They work, but nothing looks really good. The texture work is decent at best, but there is now "zing" to them. areas outside look like crap. Character don't move or look good. Framerate is just fine though. Can't really say anything else.

Sound

the only image i found on google

Mostly average with one exception, the gun sounds. It really sucks when games have wimpy gun sounds. This game however sounds great. Machine guns go BANG BANG and so on. Otherwise the music is passable along with the voice acting. Nothing special. Wish there was a little more variety in background noise though.

Gameplay

The controls are as followed (for the PC version, you can do the exact same commands with no addictions) A is the action button, team talks. B crouches, y jumps, x reloads, r shoots, l enters lean mode, right thumbstick aims, clicking it zooms, left thumbstick moves (left and right leans while in lean) back shows objectives, start pauses, d pad up selects melee weapon, d pad down selects explosive, d pad left selects main weapon, d pad right selects pistol. 
The controls work well and aiming feels pretty good on the thumbsticks. Single player is very standard in FPS terms. Shoot, run etc. The game tries to add more stuff to it by forcing you to look for keys, but the Resident evil style back tracking gets annoying, epically when the keys are so small. The AI pretty much sucks to. I never played online multiplayer (since now one plays this game anymore) but plit screen works...depending on what map. The maps are massive, but when you have only 2 people playing at once, it gets annoying waiting to find the other player.

Overall

If only this game looked like this...

there really isn't much to this game, however that doesn't mean its bad. Everything works, just not very good, or fun. Back in the day it may have been a worthy purchase if you didn't want to get a bigger name game, but then again no were near as many people would be playing this online, so you were probably better of getting ghost recon, halo, or project snowblind. This may be pretty cool in 4 player split screen, but again the maps are TOO big. If you want to find an unknown, old, and obscure title on a dead system, get this bad boy.