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Hidden and Dangerous
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You'll want to keep this game hidden, as it's dangerously bad - Review By Mad Carl
This poor guy has a backpack growing out of his back. |
Graphics are passable, but barely. It's odd that a port of a PC game would look so much like a PlayStation title, yet it does. While the frame rate is ok, the textures look either blurred, pixilated, or both. Fog is always somewhere nearby. Buildings are solid blocks with window textures on them and doors that don't open. Graphically, the whole endeavor just feels like Amateur Night in Dixie.
The game mechanics themselves are broken beyond repair. There's an entire map screen used for issuing orders to your squad and planning your missions. Aside from the fact that its user interface is clumsy and confusing, the map screen is the best way in the world to get your squad killed. No amount of planning and orders issuing will make up for the fact that these guys are the Terminators of WWII -- rigid automatons following their directives to the letter. (They will not stop until they are dead!) Tell a soldier to run up to the corner of a building and wait, and he'll do just that. In the process, he'll run past a German who is just a few feet away. He'll sit, and he'll wait, and that German will shoot him to death.
And it won't take many shots to do the deed, either. Bang! Head shot! You're dead. No second chances. No missed shots to warn you. Just Bang! Head go pop! You are dead, Herr American Soldier! Next! If German soldiers were this well-trained, the war would have been over before Eisenhower even knew there was a Normandy to invade. These guys are the Ubermensch of Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra". They cannot miss a shot. They can take two bullets square to the face and still shoot at you (I saw it happen twice, even though on another occasion I dropped an enemy with a well-placed shot to the groin -- go figure). Hell, they even know you're there when they don't know you're there. Let me explain. While sneaking up on the enemy, you can use the sniper scope to survey the road ahead. On more than one occasion, I saw a German soldier standing there, gun at the ready, looking right at me. Sure, he wasn't moving. He wasn't shooting. He wasn't even breathing. But he was ready. He knew I was there. He was just that damn good.
The reason behind the game's lacking graphics becomes apparent. |
Of course, I'm open to the possibility that he may have actually heard me, since I was quite loud with my curses while trying to keep the controller layout straight in my head. The left trigger works as a sort of Shift key, altering the use of several buttons on the controller. Trying to remember when you have to and don't have to press that trigger is a game unto itself. But that's only half the fun, because said trigger is also a jump button -- clever! No amount of cursing, consulting the instruction manual or just plain practice made wrangling with the controls of this game any easier. Note: As mentioned above, I did not have access to a Dreamcast keyboard. The keyboard may well make controlling the game much easier. However, since most Dreamcast owners do not own a keyboard either, the control scheme implemented on the basic controller should be as simple and logical as possible. This control scheme is not.
Moving on, before the game was even started I was subjected to one of the worst-designed menus in Dreamcast history. Usually the only time I'm this lost in a menu is when I'm playing a Japanese RPG and my feeble grasp of Japanese has decided that it would be a good time to take a vacation. H&D's menu starts with you selecting your troops. You pick your men on one screen, where you can see their statistics (accuracy, speed, stealth, and the like). Then you pick their weapons. Then you equip them with items. Of course, on the equip screen, you can't tell what anybody's stats are. Thus, you don't know which guy to give the sniper rifle to, since you can't remember who the sniper is and nobody here is telling. About your only hope of ever making it into the game itself is hitting the "auto equip" button that sends weapons and troops all over your screen in a flash of activity that looks like Data surfing the net in an episode of Next Generation. But even then, you'll sometimes discover your sniper without a sniper rifle.
Eventually, I found the best plan of action in playing this game was to equip all of my men with sniper rifles and ammo. Then I would take only one of them on the mission. I would pick off the bad guys at long range and basically clear the level. Then, I would go back to the other troops, select one of them, have him tell the others to follow him, and run the whole group to the end of the level. This was not fun. Of course, neither was watching most of my team die while following perfectly intelligent orders. I guess you could say that I opted for the less evil of two non-funs.
Lastly, I feel I should warn you of this game's final great evil: the music. At first, I wanted to complain that there was no in-game music, but then I remembered how awful the menu music was, and was suddenly thankful for the gameplay's lack of tunes. You see, the entire time I was trying to decipher the game's cryptic menu and obtuse interface, I had to listen to the same five seconds of music as it looped endlessly for ten minutes. The second time I meandered through the interface (because I had selected flare guns, which look just like standard pistols), I had to listen to this music again. And then the third time. And the fourth. For the rest of the day, in the back of my mind, I had to listen to this same five seconds of music, over and over and over and over. In a game chock full of badness, this was just the icing on the cake.
The Final Word
For a simulation of combat during a conflict known as "the last great war", this is one incredibly lame game. When it isn't busy being ugly or hard to control, it seems to take great joy in killing you without allowing you the chance to first defend yourself. For a game that strives to be (and could have been) the Rainbow Six of WWII, this is a real letdown.
Developer: Illusion Softworks / TalonSoft
Publisher: Take 2 Interactive
Genre: Tactical Action
Highs: Nicely interconnected missions, sneaking past enemies can be fun, good sound effects.
Lows: Too damn hard, convoluted control scheme, ugly textures.
Other: 1 player, VMU Compatible (11 blocks), Jump Pack Compatible, Keyboard Compatible.
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Final Score:
(out of a possible 10)
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