Cold Zero The combination of
elements from several different genres action, strategy, and role playing works
to keep things interesting in Cold Zero.
An intriguing blend of action,
real-time strategy, and role-playing elements, JoWood's isometric third-person
shooter Cold Zero: No Mercy superficially resembles games like X-COM and Jagged
Alliance and is an often trigger-happy journey through the trials and
tribulations of a hired mercenary. The game is violent, challenging,
alternately thoughtful and fast-paced, and at times highly addictive. However,
it's hampered by problematic camera controls and some other shortcomings, as
well as action that can be overly difficult and repetitive. But if you don't
mind the occasional frustration, and you relish the thought of wasting all
sorts of baddies from an overhead vantage point while also taking time to
perform some RPG-like day-to-day chores of a soldier of fortune, Cold Zero may
be just the thing for you. In Cold Zero, you direct the actions of one man,
John McAffrey, an ex-cop expelled from the force for mistakenly shooting an
innocent civilian and now in charge of his own private detective agency.
McAffrey's new business is suffering mightily from his past indiscretion, and
he soon finds himself flat-out broke and forced into working for a purported
Mafia kingpin. He does not fight the law--in fact, McAffrey begins the game as
an essentially decent sort who agrees to his current gig only under the threat
of violence and because he believes he's battling other hoods. The game kicks
off in McAffrey's new digs, a sorry tenement in an odd little neighborhood
surrounded by gun shops, target ranges, bars, and pawnbrokers.
Thankfully, the game's visuals
aren't so repetitive. You'll find yourself in a jungle one moment, a
dilapidated mine shaft the next, and a big city soon thereafter. Each
environment is attractively rendered, with believable lighting and tons of detail.
The designer, Encore Software, clearly went beyond the call of duty to render
incidental items in secondary areas that you may not ever visit. It also
developed a neat system whereby rooftops and other visual barriers magically
evaporate to allow you an unimpeded view inside. And, if you just want to break
stuff, the game obliges by delivering an array of blow-apart boxes, exploding
barrels, and more.
Sound is definitely one of Cold
Zero's strong suits. The music is especially enjoyable, dynamically responding
to the current situation by swelling up dramatically when things get sticky and
lowering to a peaceful, temperate passage when the going is easy. Sound
effects, including the clatter of dropped weapons and ammo, the whoosh of a
windstorm, and the clip-clop of distant footsteps and voices, emanate from
precisely the direction they should. However, voice acting is somewhat suspect.
Most characters are just too over the top, and many are obviously voiced by the
same performer.
Our anti-hero, John McAffrey,
opens a safe and finds a few more items for his already burgeoning inventory.
Multiplayer Cold Zero can support
a maximum of 16 competitors via either LAN or the Internet. Though we were
unable to locate any active servers in time for this review, we did set up a
small team-based LAN game and found the action to be quite a bit more fast and
furious than during solo play.
Though it's rough around the
edges, Cold Zero is nevertheless an adventurous and generally likeable game.
Yes, you'll die way too often. And you'll definitely be forced to constantly
rely on quick saves. Yet the combination of elements from several different
genres--action, strategy, and role-playing--works to keep things interesting.
When flaws in one are discovered, you always have something else to fall back
on. If you're not a hardcore purist in any of the three genres, and if you can
forgive its imperfections, you'll find that Cold Zero is an involving,
gleefully violent game.
SCREEN SHOTS
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Download Game and Extract with
WinRAR
2. Password softhitz.blogspot.com
3. Run "Setup.exe"
4. After installation copy the
"Movies" folder and paste it in your installed drive when ask for
overwrite click "YES"
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Processor= 733MHz
RAM= 128MB
Graphics= 16MB
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