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Sam Fisher with boobs is an accurate description. Rogue Ops from Bits Studios and Kemco. The game obviously draws inspiration from Konami’s Metal Gear Solid franchise and Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell but can’t quite compete with the massive budgets for those games.
You play as Nikki Connors. She used to be a pretty hardcore military type who retired for a more peaceful life. Afterwards, her husband and daughter are killed, forcing Connors to enter Phoenix, a covert ops group to get revenge and make something of herself. If anyone saw Nikki before her makeover, she wasn’t quite as hot. Intelligently, Bits Studios made her a bit more appealing to the masses, because well, who doesn’t like blonds?
A spy is nothing unless they have some weapons and gadgets to use. During the game’s missions, you’ll see the enemies in MGS-style radar. Here you will also see the security cameras. The field of view is represented by cones, not unlike MGS. Your weapons include everything from a pistol to throwing stars. Your gadgets include night vision and heat sensing goggles. You’ll also control a little spy camera, which is fun.
You can’t always rely on weapons, though. Luckily, Nikki Connors is trained to kill. Obviously, you can’t just shoot everyone since you don’t want the others to be aware of your presence. To kill people silently, you’ll need to wait behind them, waiting for a meter to fill up. Whenever you want to, you can press the kill button which will make you press some directional keys and awards you the kill. The more the meter fills up, the easier it is to pull off the kill. If you mess up the combo, you’ll alert the guard, so be careful. When you move around the world, the game automatically lets you know if there’s an item you can interact with and chooses the appropriate action, making moving around painless.
Some of the game mechanics are a bit flawed. There are times when enemies can spot you even if you should be outside their field of view. There are others where enemies should see you and don’t. Sometimes, you don’t really know what to do and are aimlessly wandering around looking for the next interact able item.
The visual engine behind Rogue Ops is very capable. In this genre though, that isn’t enough. The leaders, Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell, are technical achievements. The same can’t really be said for Rogue Ops. Nonetheless, the game looks good with appropriate character models and decent animation. The PS2 version I played is a bit jaggy, but that is to be expected. Also, the frame rate, while smooth for the most part, drops quite a bit when things get intense.
The soundtrack of the game is pretty good, when you actually listen to it. For the most part, things are silent. The sound effects are what is to be expected, although they are quite crisp. The voice acting in the game is decent but not good. There’s plenty of cursing, though I’m not sure why. Unlike a game like GTA or True Crime, where cursing actually fits the atmosphere, it seems to have been added for the heck of it.
Rogue Ops is a solid game for stealth fans. It tries to be the next Metal Gear or Splinter Cell but can’t quite succeed. Nonetheless, judged on its own merits, the game is quite enjoyable. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Nov 24, 2003
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